KIN 122 podcast

Getting adequate sleep is important for physical and mental health. It helps repair muscle cells, reduces stress, and improves performance. Lack of sleep can lead to negative effects like less endurance and physical performance. College students with poor sleep quality are more likely to experience anxiety and depression. Stress is a major factor for college students, caused by moving, changes in living conditions, and uncertainty about the future. Physical activity can help reduce stress and improve mental well-being. Exercise releases endorphins and promotes better sleep. It also empowers individuals to take an active role in their mental health. Physical activity doesn't have to be intense, even a daily walk or yoga can be beneficial. Taking medication alone may not solve mental health issues, a comprehensive approach including exercise is important. It's important for college students to take advantage of the opportunities for physical activity on campus. What's up guys? We wanted to start this podcast off with a little fun joke and here I go. Why did the doctor tell his patient to keep exercising? Why? Because running is cheaper than therapy. Okay, aside from that, on a more serious note, getting adequate sleep is actually a crucial part of both our physical and mental health. During our sleep is when most of our repaired muscle cells are activated. This helps with our growth as well as our energy utilization. It helps in our functional day-to-day living and provides us with the energy we need to get through that day. It helps with stress reducing, reduces risk of injury, and also improving the performance of everyone as a person because sleep, it just is essential. It regenerates energy cells. Lack of sleep can also lead to the negatives which are less endurance, less physical performance, and less overall well-being, and then constant losses of sleep. That's called insomnia. Is that right? Yes, yes. I also just have a question for you guys. How many hours do you guys get like every single night of just like sleep and stuff like that? I like to kind of prioritize my sleep. Like I try to go to bed at 10 or 11 and then I also sleep in a little bit so I would say I think the recommended amount of sleep is like 8 hours and I probably get that or more which helps me like throughout my day. Yeah. What about you? Like 4. 4 hours? Yeah. What about you? It can go either two ways. It matters what day, obviously, especially if I, if it's a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'd probably wake up around 9, go to bed around 11, so 10 hours of sleep, I guess. But um, yeah. Do you have anything else? I would just like to prove, give the numbers that my article, which was the physical activity and sleep quality in relation to mental health among college students, they, they referenced or they gave facts specifically saying that due to poor sleep quality, the amount of anxiety and depression went up by 1.38% and 1.58% to individuals who got consistent, not enough sleep. That's interesting. Yeah. Abby, you have the topic of anxiety and like stress, all that stuff. Do you kind of want to add on to that? Yeah, so mine was more about stress mostly and I looked at a research study called quantifying the impact of physical activity on stress tolerance in students and the study that they did was like on people our age, so like mostly in college, and over half the participants in the study said that their stress was caused by like the start of college, feelings of uncertainty about the future, summer jobs, moving, and changes in living conditions, which all of those are kind of what like you go through while you're in college. Like the moving part, which is super stressful, like I personally have to move like every year, like I'm in a dorm, my sorority house, and then an apartment, and then I don't know what, like where are you guys living? I'm living in an apartment on Green and it's like a 20-minute walk to every class. Yeah. That's a daily source of exercise, you know, so definitely nice. I live in Bromley, I'm still a freshman, so and yeah. Yeah, and then another part that I thought about that causes stress is how much like our schedules are changing from each semester. Like you get a whole new schedule, you have to change like your whole routine, which can be stressful to find out, but in the study they had a hypothesis that said college students with high stress tolerance would be significantly more likely to employ physical activity-associated behaviors as a coping mechanism, and it was statistically shown that the four physical activity-associated behaviors they used in the study were more likely to be employed by the high stress tolerance group. So I just think like it's, I find so much importance to be able to exercise every day if I can. There's like so many positives, like it increases your endorphins, and then for me, I think that it could be the same for you guys too, but it kind of just acts like a distraction and a break from my day. For sure. You talked about scheduling and stuff like that. Well, what do you think is like the biggest difference from high school scheduling and just like going into college and all that stuff? Yeah, so the transition I think was like harder because like you feel like you have more time with your classes being like two or three classes a day. Yeah, but with that being said, like the fact that it changes like what every three months, and then you have to figure out what you want to do in your schedule, like when you want to work out and do your homework and stuff like that, so it can get difficult. Talking about working out, do you guys work out? I did. How often do you work out? I work out like four or five times a week. What type of training do you do? I do lifting and then sometimes cardio, like also if I just need a break, I'll go on a walk, like it doesn't have to be such a time commitment to like go to the gym and specifically like weightlift or like go for a run, like you could put a walk in between your classes just to like lower your stress. And just like you said, you talked about how like 20 minutes away from every single class and like even when you're going to class and like learning all that stuff, you can still have a nice day with just taking a 20-minute walk and all that stuff, so and then how many times do you work out a week? I go five times a week, but like referencing my area of expertise on this podcast, I don't get much time to myself, so I'm muscle cutting right now, so I need the extra sleep that I should be getting more of, so that way I can make sure that my anxiety or depression or any levels of negative that are impacting my life can be reduced due to my lack of energy because of the lack of carbohydrates, calories, intake that I am getting right now. Yeah, and onto the topic that I kind of want to talk about that affects millions of people around the world is obviously depression. Traditionally anti-depressant medications are the more common approach in treating depression. While it can definitely be effective to many individuals, I think it's really important to recognize that it might not be the ideal solution for everyone. I think one alternative that has gained increasing attention to physical activity is the research that I did on this article that I looked at by Eagle W. Martizan, and it has shown that exercise can be a powerful and natural way to combat depression. Eagle mentions that one in five students are severely depressed across the whole United States of America, and 17% of students in college use anti-depressants, which I kind of think is kind of crazy because I definitely walk past like more than five people, and I know you guys do too. You guys have a hundred people lectures, all that stuff, so it is really eye-opening that that many people have depression and stuff like that. But to continue, I think that exercise not only contributes to physical health, but it has profound effects on mental well-being, just like Abby said. It releases endorphins, it's the body's natural mood lifter, and it just promotes better sleep, and that's kind of what we're here to talk about. Obviously, again, what Abby said, it reduces stress and anxiety and all that other stuff. I think another great thing about physical activity is that it comes with minimal side effects and empowers individuals to take an active role in their mental health. Like for me, and we can all talk about this, is what's the biggest difference that physical activity has made in your life? And I think for me, it's helped me gain the mentality of discipline, and every single day, no matter how you feel, you still go to the gym, you still put your body through not what you want to do, but you just kind of have to do it, and that's how it affected me. And it doesn't only just go to the gym, it just happens. It helps me with schoolwork, it helps me do other stuff that I have to do. Do you guys want to comment on that? Yeah, I agree with that. I know you mentioned stuff about medication, and I do take anxiety medicine, and since my whole thing was about stress and anxiety, only doing medication isn't going to solve everything. I know for me that physical activity is one of the biggest parts in helping that and reducing it, so that's why I think going to the gym is something that I have to include in my everyday life and stuff like that. Like Abby said, last time I went to the doctor, they referenced and said that I should get evaluated for ADHD, and because of that, I was worried, but I don't want to take medicine, so I've been constantly going to the gym, and ever since then, I've noticed myself become more relaxed, more at ease, because I get to burn the energy that I have at the gym, which leaves me more relaxed and mellow in my day-to-day life. And I think people, when they describe physical activity or something like that, they always just think, oh, I need a bench, 500 pounds, I need a squat, 300 pounds, all that stuff, but it honestly could just be as simple as a daily walk, a dance class, or yoga, if anyone's into that. But I think the best thing for us to do as a community at the University of Illinois is, let's encourage each other to move, to find activities that bring us joy, and to embrace the comprehensive approach to mental health that goes beyond medications. I agree. And I think that a lot of, like, I'll always bring this up, that it's always easy to go take, like, all these different sorts of pills, but it's very, very challenging for people to actually go work on themselves, work on their body, and become who they actually want to become. And I think especially that we're college students, like, our school has so much, like, opportunities of, like, workout classes, like, you have a free gym to go to with, like, being a student here, so I think it's really important that we, like, take advantage of that while we're here, specifically, too, because, like, we're talking about the stressful times of college, and how physical activity will help lower that. Yeah, and, I mean, we have the ARC here, there's, I have my car here at U of I, and I go to Crunch, and all that stuff, so, just like Abby said, there's always opportunities, but you just gotta dig for them, and they'll always pop up. And with that, that concludes our beautiful, beautiful podcast. See you later.