PARTY
SELF CARE
of the body and mind in college Written by Louise-Audrey Zenezini Photos by Sabrina Sepul-Azcarraga
INSPIRATION
THE BASIS OF SELF CARE
As a typical college student in a large metropolitan city, my night ended with an Uber drive home. While my friend and I chatted about our night, our driver softly spoke up. He told us that we were the only sober girls he had picked up that weekend - and I wish I had been surprised by the fact. He explained he didn’t understand students’ need to drink and their need to party and be out late. He began to describe his past and the nights he couldn’t remember and the headaches he would wake up with more mornings than he could count. After living like this for so many years, he chose self-care over wild nights and he changed his life.
Now, this is not an article meant to sound disapproving of anyone who parties or discourage anyone to - I mean, heck, I like to party just as much as the next college student. This is to encourage you to think a little more about your own well being, and how your actions impact not only your physical health, but mental health as well. Mental health is often overlooked on the subject of self-care, because the topic as a whole typically brings up thoughts about food, exercise, limiting smoking and drinking and sleeping well. But despite how much those actions can impact your physical attributes, what nutrition goes into your body has a chain-reaction to what happens in your brain. Your brain needs food that is high in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, and that is low in refined sugars, which can cause the worsening of mood disorders, like depression. This information comes from a slowly emerging field called nutritional psychiatry, which has directly proven a link between what we eat and how we feel.
“he chose self-care over wild nights and he changed his life”
The relationship between foods and moods begins with serotonin, a neurotransmitter of which 95 percent is produced in the gastrointestinal tract. The tract is lined with millions of neurons that are influenced by what you eat and reflect this in guiding your emotions. Diets that consist of high levels of fruits and vegetables, unprocessed grains and fish have proven to lower risks of depression by 25 percent to 35 percent compared to a diet full of processed foods and sugars. In the general day to day college life, with dining halls filled with endless fresh cookies, fries and ice cream, it is hard to limit oneself. Though it may require a bit of dedication I encourage you to try several days if not weeks without foods that are known to cause inflammation and fluctuations in moods. Gathering information from personal experience, a changed diet without foods that caused inflammation can revitalize you and boost not only the way your body feels, but the way you feel emotionally as well.
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