If you’d rather listen to this newsletter, click here.
I really hope you’re well in this first week of October, South Africa’s most beautiful month. I’m not just saying that out of habit or politeness. Your brain, with which you must learn and write exams, is part of your physical body. You must treat it in the same way athletes treat their bodies, which are the instruments they use to perform: with awareness, respect and care.
The main ingredients of that care regimen are food, exercise and sleep.
FOOD
When it comes to food, the most important principle is to keep your blood sugar levels even. Your energy and mood rise and fall with your blood sugar. Sugar and refined starches like white bread, white rice, instant noodles and pastries are digested very quickly, flooding the bloodstream with glucose. The body reacts by producing a burst of insulin, bringing the blood sugar right down and causing a “crash” which leaves you tired, hungry again, and unable to focus.
Eating too much sugar and refined starch can also make it harder for your brain to learn and remember things, slowing you down and increasing your stress levels. Studies show that high sugar diets harm the hippocampus, the part of the brain that helps with memory. When the brain is overloaded with sugar, it causes stress and inflammation in brain cells, which makes it more difficult to store new information. Even in the short term, lots of sugar can affect focus and recall, leaving you more forgetful in class or when studying. It is also associated with anxiety and depression.
What does that mean in practical terms?
Avoid:
- Sugary drinks. The recommended daily allowance of sugar is 6 – 9 teaspoons. A can of Coke contains about 9 teaspoons; many energy drinks have even more. ,
- Sweets and energy bars, which are packed with sugar.
- White bread, white rice, noodles, pastries. They act in almost the same way as sugar.
Have in your cupboard foods high in fibre, vitamins and nutrition:
- Fruit – apples, bananas, nartjies, etc.
- Peanut butter.
- Popcorn.
- Dates.
- Rice cakes.
- Brown bread.
- Potatoes.
- Onions.
- Tinned beans.
- Eggs.
- Pilchards.
- Brown rice.
- Plain yoghurt/maas.
- Oats.
- Salt, black pepper and mixed herbs.
Easy meals:
- Overnight oats: mix together equal amounts of oats and milk/coconut milk/maas (Princess Diana apparently used orange juice), cover and leave in the fridge overnight. Add raisins/dates/peanuts/apple/banana and a spoonful of honey. Some yoghurt gives it a nice tang.
- Baked potato with filling: prick the skin and put it in the microwave for 3 minutes, turning over halfway. (Experiment with your microwave until you get it just right.) Add Pilchards, beans, cheese, mince, or whatever you fancy.
- Eggs in any way: boil a dozen and have them handy to mash up with yoghurt/mayonnaise/chutney on bread or a potato; fry some onion and tomato in a pan and break eggs into the mixture, cover until they’re cooked; scramble eggs and add grated cheese; or just have them on their own. It’s a meal in itself.
- Pap with chakalaka and beans/mince.
- Rice with beans, onion and some spice – try curry powder or paprika.
- Fried rice with eggs: use yesterday’s rice, scramble in eggs and frozen peas/carrots. Add soy sauce or even Marmite.
- Mince: when you have time, prepare enough for two or three meals. Simply fry a chopped onion, add the mince and stir till it’s crumbly and brown, with salt, black pepper and a little mixed herbs. Grated carrots give nice texture. Eat with rice, bread or a potato.
- Avocadoes: half an avo with tuna/cottage cheese is a very good meal; otherwise mash it up on bread.
Snacks instead of sweets/energy bars:
- Dates
- Fruit
- Apple slices with peanut butter, or simply a spoonful of peanut butter
- Pop corn
- Rice cakes with peanut butter and jam
Drink lots of water. Keep some water next to you when you’re studying and have a sip every now and then. “One out, one in” is a good guideline! Coffee and tea are fine in moderation (not more than three cups a day), but be careful of the sugar you add.
EXERCISE
If you leave a car in the garage and never drive it, the tyres will perish and the engine will seize up. Your body needs to move even more than a car. It was made to move. Find something you can do easily (otherwise you won’t keep it up), and do it for 30 – 40 minutes, at least three times a week. More is better.
- Run/walk – very good, easy exercise. If the streets are not safe where you live and there’s a mall nearby, go there and walk from one end to the other, climb the stairs and do the second floor. Don’t saunter, walk fast.
- Dance – you can do this on your own, in a small space, even in the five-minute breaks between your pomodoro sessions. Put on your favourite song and jump about. No one’s watching, just do it! It will help your body and lift your mood.
Here’s a slightly off-beat suggestion: in the 1950s, the Canadian Air Force developed an 11-minute workout which targets all the main muscle groups. The idea is to do it daily, and you only need a space big enough for you to lie down flat. It is still available on youtube, presented by a young woman who was definitely born after 2000 (there are other variations as well). Try it!
SLEEP
Just as your body needs rest between bouts of exercise, your brain needs rest to consolidate your hard work in building the neural clusters and connections which are the physical manifestations of learning. It may feel completely illogical, but sleep helps you learn. You have to sleep.
In the first place, the brain chemical glutamate, which is necessary to make connections between the synapses in the brain, builds up over your hours of study until it does the opposite: it clogs the connections, making your brain sluggish, and making it very difficult to remember anything. Sleep clears it out so you can start fresh.
But there is even more intriguing research which has only recently become available.
Prof. James Maas, former head of Psychology at Cornell University in America, has written a book called Power Sleep. He explains that research shows that during REM sleep, towards the end of the night when we dream, the brain creates what are called “sleep spindles”. A sleep spindle is a one- to two-second burst of brain waves that reorganizes neural networks essential for remembering, learning, performance and problem solving. In the process, new information is stored into long-term memory. It’s a bit like building a wall – you put the bricks in place with cement to hold it together. Immediately after, you can still push over the wall, but overnight the cement hardens and the wall becomes solid.
“Depriving the brain of sleep,” says Prof Maas, “makes you clumsy, stupid and unhealthy.”
Take good care of your body, which includes your brain, and happy studying!
The GRAD team
——————————————————
Click here to check out our other podcasts
If you like our content, forward and share!
GRAD – your guide to university success is a partnership project of Ruda Landman, StudyTrust, Van Schaik Publishers and Capitec Bank.