Entering a university is one of the most exciting parts of being a student. You’ll meet new people, build new friendships, and experience independence at its finest. However, as the world opens up to new opportunities, so do the health risks that may surround you.

Health Risks in College

These health risks can be physical, mental, and emotional, such as:

• Mental health disorders, such as anxiety, depression, etc.

• Common colds, coughs, and flu

• Staphylococcal infections

• Sleeping disorders, such as sleep apnea and insomnia

• Poor physique due to lack of exercise and physical activities

• Malnourishment due to improper and unhealthy eating habits

• Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), such as herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, etc.

These health risks are becoming increasingly common among college students nowadays. Not only can it put their lives in danger, but it can also affect their academic standing, which is often affected by a range of factors, including family issues, work and academic stress, and financial concerns, especially for students coming from low-income households

Steps to Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle In College

So, how can you stay healthy in college despite these day-to-day challenges? Look no further! This post is here to help you. In this article, you’ll learn how to maintain a healthy lifestyle while studying hard in college.

1. Move To A Healthy And Worry-Free Student Apartment

Your place is crucial to achieving and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. That’s why finding a healthy and worry-free apartment while studying in college is important. Here are some tips that may help you:

• Choose A Place Near Your School: Look for a student-friendly apartment or dormitory near your college. This way, you don’t have to commute when going to your school, giving your plenty of time to study and rest.

• Look For A Non-Smoking Place: Even if you’re not smoking, inhaling other people’s tobacco smoke can be detrimental to your health—secondhand smoking. So, try to look for a neighborhood that promotes a non-smoking policy.

• No Pets Allowed: If you have no problems dealing with pet fur and dander, you may skip this tip. However, if you’re allergic to pets, it’d be better to look for a community that doesn’t allow pets inside to prevent triggering your allergies. 

• Check Your Roommates: It’s important to look for roommates that can help you overcome the challenges of college life. Avoid roommates who are into drugs and alcohol to prevent addiction and other mental health conditions.

• Consider Green Things: If possible, choose a student apartment with a garden on the rooftop or near a community park. Being closer to nature can help improve and stabilize your mental health, which is important in college.

If you’ve found a student-friendly dorm, these frequent questions from northpointrexburg.com and other similar sites may help you make a wise decision.

2. Get A Good Night’s Sleep

Sleep is non-negotiable when maintaining overall physical, mental, and emotional health. A good night’s sleep conditions your mind, body, and soul. This will help you foster a positive mindset and build a stronger body, which you’ll need to succeed in college.

College students rarely get enough sleep because of school assignments and projects, making them vulnerable to mental and emotional disturbances. These include stress, anxiety, and depression. Hence, they’re so common among university students. 

Sleep quality is also essential to maintaining a healthy mind and body. Poor sleep quality may increase your risk of developing health problems, such as:

• Colds, coughs, and flu

• Headaches

• Self-isolation or withdrawal from family and friends

• Sadness and hopelessness

• Extreme anxiety 

To achieve consistent, uninterrupted sleep, consider following these healthy sleeping habits:

• No Caffeine After Three: Caffeinated products like coffee must be avoided after 3:00 in the afternoon. A cup of coffee can stimulate focus and energy, making it difficult to relax and fall asleep at night. This leads to poor sleep quality.

• Create A Sleep Schedule: This is extremely challenging for college students with plenty of tasks to accomplish, but it’s not impossible. Determine what time to sleep and what time to wake up. Follow this schedule every day to optimize your natural body clock.

• Optimize Sleep Environment: Optimizing your bedroom can be difficult for college students, especially those with roommates. If you can’t keep the entire room dark, cover your space with curtains that don’t allow light to penetrate to help you fall asleep faster.

• Take Melatonin Supplements: Melatonin is a chemical your body naturally produces. It’s responsible for making you feel sleepy at night. But if you’re not producing enough melatonin, there are supplements you can take, but consult your doctor first to be safe.

• Reduce Long Daytime Naps: Naps can help you focus and concentrate better, but if you do it too much during the day. It might affect your sleep quality. Taking long daytime naps can make it difficult to fall asleep at night.

If these tips can’t make you sleep peacefully at night, you probably have a sleep disorder, such as insomnia. If that’s the case, seek medical attention immediately. Consult a doctor or a sleep specialist to help improve your sleep quality.

3. Reduce Social Media Exposure

Social media offers a lot of benefits, which most people find useful these days. It helps people connect, communicate, and interact with each other. Also, it allows them to stay updated on news, businesses, and the like.

However, too much exposure to social media isn’t good for your health. It can cause low self-confidence, anxiety, and stress, increasing the risk of developing mental health problems. That’s why cutting back on social media is highly recommended. 

Instead of relying on social media for entertainment, focus on achieving your goals in college and spend your time on healthy habits. Here are some helpful tips to limit your social media screentime:

• Keep Your Phone On Silent: This helps reduce the distractions caused by alarms and ringtones from notifications and updates whenever someone you follow posts or shares a post.

• Turn Off Your Notifications: If you don’t want to keep your phone on silent in case of emergency calls and messages, you may turn off your social media notifications instead. Go to your settings and customize your notifications panel.

• Set A Schedule: To avoid wasting too much of your time on social media apps, creating a schedule might help, especially when you have plenty of schoolwork to finish. For example, don’t use social media before bedtime or when you have school projects.

• Create A List Of Healthy Habits: If you have nothing to do, it’s often easy to sit back, relax, and turn to social media. Instead, create a list of healthy habits that may replace your social media addiction. You may consider cooking, reading, cleaning, or writing.

• Delete Social Media Apps: If you can’t limit your social media use with the tips above, it’s best to delete them from your phone to rehabilitate your mind and body. Now, you need to open your desktop to access them, which can be tedious and burdensome. 

Reducing exposure to social media also promotes a good night’s sleep, improves focus, and keeps you in touch with reality. That’s because people who spend most of their time on social media lack focus and the presence of the mind.

4. Eat A Healthy, Balanced Diet

A balanced diet is essential to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It strengthens the immune system and promotes a healthy mind, protecting your body from a range of physical, mental, and emotional turmoil.

As a college student, eating a balanced meal is crucial. This will keep you physically and mentally stable despite all the challenges that may come your way. That said, here’s what a healthy diet should contain:

• Fiber: Fiber helps maintain a healthy digestive system, control blood sugar levels, reduce cholesterol levels, and make you feel full longer. Good sources of fiber include fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes.

• Vitamin D And Calcium: Vitamin D and calcium work together to strengthen your bones. Morning sunlight may help your body produce vitamin D, but that isn’t enough. Consume dairy and soy products, salmon, sardines, collard greens, and mushrooms.

• Potassium: This mineral helps essential body parts function properly, including the kidneys, heart, bones, nerves, and muscles. To increase your potassium intake, drink 100% prune or pomegranate juice and have bananas as a snack.

• Unsaturated Fats: Unlike other fats, unsaturated fats help promote a healthy lifestyle. They support heart health and promote healthy cells. You can find them in good oil (e.g., olive, peanut, sunflower, grapeseed, etc.), avocados, nuts, seeds, and beans.

• Protein: If you’re active in college sports, you eat more protein. This can help repair damaged cells and generate new ones. You find protein in chicken breast, lean meats, salmon, nuts, milk, grains, seeds, eggs, and shellfish.

Also, limit your sugar and sodium intake. Too much sugar can increase the risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. And too much sodium can cause high blood pressure, stroke, and heart attack.

In addition to a healthy diet, it's recommended t get regular health checkups. Also, if you have any health issues, it's best to consult medical experts as early as possible. For example, if you have missing teeth, you can check out dental implants in Chesapeake or one near you.

5. Engage In Physical Activity

Being physically active offers tons of great benefits for your body. It helps improve brain health, maintain optimum weight, lower the risk of developing diseases, strengthen muscles and bones, and improve the ability to perform day-to-day activities.

Also, engaging in physical activities doesn’t mean going to the gym unless you want or need to. Instead, choose activities that you can wholeheartedly enjoy and that are meaningful to you. Here are some physical activities you might want to try:

• Brisk Walking: Also known as power walking, brisk walking is faster than strolling, around three miles per hour. Do this in the morning before going to school for a minimum of 10 minutes.

• Yoga: Yoga can help restore balance to your mind and body. Also, it helps relieve stress and anxiety. That’s why it’s one of the most recommended activities for college students. Men are also welcome to attend yoga classes. After all, it’s not exclusively for women.

• Stretching: If you have no time to prepare a healthy and balanced meal, your body probably lacks the essential nutrients it needs to combat stress. If that’s the case, consider taking supplements such as the best L-theanine supplement, Rhodiola, and B vitamins.

• College Sports: You don’t have to become a varsity student to play college sports. Sports clubs and teams are open for any student who wants to play and create good memories with other students. Many colleges will offer Recruitment help for college athletes to give them a push to get started. If you are looking for guidance in the college recruitment process then be sure to ask your college sports team for more advice on how to begin. 

• Climbing Stairs: Do you need to go to the fourth floor for your next subject? Taking the elevator might be tempting, but it’d be best to climb the stairs instead. This will boost your heart rate and burn more calories.

Even if you have plenty of projects and studies to do in college, let your body sweat even for just a few minutes every day. After all, it’s better than doing nothing.

6. Manage Stress Levels

Indeed, college can be stressful, especially when your professors ask you to do multiple things at the same time. But don’t let that get into you and break you. Try to manage your stress as much as possible to reduce the risk of heart disease, depression, and anxiety.

Here are some tips that may help manage stress levels:

• Engage In Physical Activities: Getting more physical activities cons can help reduce your stress levels and boost your mood. Biking, walking, and other gentle activities are highly recommended for students with inactive lifestyles. 

• Reduce Screen Time: Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets may increase your stress levels, especially when playing games that can make you violent. Reducing screen time may help relieve your stress and improve your sleep.

• Take Supplements: If you have no time to prepare a healthy and balanced meal, your body probably lacks the essential nutrients it needs to combat stress. If that’s the case, consider taking supplements such as L-theanine, Rhodiola, and B vitamins.

• Practice Self-Care: Although college life is busy, take some time off and take care of yourself. Enjoy a warm bath, light up some candles, read a good book, prepare a healthy meal, and go for a walk. These self-care activities may help reduce stress levels.

Final Words

College is one of the most exciting parts of being a student. However, it opens the door to various health risks, such as bacterial and viral infections. This is especially true for busy students who don’t have time to care for themselves. 

To stay healthy in college, find a risk-free student apartment, sleep properly, eat balanced meals, reduce screen time, engage in physical activities, and manage stress levels. Follow the tips above to maintain a healthy lifestyle while studying hard in college.