If university life has not taken a toll on your health then you are either new to the experience or you are able to do what many students have fallen short on; balancing health and university studies. Getting healthy or remaining healthy while in university sometimes fall on the back burner due to busy schedules among other “obstacles to health.” Here is how you can hurdle those obstacles:

Sleep Well

With all-nighters being the norm for many university students sleeping well is definitely one of the ways we fall short on health. But just how much sleep is good enough? Most experts agree on 7-9 hours for adults. If you should get the requisite amount of sleep you will reap the benefit of a balanced metabolism, enhanced memory, and heightened mental clarity. It might just be that you’re smarter than you are currently performing and all you need is more rest since poor sleep reduces your concentration and increases irritability as well as anxiety.

It is greatly beneficial to establish regular sleeping hours and stickto it. The human body, being as trainable as it is, will adapt to such patterns resulting in better quality rest.

Eat Well

The type of food that we consume as students is very essential to our health. Here are a few tips on how to eat well. Plan your meals, buy whole foods and stop consuming junk food.

If this does not make a positive impact on your health then hardly will anything else make a difference. You should also note that the time you eat is just as important as when you eat. Sleeping on a full stomach keeps the internal organs working while you sleep and instead of waking up refreshed you feel lugged. This is very counter-productive.

Exercise Sneakily

In class we sit, at the café we sit, in the library, we sit. That is a lot of sitting. How about we get up and exercise even if it is done “sneakily”. Well, this should be easy for NCU students if we utilise the numerous stairways and challenge our muscles to a walk up the slopes of the ‘Hilltop Campus’. A bit of advice to students who do not match up to the recommended 20-30 minutes of physical activity per day; treat your body to a brisk walk up the stairs each day. Taking ‘Steps to Christ’ is not such a bad idea after all.

Don’t be Afraid to Relax Sometimes

Relaxation protects the heart, lowers one’s chances of catching a cold, reduce the risk of stroke and depression among other things. This makes it vital to the survival of university students.If you, however, find yourself passing away hours filled with watching movies, chatting with friends or whatever else relaxes you, and not getting much work done then you are relaxing too much. This results in piled up work and you having to put your body under unnecessary strain to complete those activities at a later time. That is a formula to weaken the immune system and damages the hippocampus of the brain which is responsible for storing new information. You could just imagine that an exhausted brain will not be able to grasp much in class.

Don’t Forget Your Spiritual Health

The scientific community has now come to the realization that based on the findings of several researches there is a correlation between spiritual activity and health.

“In a recent study of people with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), those who had faith in God, compassion toward others, a sense of inner peace, and were religious had a better chance of surviving for a long time than those who did not live with such belief systems. Qualities like faith, hope, and forgiveness, and the use of social support and prayer seem to have a noticeable effect on health and healing”(University of Maryland Medical Center, 2017).

More time with God will definitely make you a healthier student.

So there you go, five simple principles to follow for good health as a university student. As the adage goes “practice makes perfect,” so practice these tips and perfect the art of staying healthy.

Rushane Nelson

rnelson10@stu.ncu.edu.jm