Flying high: Jenny, after testing the "miracle" Zeez Pebble for Channel 5 | 3 minute read

Viewers of Channel 5 may have watched Jenny on Cherry Healey’s documentary, Women’s Health: Breaking the Taboos which, over four episodes, took a close, sometimes very close, look at health issues women face. Endometriosis, fibroids and hysterectomy, menopausal symptoms, bladder incontinence and, in episode 3, insomnia which, studies show, women are 40% more likely to experience than men. Jenny was one of this episode’s ‘guinea pigs’, trialling three hopeful insomnia cures: yoga, a weighted blanket and the Zeez Sleep Pebble. 

You can watch the three women’s take on each product here.

Several times during filming, Jenny can be seen offering up a little prayer, invoking each item to please work. She had not slept properly from as far back as she can remember. Her very earliest memory is of lying in a cot where she would cry and cry, then fall silent to listen for reassuring footsteps. 

By adulthood insomnia had Jenny in its grip. By her 50s, she was taking Phenergan * sleeping tablets at bedtime each night. 

When she agreed to appear on Breaking the Taboos, Jenny had reached her menopause and had also been made redundant three times in two years. This stress alongside her continuing sleeplessness brought her to the conclusion that she did not fit into the 9-5 environment. The outcome is a good news story, as it led to her starting her own enterprise, Ask Jenny. She organises people’s lives, declutters for them, picks up the tasks they’re too stretched to carry out, creates solutions to vexing problems. She loves the jobs we hate so . . . Ask Jenny. She gardens professionally too and derives intense relaxation from being outdoors. 

Despite the lifestyle change, however, sleep still eluded `Jenny . . . until she found her miracle cure thanks to the Zeez Sleep Pebble and Cherry Healey’s ground-breaking tv documentary. The programme offered Jenny and two fellow-testers two weeks in which to trial three products that claim to improve sleep. 

The first, yoga, scored no effect for Jenny, and was rated the least effective by all, not least because doing stretches late at night was unappealing. Jenny found the weighted blanket too hot and heavy  although it pipped the Zeez to the post, winning on cost grounds. The difference the the Zeez Pebble made to Jenny’s sleep was immediate and intense. Jenny describes her pre-Zeez sleep-pattern as, ‘Three weeks of none with maybe one night of six hours’. It’s now - ‘Three weeks of full nights, with maybe one where I don’t.’ A complete turnaround. 

When you find a ‘cure’ you fear it is maybe a short-term fix, that you’ll acclimatise and slip back into old patterns. A critical test of this came when Jenny and her partner went on holiday to Egypt. Working to the last minute, she packed in a hurry and at the airport, realised she’d forgotten her Zeez Pebble. The airport pharmacy had run out of Phenergan and Jenny prepared for a stressful, sleepless holiday. Then, joy unbounded, she found some Phenergan in her suitcase. 

Her safety net, she put them on her bedside table at the resort. And then did not use them. She slept beautifully for the whole week. Like all those who have suffered long-term insomnia, saying ‘I’m cured’ still feels like jinxing fate, and the truth is, even after we have recovered a good sleep pattern, we are likely to need the Zeez Sleep Pebble again, perhaps when we next experience stress. Jenny has proof of a radically changed sleep habit and hopes the Zeez Pebble will keep her sleeping throughout the rest of her life. As it works gently, reminding the sleepless brain of the patterns of a good sleeper, retraining the brain, there is no reason it should not. 

Meanwhile, Jenny champions the Zeez, tells her friends, encourages all her non-sleeping acquaintance to give it a go. She wants it to be available on the NHS. Her story is testimony to the fact that for many users, the Zeez Pebble . . . simply works.  

(Phenergan is indicated for short term insomnia relief, with an adult maximum dosage of 1-2 tablets / day).

Ask Jenny can be contacted at jennypa66@gmail.com or https://www.facebook.com/AskJenny66