Regular exercise is a crucial part of what it takes to maintain a happy and healthy life. From strengthening your mental health to reducing the risk of major illness, exercise is, in many ways, a remedy of its own.
While exercise is a part of many people’s lives by default, i.e., walking to work or school, cycling instead of driving, or taking part in active hobbies like football and running, others might not have the same opportunities.
Since daily routines are unique and not everyone gets the chance to incorporate physical activity into their day, going out of your way to dedicate time to regular exercise is essential if you want to enjoy better health. So, if you need to give yourself a bit of a motivational boost in this area, it’s worth checking out five of the top benefits exercise has to offer you.
Studies show that if you exercise regularly, you are effectively reducing your risk of contracting many different types of chronic disease, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and various forms of cancer.
Your health is a long-term investment, and what better way to ensure you get to live a long and happy life – one that returns your investment – than to ward off illness with a little exercise?
Depression can feel like a black hole that sucks away all ambition, happiness, and sometimes, feelings of any kind at all. Naturally, it can be difficult to think about exercise when you’re suffering from depression, but it’s important to recognise that it can be a good way of battling it.
Regular physical activity may be able to boost your mood and improve your mental state over time, reducing anxiety and engaging the brain at the same time. It’s mostly down to the happy hormones your body releases when taking part in exercise, which can work wonders for mental health.
Still, it’s important to seek help if you’re feeling depressed – you aren’t alone, even though it probably feels that way a lot of the time. You could check out GP online services if you want help remotely or if you need more advice on how exercise may be able to improve your situation.
You might also be able to use exercise to reduce your risk of becoming depressed again in the future – many people cite exercise as a form of natural anti-depressant, which again, is often the result of the positive hormones flowing through the body during and after exercising.
Exercise can help you lose excess weight and maintain a healthy weight whilst improving your metabolism, reducing the risk of several diseases and increasing your energy levels throughout the day.
To get the most out of weight loss and other health benefits exercise can offer, it’s important to always include some aerobic exercise into your routine – this helps get your heart rate up and your blood properly circulating around your body.
If you feel as though you could do with keeping your energy levels up a little better throughout the day, then it’s worth noting that regular exercise can boost your endurance levels.
The more you exercise, the greater your endurance becomes over time, even if you only take on a moderate intensity. Plus, this increase in stamina and fitness usually occurs fairly quickly in the beginning when you commit to regular exercise, so you may be able to see results early on.
High blood pressure is linked to plenty of nasty diseases and mental health conditions, so it’s crucial to keep it under control – and exercise is a great way to aid you in this.
Exercise can make sure your blood vessels and heart stay fresh and healthy, allowing you to lower your blood pressure altogether.
Stress is common for students, but there are ways to feel more at ease through regular breathing exercises shown in this guide.
Meditation, mindfulness and deep breathing have long been associated with improving mental health. For students, taking care of their mental health is an absolute priority during an extremely stressful time, especially during peak exam season. How can they heighten their mental well-being in the midst of their pent-up stress? By trying out breathing exercises and mindful techniques!
Of course, inhaling and exhaling properly sounds easy, but there’s actually a lot more to it when it comes to deep breathing and mindful exercises. Knowing where to start can be tricky, but fear not, for here is a guide geared towards students looking to implement mindful breathing techniques into their life.
This exercise is a good one to start with because it allows for long, deep belly breaths and is also great for mindfulness since it lets you rest your hand on your belly to feel your breath moving in and out. In fact, this movement can be useful for grounding you while you’re practising your breathing.
To begin, place your hands on your belly, close your eyes and take a long deep breath through your nose. Hold your breath for a moment, feeling your belly full of air as you wait, and then exhale slowly through your mouth, feeling the ‘balloon’ in your belly deflate as the air leaves your lungs.
Mindfulness is all about paying attention to the here and now and the sights, sounds and sensations around you. When it comes to mindful breathing, it’s about how your breathing feels and sounds.
To try mindful breathing, set yourself up in a quiet, safe space where you won’t be interrupted. Start by closing your eyes and taking deep breaths in and out, with a long inhalation through your nose and a long exhalation out of your mouth.
While doing these slow, deep breaths, you should pay attention to everything you’re feeling. How does your breath sound? How does it feel when your breath fills your lungs, and how does it feel when you let it out? Are there any other sensations you experience? Take your time in evaluating and accepting your feelings and thoughts as you gently ride each breath – and don’t fight them; simply let them be.
There’s a reason that exercises like yoga and pilates focus so much on correct breathing techniques. When practising stretches and releasing muscle tension, breathing goes hand-in-hand. If you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed with your studies, you might want to relieve the tension from your whole body – and you can do this with breathing exercises.
Lay down in a comfortable place and focus on every area of your body as you settle into a state of relaxation. Next, take a deep breath, holding it in as you curl your toes up and stretch out your entire body. Afterwards, release your breath slowly as you uncurl your toes and relax your muscles.
In addition, you can do exercise while focusing on different areas of your body, making sure to breathe deeply and mindfully as you work your way through each body part that needs relief from tension.
Breathing exercises can help you feel calmer and more collected; however, they can only do so much. If your stress levels are getting out of hand and last a long time, you should see your doctor. Your mental health is just as important as your physical health, and you need to take care of it if you want to remain in good form.
Naturally, students are busy people and can’t always find the time to go to a GP right away, which is why GP online services can be a good first port of call for those with hectic schedules. There are also student health services available for those that need them, so use them if you feel like your mental health has declined – that’s what they’re there for.
Not getting enough sleep can hinder your physical and mental well-being over time. Luckily, it’s never too late to start healthy sleep habits to improve your health!
In a world that’s growing increasingly hectic, with heightened demand for technology implementation and most people using technology before they go to bed, sleep can often fall on the back burner. As such, many may either struggle to get quality sleep or fail to prioritise sleep in favour of late nights and early morning starts.
Responsibilities, such as work schedules, education and family commitments, can easily have you working late or starting early, and that’s not to say that work, school and family aren’t important. However, insufficient sleep will negatively affect your mind and body’s health over time.
What Are The Signs You Might Not Be Getting Enough Sleep?
A lot of the symptoms of sleep deprivation can easily be dismissed as simply feeling off or having a bad day. Nevertheless, the key indicators of poor sleep to watch out for include:
How Much Sleep Do You Actually Need?
Getting the right amount of sleep will vary from person to person, especially when your age comes into play. Still, a good idea is a trial-and-error approach to see when you feel well-rested versus when you don’t. This method will help you figure out how much sleep your body is telling you that you need.
However, as a general rule, healthy sleep habits based on hours-to-age-range ratio are:
What Happens To Your Body When You Don’t Get Enough Sleep?
There are numerous repercussions to continually failing to get enough sleep, which include surface problems relating to how you feel and serious health problems down the line. When you don’t get enough sleep, your body cannot properly recover and maintain its optimum condition, leading you to start noticing serious changes in your mental and physical state.
Over time, untreated sleep deprivation can result in significant health failures, such as a heart attack or high blood pressure. Alongside these, continuous poor sleep could also put you at risk of a weakened immune system and diabetes and can negatively impact your mood, causing issues such as a low sex drive and depression.
If you find yourself suffering from any of these issues no matter how minor, taking action early on can prevent further health decline – so see your doctor or use GP online services if you can’t find the time to go in person immediately. Your GP can offer expert advice and prescriptions should they feel you’d benefit from medication.
Lack of Sleep, Physical Health and Mental Health
It’s important to note that physical and mental health should be considered when understanding a healthy sleep pattern and any problems with one. Despite your best efforts, you may still find that you still feel exhausted no matter what you do – and this isn’t a rare problem in today’s age.
Perhaps you feel like all you want to do is sleep, even though you’re getting a full night’s rest, or maybe you feel exhausted and irritable throughout the day. Signs like these could indicate you’re suffering from sleep-related issues; however, they can also point to other health conditions, such as depression, anxiety, or a physical health problem.
Whatever the signs and symptoms, it’s important to speak with a healthcare professional, make an appointment with your doctor or use GP online services if you’re concerned about your energy levels and sleep pattern. Lack of sleep affects plenty of people, yet too many don’t take it seriously and forgo help – much to their detriment. Support is available and can set you on the right track to getting the quality sleep your physical and mental health need – so use it.
In many ways, the pandemic exacerbated many students’ worst fears: loneliness, isolation, volatility in the job market, and countless others.
The effect that this has had on the collective mental health of the student community is prevalent and wide-reaching, and even now, many months after the end of the third lockdown, the impacts of the pandemic are being felt by many.
If your own student experience has been affected by the pandemic, it’s important to recognise the value of looking after your mental health.
Below are some common ways in which the pandemic has had a negative impact on student mental health and some possible solutions worth investigating.
Depression is an awful feeling and one that many people are slow to recognise and slower still to do something about.
Looking after your mental health and wellbeing are essential, so if you suspect that you or one of your friends is starting to show signs of depression, it’s important to reach out for help; you aren’t alone.
You could consider checking out the student health services that are available to you; even if you’re not totally sure about your mental health, it’s worth clarifying as it could stop the problem from becoming more serious.
Uni can be a stressful environment even without a pandemic looming on the horizon. The mental health impact that the accumulation of various negative feelings can have should be taken seriously.
Trying to cut down your stress levels may seem like a never-ending battle at first, but it’s completely achievable and vital to combatting anxiety and depression.
Making sure that you get the basics right is a must; that’s making sure you get enough sleep, maintain a good diet, and practice mindfulness.
You don’t have to tackle stress alone, not when there are some great GP online services available to help you out.
If you’re worried about your health during the pandemic, remember you can still wear a mask and observe social distancing.
Chronic stress is a serious health condition and needs to be treated as such, so speaking out is important, even when it’s difficult to do so.
Coping with a mental health crisis can be exhausting. It takes a real toll on your physical health after a while, so it’s vital you don’t overdo it.
The pandemic might seem like it’s never-ending at first, but this is far from the truth. It will come to an end, and you’ll be able to enjoy a future free from COVID.
Making time for yourself is a must in order to avoid suffering from exhaustion and burnout, as is eating a healthy and balanced diet.
It’s awfully easy to forget the basics as a student, especially when there’s so much going on around you.
Thankfully, there are plenty of steps you can take to put yourself first, and it all starts with a little self-care and a willingness to acknowledge the situation.
It takes courage to recognise when something is wrong and even more courage to confront it. Mental health support is available, and if you feel like you can’t ask for it, try and talk it through with a trusted friend; it can make all the difference.
Uni is tough. As a student, finding time for yourself amongst the chaos of the everyday can sometimes seem like an impossible feat, particularly if you’re already being constantly pressured to go out, deadlines are impending, and your bank balance is in the minus figures.
Everything can happen at once or slowly build up over time and start to chip away at your mental and physical health. Either way, a little self-care can go a long way toward making your experience at university much more enjoyable.
It’s widely accepted that much of student life is a bohemian, hedonistic affair, but it doesn’t need to be detrimental to your health, not when it costs so much to be there and there are so many amazing resources to take advantage of.
Here are some of the best reasons to put a bit more time into self-care; you might find it drastically enriches your overall health.
If you don’t take some time to look after yourself, the full benefits of going to university could pass you by.
Turning up to class with a brain-boiling headache, the post-beer fear, and an unexplainable feeling of shame that you can’t quite put your finger on is a sure-fire way to miss out on high-quality education.
Self-care can help you seize every opportunity around you, as you’ll find it easier to concentrate, think critically, and apply yourself to the learning environment.
For many, going out is, of course, part of being a student, but there’s no need to let it impair your ability to form more meaningful connections with others who want to learn.
Swap the dawn walk home for a coffee with a mate at lunchtime, or simply just stay in and get lost in your institution’s resources. Whatever you do, aiming for at least 7 hours of sleep (good sleep) can make all the difference.
Uni can be overwhelming, especially when deadlines start rolling in, so it’s worth practicing mindfulness to make sure you don’t get flustered by the situation ahead.
It’s easy to get caught up in the moment without seeing the bigger picture, a common pitfall that often leads many students into panic mode.
Taking some time to practice self-care can help you avoid this.
Why not start small and concentrate on your deep breathing? This can calm you down and help you get a perspective on things, even if you do it for just 30 seconds.
Mental health support is available, so please don’t be afraid to reach out via our website, our student health services are comprehensive and easy to access, and they’re here to be used.
If you have lower academic stress levels, you’ll start to enjoy the entirety of your course a lot more. Remember, you can always talk to your uni about the course if you feel like you need some extra support; you’re not alone, even when life feels lonely.
Self-care can help you reduce stress levels; that’s partly the point of it, after all, so why not dedicate some time to it?
Health anxiety can creep on unexpectedly at uni. It may manifest from a consistently bad diet, poor sleep schedule, increased alcohol intake, or plenty of other factors.
It’s important to contact your GP online services if you have any pressing worries or concerns, as this can be a straightforward way to get some direct medical insight and most likely, make you feel better too.
There’s no denying the mental health impact that uni life can have on students – it makes self-care more important than ever, and it’s never too late to start practicing.
Moles – small spots that appear on the skin – are extremely common. Most people have at least one or two on their bodies. Usually brown in colour, moles tend to sit on the skin forever without causing any issues.
That isn’t always the case, though. While you shouldn’t worry yourself over every mole or freckle, it’s important to know when you should seek help for a mole.
What do Moles Look Like?
Moles, just like humans, come in all shapes and sizes. Some are small, some large. Some moles are flat, others are raised, and some people even find hair growing on them. They can appear anywhere on the body, from the face to the legs to the stomach.
When to Seek Help for a Mole
The worry concerning moles is the risk that it is melanoma. Melanoma is a type of skin cancer that starts in the cells and is the deadliest of all skin cancers. It’s understandable, then, that people are concerned about the moles on their skin. While most are non-melanoma, if you do have one that is melanoma, it’s important to seek specialist treatment straight away.
While these signs won’t tell you for certain whether your mole is melanoma or not, if you experience any of them, get your mole checked out.
What you really need to look out for is changes in moles. A mole that looks the same as when you were a kid is likely nothing to worry over. One that is suddenly darker, a different shape, or bleeding could indicate an underlying problem.
Contact Your GP
It’s important not to stress yourself over a mole. If you experience any of the signs listed above, book an appointment with your GP as soon as possible. At your appointment, you can expect your GP to inspect the mole and tell you whether or not further inspections are required.
If your GP is also concerned about a mole, you will then get it tested in a hospital by a specialist.
Concerns About Appearance
Most moles are benign. That doesn’t mean everyone is happy with their moles, though. Even if they cause you no physical harm, the appearance of your mole/s might cause you distress.
If that’s the case, there are options. While not usually covered by the NHS, you can seek cosmetic treatment to remove a mole if you don’t like how it looks. The cost of this treatment varies for each case.
Prevention
Keeping an eye on your moles is essential, but it’s not enough. Prevention methods will help reduce your chances of getting skin cancer. Here are some of the best prevention methods:
Moles are a normal part of the human body. If you notice any of the signs listed, though, or you’re concerned about its appearance, seek the help of your GP right away. It’s better to be safe than sorry!
When exam season rolls around, many students start to feel understandably anxious. Stress about upcoming exams and too many late-night study sessions isn’t good for the body or the brain, though. In fact, it can lead to insomnia.
Students need to know how to tackle insomnia, as it can severely impact their mental and physical health, as well as their performance on exams.
When exam season rolls around, many students start to feel understandably anxious. Stress about upcoming exams and too many late-night study sessions isn’t good for the body or the brain, though. In fact, it can lead to insomnia.
Students need to know how to tackle insomnia, as it can severely impact their mental and physical health, as well as their performance on exams.
Worried you might suffer from insomnia? Here are some of the most common signs:
If you are experiencing these symptoms, you should consider that insomnia might be the culprit. Once you know you have insomnia, you can start addressing the issues and focusing on getting a better night’s sleep. Read on to learn how.
When you use your bed for anything other than sleep, your brain no longer associates it with those all-important zzzs. Don’t use your bed for anything other than sleep, and you’ll find you drop off much sooner. That means studying, scrolling on your phone, and watching TV!
Screens take up a large portion of modern lives. In fact, you likely need them to study for your exams. The time of day that you look at screens matters, though. Stare at your smartphone too close to bedtime, and the blue light will trick your brain into thinking it’s daytime. Find a non-screen-related hobby to do before bed, such as reading or meditating, and you’ll find you fall asleep easier.
Managing stress, especially during the exam period, is a challenge. Too much stress can lead to insomnia, though, which will only contribute to more anxieties. Try to manage your stress levels by taking breaks from studying, engaging in stress-relieving hobbies, and staying organised with your studies.
Consider how sleep-friendly your room is. If your bedroom is too warm, too bright, and too noisy when you’re trying to sleep, then it’s no wonder you’re having difficulty dropping off.
Aim for these three things: cool, dark, and quiet.
If you’re a student living amongst other students, the chances are that quiet is hard to come by. In this case, a white noise machine will help drown out the background noise.
If improving your sleep hygiene doesn’t work, and you’re still struggling to get enough sleep, it’s time to speak to your GP. Tell them your list of symptoms, and they will be able to get to the root of the issue to help you overcome it. That might involve medication, therapy, or new sleep techniques.
No one should have to live with insomnia. Make sure you get a handle on it over exam season so that you can perform well in your exams. If you can’t by yourself, your GP is there to help.
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We have 4 locations near you:
Wembley – Hazeldene Medical Centre 1b Wyld Way, Wembley, HA9 6PW, United Kingdom
Alperton – The Eagle Eye Surgery 26 Eagle Road, Wembley, HA0 4SH, United Kingdom
Willesden – Crest Medical Centre 157 Crest Road, NW2, London, NW2 7, United Kingdom
