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During the first semester, we at StudyTrust had a lot of conversations with students. One theme came through loud and clear: mental health is a huge issue.
When we asked students to write about their experience, 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 tell us they sacrifice their sleep, their social life, even eating in order to try and keep up with their work. One of them wrote: “I used to go to bed with an empty stomach, not because there wasn’t food, but because there wasn’t time to cook. I’d rather use that extra hour to study than eat”. Someone else ended in hospital from sheer exhaustion: “No sleep, no real food, no moment of rest that wasn’t stolen guiltily between tasks… That’s not laziness. That’s collapse”.
If you feel this way, I want you to understand one thing: you are not weak, or weird, or stupid, or whatever you have been calling yourself. Being a student can be completely overwhelming.
Many, many of your colleagues feel exactly the way you do. It is normal.
Your situation may be even more difficult if no one at home has walked this road, so that you feel you cannot open up to your family, even your mum, about these feelings. You may be among the very few of your classmates who got this far, so you are lonely, without trusted friends who share your experience. And the step up from high school is enormous. That’s just the reality.
But as always, I want to stress a second point: yes, you can. Thousands have done it before you. You can too. You can learn to be resilient. You can train your mind to adapt to the challenges and become mentally fit, as an athlete would train ever harder in order to become physically fit enough to do what he wants to do.
I will come back to the very important process of keeping your mind healthy, open and ready to learn. In the next two newsletters, however, I’m going to go back to the very basics: a healthy, rested body for a healthy, rested mind.
Before you can take care of your mind, you have to take care of your body. 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.
So, this week we’ll talk about how to get good food in your tummy without spending too much money or too much time. Next week we’ll talk about exercise and sleep.
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/fruit 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.
You have to eat well, for your body AND your mind. Start there with your new care regimen. Next week we’ll talk about other important elements of your schedule: sleep, exercise, and time for connecting and playing.
Happy studying
The GRAD team
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