Wellness Environment Essay

There are areas of wellness that I am working actively to maintain, such as practicing music and staying hydrated. However, there are other areas that I could devote more energy towards. Living in Central Campus Residence Hall means I have access to premium options for dining and exercise. I want to take advantage of these opportunities to improve my health during my first year of college. Physical activity, sleep, and nutrition are three deficient areas that I am highly motivated to change.

First, my level of physical activity is generally low. The exercise I get comes from walking around campus or downtown, along with attending the occasional yoga class. Before I arrived at school, I typically exercised I have not been taking advantage of the fitness center the way I had planned. When I exercise, my mood and energy levels noticeably increase, for which there is a strong scientific basis.

A research report (Daniele, de Bruin, Rios, & de Bruin, 2017) examining the effect of exercise on sleep-deprived mice showed a positive correlation between exercise and higher levels of serotonin and norepinephrine.

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Groups of mice were subjected to combinations of sleep deprivation and treadmill exercise. The results show that while sleep deprivation resulted in high serotonin turnover, which is experienced by unmedicated patients with clinical depression, regular exercise reduced serotonin and norepinephrine turnover (Daniele et al., 2017). These findings are especially promising because I am serotonin deficient; it is in my best interest to exercise regularly to reap the neurological benefits.

Going forward, I want to go to the fitness center twice a week for at least 30 minutes each time.

I also want to incorporate other exercise from fun activities. The yoga classes are great for beginners, there are hiking trips nearly every weekend, and multiple indoor rock-climbing gyms nearby with student membership options. Consistency will be difficult for me. I will mark specific times during the week to go to the fitness center to avoid having to make that decision on the spot. I am much less likely to exercise if it is not built into my schedule in advance.

It is also important for me to implement small changes that could add up over time, like taking the stairs instead of the elevator. The tendency for me to revert to the option that requires the least amount of effort is something that needs to change.

Next, my sleep patterns are irregular. I go to bed between 11:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. and wake up between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. I rely on prescribed medication to sleep every night; if I take it as directed, I typically get enough sleep to function normally the following day. However, if I have a heavy workload, I will sometimes delay taking medication so that I can finish my assignments. This usually results in fatigue and an inability to concentrate. During my gap year before college, I worked about 45 hours per week at a retail job. My constant availability meant I covered shifts when coworkers were unable to come in. As a result, I consumed a lot of coffee while living at home, which negatively affected my sleep. I have less access to caffeine (and less money) at school; I still need to reduce my intake and avoid coffee after 4:00 p.m.

Electronic devices also inhibit sleep. My phone sits on a shelf attached to my bed every night and is also my alarm clock. It is now the last thing I see at night and the first thing I check in the morning. I do take advantage of functions like Night Shift, which shifts the display colors to a warmer spectrum to reduce eyestrain. Nevertheless, phone screens still emit blue light, which has been proven to impede sleep. A study conducted by Nagai et al. exposed mice to blue or white light and compared the circadian rhythm disturbances (2019). They found that blue light not only hindered sleep, it also affected blood glucose levels and slowed metabolism (Nagai et al., 2019). The Apple Watch I received as part of my participation in the Wellness Environment research study has been more helpful than harmful as it pertains to sleep. I am able to use my watch to track sleep using the Pillow application. I have also been able to greatly reduce the amount of time spent on YouTube and Netflix. This may be due to the lack of time I have for extra activities in general, but nonetheless, it is a positive change.

Going forward, I want to get a healthy amount of sleep. I am tremendously motivated to do whatever I can to make this happen because being well-rested means I have the energy to complete my schoolwork and spend time with close friends. I want to get at least seven hours of sleep per night and wake up before 9:30 a.m. on weekdays. In order to make this a reality, I will take my medication at 10:30 p.m. every day without exception and refrain from caffeine consumption after 4:00 p.m. As with exercise, having a set schedule greatly reduces the temptation to ignore my own boundaries and stay up late.

Finally, I would like to work on nutrition and choosing healthy options. I am now used to eating in the dining hall or the Marketplace and what options are typically available, but it is still difficult to create balanced meals and resist the urge to choose comfort foods, particularly corn dogs. I come from a health-conscious family where junk food was never readily available. Thankfully, I am familiar with what a healthy meal looks like because of this, but I need to improve my food decision-making when left to my own devices.

Right now, I am almost always eating three meals a day. For breakfast, I like to have oatmeal with chia seeds and blueberries, which keeps me full until my three back-to-back afternoon classes end at 2:00 p.m. I started going to the Marketplace for lunch after they introduced the meal swipe equivalency for students with unlimited dining plans. There are healthy options, but they also offer a fair amount of comfort food. This is usually where my nutrition starts to go downhill. I have the self-awareness to recognize that fried food is my main vice. For dinner, I usually pick whatever is available from the “Simple Servings” station. I have not been eating snacks during the day, but if I have food in my room at night, I tend to stress-eat.

Unhealthy “comfort eating” is common in the United States, but evidence suggests that replacing unhealthy foods with healthy foods did not impact stress reactivity. A recent study examined the effect of unhealthy (foods high in sugar or fat) consumption vs. healthy consumption on stress-induced adrenocorticotropic hormone release (Finch, Cummings, Tomiyama, 2019). Finch et al.’s (2019) study found the following:

Unhealthy and healthy comfort eating did not dampen reactivity or enhance recovery of psychophysiological stress compared to control, and no differences in reactivity or recovery were found by comfort food type. Findings suggest that by replacing unhealthy comfort foods with fruits and vegetables, women will not be sacrificing any stress-reducing benefits and can inherently improve the quality of their diet while avoiding potential drawbacks of unhealthy comfort eating. (p. 28)

According to the results of this study, if I have an urge to stress-eat, it is beneficial to replace the typical unhealthy options with fruits or vegetables because the type of food did not have a noticeable impact on stress levels.

Nutrition is currently a medium priority. I have done a decent job of choosing balanced meals, but I am much more likely to choose a burger and fries if I am not doing well emotionally. Moving forward, I want to eat three well-rounded meals every day. It is okay to have an unhealthy treat every once in a while, but I do not want to have one with every meal. I will be more mindful about the choices I make when it comes to food.

Health and wellness are of great importance to me. When I neglect exercise, sleep, and nutrition, it has a profound impact on my physical and mental wellbeing. It is easy to forget to eat breakfast or to stay up late when balancing classwork, a social life, and extracurricular activities, but staying on track when it comes to wellness is a top priority. I will use the aforementioned strategies to make a conscious effort to improve myself, and if all goes well, my life will change for the better.