Staying Healthy: Winter is Coming

I don’t know about you, but it’s getting pretty chilly outside.

It’s easy to forget how quickly winter is catching up. In fact, I only took notice when I realised how many jumpers I was willing to put on last Monday morning! With that time of the year on the horizon, it’s fairly inevitable that the people around you (most likely including you) will be falling prey to the old winter bug. Considering the large concentration of students on campus, it is easy for something to get spread around, and trying to stay cough- and-colds-free often feels like a losing battle.

The best way I’ve found to avoid it is by ensuring that you uphold the basics of staying healthy at university. Firstly, that means, no matter how badly you want to finish that drama, or you want to stare blankly at your essay, you have to sleep! After all, walking to that lecture severely sleep-deprived will already make you feel unwell anyway. Best tip on ensuring a healthy night sleep is to put your mobile devices as far away from your pillow as possible!

If not, then there’s a new video platform I’ve heard of called Napflix that is apparently geared to bore you to sleep.

Secondly, eat! Not being an enthusiastic cook myself, I still ensure to maintain a balanced diet by keeping a diary of what I eat. Oh, and including vegetables wherever I can (a bag of frozen peas will get you far!). It’s really easy to lose track of what you eat at university, especially when times get busy, so make sure you’re keeping yourself well-nourished for the winter. Best tip to eat well this winter is to cook and buy in bulk as it’s easy to skip a supermarket trip because your housemate warned you of how cold it is outside.

Lastly – wrap up! If you get cold easily like me, get yourself a nice comfy coat, a hat, pair of gloves and a scarf and protect yourself from those subzero temperatures. It’s probably not going to feel warm for a while so make sure you invest in winter fashion that will last you the season. If you end up living in student accommodation, the chances are it’s going to be freezing so top tip is to get warm winter socks and keep that stock of warm beverages topped up.

So that’s it for me, for now! Stay healthy – and Happy Bonfire Night!