Wage War On Exam Stress

Here’s How You Can Stay Healthy In A Stressful Environment

It’s no secret that the run-up to exams can be extremely stressful. For many young adults, it’s one of the most stressful periods of time they’ve ever experienced. This rings especially true for those on the younger end of the spectrum, who have never experienced serious study before.

Below you will find a selection of lifestyle changes you may consider

Nutrition / Diet

This may sound like a lower-priority approach, but your diet strongly influences your mood and your anxiety levels. Many people fall into poor eating habits during intense periods of study. This is partially due to being too low on time/energy to prepare a healthy meal. It’s also partially due to the all-too-familiar habit of comfort eating many people have a tendency to adhere to.

The problem with this approach is it often leaves you with even less energy and even more stress. Especially if you’re downing anxiety-inducing highly caffeinated beverages.

This can turn into a negative feedback loop of sorts. In which you feel bad so you don’t bother to take care of your diet. Then subsequently end up feeling worse and repeating the cycle continuously.

Don’t fall into this trap. You can severely impact your performance in an examination by going into the scenario highly stressed. It’s also much harder to take in and retain information when you’re feeling anxious.

Make sure you put enough time aside to eat real, nutritious food.

Reducing Stress With Planning

If you’re looking for another way to reduce stress, planning is an essential part of the process. Having a clear-cut timeline of what you should be prioritizing means you won’t be worrying about not having enough time. Always remember when planning out your studies to retain realistic and reasonable goals. Cramming a module with 10 hours of recommended study time into 2 hours is not advisable for anyone. Regardless of intellectual capacity.

Another important thing whilst planning your studies is to actually set aside time to relax and enjoy your hobbies. It may be tempting to convince yourself you’re capable of spending every single hour of free time studying, but it’s simply not practical. The human brain can only concentrate at a reasonable intensity for so long. Sometimes spending more time studying actually does more damage.

Consider Supplementation

A handful of other factors can contribute to poor performance in an exam situation. Issues such as anxiety and fatigue can be brought on by poor gut health, low levels of iron, and a variety of other factors. 

Supplementation using probiotic bacterial cultures can improve the quality of the bacteria in your gut. An imbalance in the bacteria lining your digestive tract can massively affect your ability to perform. As the gut is responsible for absorbing vital nutrients from food and even stores about 80% of the body’s immune system. It logically follows that issues with this region of your body can manifest in the form of frequent illness & fatigue.

Get Plenty Of Sleep

The process of sleeping is absolutely vital to the process of recalling information. The longer you spend without sleep, the less information during that period of time you’ll be able to recall. One of the most common side effects in people suffering from insomnia is memory-related difficulties. This is in part because sleep is literally the period of time when your brain categorizes and consolidates memories throughout the day. It’s also because those who are sleep deprived often just do not have the energy to correctly recall information.