Health and Wellbeing | Self Care
There are multiple ways to stay healthy and well. It can be difficult at University to keep yourself healthy and well, as you may feel like your time is restricted. If you lose one aspect of your wellbeing, such as you stop being physically fit as you aren’t getting regular exercise, or you stop getting regular sleep, you compromise your general health. You should allocate time in your day and week specifically to make sure you are looking after your physical and mental wellbeing. You can do this in many ways such as through regular exercise, sleeping at least 8 hours per night, and taking time to relax in ways that make you feel comfortable.
Keeping physically fit is something that we either love or loathe. Doing physical exercise in any way is vital to keeping you well. Even a 30-minute walk is sufficient to keep your heart rate up, and to help clear your mind. The secondary effects of exercise mean that you are tired for bedtime and are more likely to sleep longer. Make sure you get at least 3-5 hours of exercise a week to keep your body working the way it should be.
If you set yourself a regular time to be in bed for, and try and organise your evening backwards from there, that’s a great way to plan to get the hours of sleep you need each night. If you struggle to sleep through the night, or getting to sleep, there are lots of essential oils and natural remedies that can help such as lavender.
Meditation can be a great way to stay in tune with your body and mind. It’s easy to put yourself down, and see yourself in a negative light, however this isn’t good for your mental health. Meditation can be a great way to focus on yourself, looking at why you may be unhappy with yourself, and how you can make positive changes to make yourself happier. At first, meditation can seem a strange concept and thing to do, however there are a lot of apps that can help with this. Apps like, Calm, Headspace, and Insight timer are useful recommended apps to get started with meditation.
To keep on top of both your physical and mental health and wellbeing, it’s important to make sure you are checking in with your GP whenever something doesn’t seem quite right.
What we offer you!
Even the basics of self-care can be difficult due to financial constraints. When money and finances can be a cause of stress, having to fund the basic essentials of living can end up being more stressful, which is one of the many reasons why we find ourselves putting aside self-care.
The Students’ Union believes that you should never have to worry about the essentials of living and aims to help you in any way that we can.
If you’re struggling for food, the Students’ Union has its own foodbank called FoodHub that you can access as a student. Our FoodHub is located in the Students’ Union above the Ember Lounge. Simply go upstairs and speak to whoever is on Reception about getting a FoodHub voucher. This entitles you to £15 of groceries from either the College Road shop or Leek Road Shop. We advise you to make sure that you purchase 3 days’ worth of food with this voucher. Please note that the voucher excludes sweets and chocolate, fizzy pop, tobacco products, alcohol, stationary, clothing, computer consumables, household, hygiene and medicine products.
In all our venue toilets and through FoodHub, we offer free sanitary products. We believe that no one should have to pay to menstruate, so when you need to, take what you need.