Tag Archives: College health

college health, mental health, student health

Tackling the Freshman 15 With a New Approach to Fitness

freshman 15

Your new college student probably returned home for the holidays with some unexpected baggage: the freshman 15. It’s a common fact that many freshmen can gain weight due to various factors—poor diet, sedentary lifestyle and stress eating.

However, as your student begins the new semester at college in 2023, it’s time to take a step back and rethink a new approach to fitness. They may or may not be concerned about their health but it’s a good idea to encourage them to pursue a healthy lifestyle.

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college health, student health

4 Self-Care Tips for college freshmen

self-care tips

One of the biggest obstacles when starting your freshman year of college is figuring out how to manage a healthy balance between your academics and social life– but don’t forget that practicing self-care is a key piece to that balance. Making yourself a priority during the hustle and bustle of your first year of college will help you create and maintain healthy habits for the rest of your schooling to come. 

Imagine being on an airplane, you get your luggage stowed, you buckle up and the video in front of you starts to play informing you of all the safety measures to take in the event of an emergency. One of the biggest tips they stress is when the oxygen masks come down, always put yours on before helping the person next to you. You cannot help someone if you cannot get air yourself! This goes for life, and even freshman year. If you do not make time to take care of yourself, everything else will start to fail too. But you know the best part of that? It is easier than it sounds!

Here are a few self-care tips for you as you take on this new journey!

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college health, parenting, student health

Teaching Your Teen Healthy Habits

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Healthy habits are the best way to take care of your body. After all, our body is a gigantic system with so many different processes, each of them working in harmony to create a strong and healthy body. However, when one of these systems or processes is interrupted, it can slow everything down to a crawl. This is not where you want to be, hence why it’s important to take a holistic approach to health and also why it’s important to educate your children on this.

So what can you do to encourage your child to take a full body approach to their health? Here are a couple of suggestions.

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college health

Sleep Disorders–The Transition to College

 

Sleep disordersPreparing your child for college demands a lot from a parent – there’s so much to think about and always a concern that your child may not cope well with a new environment. If that child happens to have a sleep disorder of some kind, parents can become even more anxious worrying that they will not settle well and that their disorder may be exacerbated as a result. Here are a few tips to help you prepare your child to adjust to college life, and learn to cope with their sleeping disorder without mom or pop.

Some types of sleep disorders

Quality sleep is needed for good health and it can affect mood, hormone levels and weight. Sleep problems therefore impact on the same areas as well as causing tiredness and poor concentration. Common disorders include sleep apnea, sleep deprivation, insomnia, restless legs syndrome and snoring.

Children and adolescents require a minimum of nine hours of sleep per night. This means that sleep problems and a lack of sleep can have negative effects on your child’s performance at college, including during extracurricular activities and on their social relationships. While snoring does not seem like a serious problem, except perhaps for a sleep partner, habitual snoring does in fact have an adverse effect on the quality of sleep of the person who snores. Nightmares, night terrors and sleepwalking are among many disruptive disorders known as parasomnias. When sleep apnea is a problem, the child’s breathing becomes disrupted regularly during sleep and they may experience restless nights, fatigue during the day and poor concentration, which of course makes it difficult for them to study effectively.

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Eat, sleep, and be merry: a college guide to health

college health issuesThe number of children going to college has grown steadily for the past fifty years. From a parent’s standpoint their children are leaving the home for the first time, and many are ill prepared for the realities of life on their own. Despite the financial, emotional, and physical preparations, many students are simply not ready for the day to day struggles of life away from home.

Improper hygiene and the lack of good eating habits is one of the major causes of illness with college students. It’s true that students try to survive on mac-n-cheese and soda, but these type of eating habits can affect the student’s overall health. Combine poor eating with too much drinking and not enough sleep, and it’s a wonder that college students are continually at the health center. With only a few minor changes and instruction, the health of our youth at college can be vastly improved.

Encourage your kids to get regular checkups. With all the sicknesses that go around it’s important to guard against the ever-present flu and cold viruses through proper hygiene. Simply washing your hands can ward off many potential threats. There are a few services to help beyond the campus health clinic; services like the school medical center can provide a wide range of answers to important health issues.

Some people might believe that just because you’re studying medicine, you’ll be far better prepared to avoid being sick. Maybe your child is medically-minded, already looking to change from an online paramedic to rn (Registered Nurse)! But still, even medical students get sick sometimes!

Make sure your students get vaccinated and that their vaccinations are up to date, especially if they plan on taking any exciting holiday excursions out of the country. But even if they don’t travel, the close proximity to so many other students makes vaccinations imperative.

Fight fatigue by getting plenty of restful sleep. Insufficient sleep can negatively affect the brain processes, making test taking and even attentiveness in class a serious problem. Encourage your students to establish a good sleep routine and to avoid excessive drinking, caffeine and all night study binges.

Eating a balanced diet is perhaps the most important factor in staying healthy and being able to ward off viruses like colds and flus. Learning what foods are healthy and which are not is often beyond the experience of many students. Knowing how to cook is an important skill that helps ensure a balanced diet.

Exercise can vary radically from student to student but the reality is that daily exercise is an essential part of staying healthy. How they exercise is not so important, but vigorous daily exercise helps students develop a routine of heart pumping fun that builds their stamina and increases the blood flow to essential areas of the body, the brain included. It is the brains we’re trying to improve.

When health is the goal students will find their college life more fulfilling, more fun and more exciting. They will be able to participate in as many activities as possible, enjoy the excursions and learn to enjoy the process of learning and be ready to take on the world.