Tag Archives: Health

Cheep Cheep Bath Bomb

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Hello all,

I thought for this post I’d write something a little less depressing and not around benefits. Well, it will talk about the benefits of bath bombs…

A while ago I decided to treat myself to a Lush Bath Bomb. I looked to see what they had that was new and decided on one called Cheep Cheep. I believe it is part of their spring and Easter collection. 

The bath bomb is small and shaped like a little chicken. You can feel the little nose and the wings at the side. It even has some little feet.

A yellow bath bomb shaped like a chicken. Being held over a running bath.



The ingredients on the Lush site are: Sodium Bicarbonate, Citric Acid, Popping Candy, Tapioca Starch, Fine Sea Salt, Bergamot Oil, Lime Oil, Violet Leaf Absolute, Titanium Dioxide, Water (Aqua), Dipropylene Glycol, Alpha-Isomethyl Ionone, *Limonene, Perfume, Colour 47005:1.

I find anything lemony is a good choice because it feels nice and refreshing. Once you have run your hot bath just drop it straight in and watch as it fizzles in the water. You can also hear it fizzing away. 

The cost was only £3.50 so in comparison to other bath bombs it is one of the cheeper options.

Sometimes it is nice to just have a good soak and relax.

Have you tried any other bombs lately? If so what are your favourites?

If you would like to try this bath bomb follow the link.

Thank you for reading,
Philippa B.

No I am not being endorsed to write about this bath bomb. 

Scoliosis and the cold

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Hello again,

The weather is getting colder which means my back is hurting more and more. It is not just my back which hurts with the cold, but my joints ache too.

I have to keep going for my sport massages. These are really helpful because it helps to reduce the tightness in my muscles. This means I can move around a bit easier and feel a little less pain. I then have to keep doing my physio exercises to help keep the muscles and joints as usable as possible.
However, this is just a continuous cycle of sport massages, physio exercises and pain relief.

Due to my curved spine I will always be in some level of pain. It is just about how I manage it. There is no full solution to Scoliosis, which is what the condition is called when you have a curved spine. Even if you have the surgery to correct your spine you can still have to deal with the pain.

Currently I have pain in my right shoulder and neck which then runs all the way down the right hand side of my body. I am trying to keep warm today as it is due to snow heavily later on. The temperature is currently 1.

I am not a fan of the cold due to the high levels of pain I have to put up with. I wish people could understand a little more about the constant pain people with Chronic pain have to deal with.

I am going to go do some other things and get on with my day. Stay warm and safe.

Thank you for reading,
Philippa. 

Heart Health

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For my 30th Birthday I decided I wanted to raise awareness of Congenital Heart Disease. To do this I wrote about Heart Health on this blog and about my fundraising challenge. See Pips Turning 30. 

February is National Heart Month, lets talk about Heart Disease. I was born with Congenital Heart Disease, I had two holes in my heart and interrupted aortic arch. This was corrected at one week old. 

Here in the UK 13 babies a day are diagnosed with a heart defect.

The BHF has some staggering statistics:

‘Heart and circulatory diseases cause a quarter of all deaths in the UK, that’s more than 160,000 deaths each year – an average of 460 deaths each day or one every three minutes in the UK.

  • There are around 7.6 million people living with a heart or circulatory disease in the UK: 4 million men and 3.6 million women.
  • Coronary heart disease (CHD; also known as ischaemic heart disease) is the most common type of heart disease. It is the most common cause of heart attack and was the single biggest killer of both and men and women worldwide in 2019.
  • In the UK there are as many as 100,000 hospital admissions each year due to heart attacks: that’s one every five minutes.
  • Around 1.4 million people alive in the UK today have survived a heart attack.
  • More than 900,000 people in the UK are living with heart failure.
  • Strokes cause around 34,000 deaths in the UK each year and are the biggest cause of severe disability in the UK.
  • People with a family history of coronary heart disease are much more likely to develop vascular dementia.
  • Each day 13 babies are diagnosed with a congenital heart defect in the UK.
  • There are more than 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK each year, with a survival rate of less than 1 in 10.
  • More than 4.9 million people in the UK have diabetes – many thousands of them are undiagnosed.’

    British Heart Foundation (2023)

    These numbers show exactly why we need to ensure we invest in our heart health. Every single one of us.
A red heart with stitching up the middle holding it together. There is a needle and thread sat underneath.
A heart stitched back together.

Being born with Congenital Heart Disease means I will be on tablets for Hight Blood Pressure for the rest of my life. No lifestyle changes can stop this. I have Congenital Kidney Disease so I need to ensure my Kidneys keep working, otherwise this will have an impact on my heart. This is one of the reasons I am on tablets.

Congenital Heart Disease also means I have to attend hospital appointments to ensure my heart stays healthy and that I am doing everything I can to look after my heart.

We need to take heart health seriously, it affects more people every year. Taking far too many lives. You can do your part to help make change by learning CPR. Find a course near you.

By learning CPR you are buying someone time. You are keeping person alive when they have a Cardiac Arrest.

Most importantly phone the Emergency Services. Then someone can come and help you.

If you would like to learn more about the BHF please follow them on Twitter and give your support. Heart disease is cruel, but hopefully, one day, we can live in a world where it does not exist. 

*I am not writing on behalf of the BHF* These are just my own thoughts surrounding Heart Disease as someone who was born with CHD.