Students prone to wintertime sickness due to stress, habits

     Many college students are taken down by an illness during the winter months, but many times these illnesses can be prevented depending on how students maintain their health.
     “It’s really a lot of common sense things to stay healthy,” said Alice Loper, the clinical director at the Student Health Clinic.
     Most college students do not lead a very healthy life.  They usually do not get enough sleep and are under a lot of pressure. Students also smoke, drink and sometimes eat one meal after another. All of these actions add up and can lead to illness.
      “College students are at a higher risk for getting sick,” Loper said. “When you’re run down, you are more vulnerable to getting sick.”
     Even though college students are vulnerable, there are a few things they can do to prevent illness. The single best way in preventing the flu is to get a flu vaccination each year, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Loper said that the best thing for college students to do in order to stay healthy includes “a multi-vitamin a day, a balanced diet and good rest.”
     However, good rest and a balanced diet are two things that may be hard to find on a college campus ,let alone in a college lifestyle.
     Many students juggle both academic and social obligations, which can sometimes be stressful. Once a student gets sick, there is even more stress placed on them to not miss class, parties or other social activities. This stress can make an already sick student feel worse.
     There are things students can do to do to feel better.
Students can go to the Student Health Clinic located on the main floor of Beeson Hall on Montgomery Street. The four nurse practitioners there see between 40 and 60 sick students a day during the winter months. They can test students for mono, the flu, and strep throat among other things.
     “Colds and the flu are viruses and they are just going to run their course once they get in your body,” Loper said.
This means there is nothing that can be prescribed for a student to treat viruses that cause illnesses.
     There are some things students can do to relieve their symptoms though, while the virus is going on.
     Katherine Anthony, a freshman chemistry major, had mono at the beginning of this semester and says she drank orange juice and took vitamin C pills daily to help with her symptoms. This did not make her mono go away faster, it did however, simply lessen the effects of the virus.
     Likewise, Loper suggests taking a decongestant when students have a cold or the flu to help with their symptoms.
Students already infected with a virus can help their schoolmates by keeping their illnesses to themselves. Mono is transferred through saliva, mucus, and sometimes tears according to WebMD, an accredited health website. So students should keep their drinks and cigarettes to themselves. Colds and the flu can be transferred like mono or by an infected person’s cough or sneeze.
     “A sneeze can travel 100 feet or more,” Loper said. “So to contain that, it is best to sneeze into your elbow.”
     Students should avoid touching their eyes, nose and mouth when around an infected person since many germs enter their body through these areas. Washing your hands is also a very important part of staying healthy, according to Loper.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 9 2007. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry