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This is the second in our little series on keeping your body healthy so that your mind can relax and learn and even enjoy your time at university.
Last week I gave you the reason for this focus. It came out of feedback from students in StudyTrust’s mentor conversations during the first semester, in which they referred to “mental breakdowns,” “panic attacks,” “imposter syndrome,” and feeling “numb”. One student wrote: “I am always tired. Not just physically, but mentally. It feels like I am drained before the day even begins”. They told us they sacrifice their sleep, their social life, even eating in order to try and keep up with their work.
Let’s stress it once again: this is normal. Many students go through this in different ways and to different degrees. The first thing you have to do to counter it, is take care of your physical needs so that your healthy body can support your healthy mind. A tired brain cannot handle stress and cannot learn – and your brain is a physical part of your body, which needs food, exercise and sleep.
Last week I gave you some practical advice about food. Now let’s talk about exercise and sleep.
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 aim to do it for about 150 minutes in a week. This can be 45-minutes three times a week, or shorter bouts more often. More is better.
If you play sport, this comes naturally. If you are not the sporty type, consider these possibilities:
- 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.”
Once again we go back to the basics: make a schedule which allows 25 hours of study time a week, AND 7 – 8 HOURS OF SLEEP A NIGHT. It is just as important. (And then, of course, stick to that schedule.)
Next week we’ll talk about strategies to calm your anxiety and help you to be open, relaxed, ready to learn and enjoy life.
Take good care of your body, which includes your brain, and happy studying!
The GRAD team
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