It’s almost winter here in The UP, and with the holidays ahead and for students, exams, sometimes stress can take over. We checked in with some wellness and health professionals to talk about how to take care of yourself during winter time.
The term wellness is defined as the state of being in good health. Here in The UP during the winter months, finding activities to help maintain your overall wellness can be difficult, especially heading into the busy month of December.
“We live in a very high stress society and especially around the holidays it can be difficult to take the time to de-stress… Your nervous system is basically your CPU, your computer for your entire body and if it is not functioning optionally you get glitches.
Kristen Ball, UP Health Chiropractor
Another major factor in staying healthy is sleep, Dr. Anja Hoffstrom is a dentist and sleep specialist who talked with us about the relationship between stress and sleep.
“Sleep is so very important to our body as a whole because the time that we sleep is the time that our bodies are healing. before you go to bed and you’re going to floss and brush your teeth, that’s your dental hygiene right. sleep hygiene can be the same.”
As students here in the up start taking final exams as well, Missy Whalen had some tips for studying students “Caffeine can cause good wakefulness when studying, but too much caffeine can increase your anxious feelings. Really, I think having your mind being in a safe and healthy spot is what’s going to help you to perform best of your exams”.
Overall, the one thing stressed by each professional was the importance of exercise.
When we talked about exercise, Whalen stressed the importance of getting outside, “I also recommend and I know it’s hard because it’s cold and sometimes the weather isn’t conducive to getting outside but just 10 to 20 minutes of regular excessive outside especially when the sun is out, can be a nice reset to your brain and relieve your stress levels”.
A lot goes into maintaining personal wellness, but taking care is key to making it through the long and dark winter months.
Whalen had one last tip for those working through the stress this holiday season “I just would hope that everybody just tries to take good care of themselves, because there’s no way that you can avoid stressful situations in your love so just managing them as they come is probably the best way to try to handle it.”
