Search Results for: insomnia
Freshman Insomnia: Seven Tips To Get More ZZZ
As September settles in, college freshman are anything but settled. Instead, these students are rollercoastering through major life adjustments, especially those living in dorms or other shared spaces. Extra noises, unsettled sleep patterns, academic adjustments, general anxiety and bedtime social media browsing that skyrockets FOMO*(Fear Of Missing Out) often blend together and create sleepless nights that can trigger a downward spiral of fatigue, trouble concentrating, and poor grades…which leads to anxiety and more difficulty sleeping. What can students do to try and stop this cycle? Start with these seven steps:
- CONSISTENT SLEEP (and AWAKE) TIMES- with MWF and T/Th schedules,
6 Tips for Freshmen Insomnia
Freshmen college students have many challenges as they adjust to their new environments, and sleepless nights in dorm rooms can trigger a downward spiral of fatigue, trouble concentrating, and poor grades…which leads to anxiety and more difficulty sleeping. What can students do to try and stop this cycle? Certainly there are multiple causes for insomnia, from roommate noise to seasonal allergies, to homesickness or academic stressors, but here are six basic steps to try first:
- CONSISTENT SLEEP (& WAKE) TIMES- with MWF and T/Th schedules, often students have drastically different sleep and wake times each day, which doesn’t jive with
The ULTIMATE College Student Health Handbook
I’m excited to announce that the 3rd edition of my passion project, The ULTIMATE College Student Health Handbook: Your Guide for Everything from Hangovers to Homesickness, is now available. If you’re new here, welcome! My name is Jill Grimes, MD, better known as “Dr. Jill” or “the College Doc”. I’m a board-certified family physician who enjoyed private practice for roughly 20 years, then switched my focus to teen and young adult health. I treated college students in an on-campus university urgent care setting for about 7 years, until the pandemic hit, and I pivoted to public health initiatives. As … Read more
Weed: A College Doc’s Biased Opinion
Parents, April 20th is the perfect day to talk to your teens about weed. “420 Day” has become an international cannabis holiday, celebrated with parties that include publicly smoking or consuming edibles where usage is legal, and demonstrating to advocate for further legalization where it is not.
Why “420”? Specifics are debated, but most agree the name originated in the early 1970’s, from a small group of high school students in San Rafael, CA, who used to meet at 4:20 pm after school to smoke weed together. Today, their code word “420” is synonymous with cannabis, which is why your … Read more
Hey College Parents, Today’s Weed is Not Your ’80s Pot
“They’re just smoking a little pot, right?”
Listen up, parents, because today’s “WEED” is not your “POT”.
Back in the late 70’s and 80’s, smoking pot usually meant passing a joint or bong around a circle of friends with half-closed eyes and mellow vibes (thanks, Cheech&Chong). The nicknames were endless- pot, dope, grass, marijuana, MJ, Mary Jane, reefers, roaches, etc, and the concentration of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive part) ranged from 2-5%. With these low THC concentrations, there was no recognized withdrawal syndrome and therefore pot was not considered addictive.
Today’s “weed” in the United States- legal or not- routinely … Read more
Why Doesn’t My Kid Love College (Yet)?
I sincerely hope your college student is already having an AMAZING experience, but if your “kidult” is struggling, please know they are NOT alone! This “Fall Frenzy” hits every year, especially for freshmen and transfer students. Realities of college are setting in, from suboptimal (or truly awful) midterm grades to social struggles. Some students party way too much, coping with anxiety by blackout drinking, using weed and/or other drugs. Other students hole up in their dorm rooms, escaping reality with video games. Along with these academic and social struggles, many students begin to question if they should change their major, … Read more
College Health Checklist: 12 Things To Do Before Your Child Leaves Home
*This post was originally published as a guest blog on one of my favorite teen parenting sites, RaisingTeensToday Be sure to check out their site!
As parents, when we’re preparing to send our “kidults” off to college, we often spend the last few months before they leave cramming every possible nugget of wisdom into their brain – and rightly so.
And, even though our loving advice, (passed along with all good intentions, of course) might be met with an eye roll and an “Okay! I knoooowwww!” we have to press on because part of the separation process isn’t … Read more
Struggling with Test Anxiety? Fix It Now… BEFORE Finals!
With Spring Break in the rearview mirror, the rest of the semester will start to fly by, and finals begin to loom large. If you are one of the 20% of college students with TEST ANXIETY (yep, that’s 1 in 5 students!) then this post is for you.
Start with objectively deciding if your test anxiety is APPROPRIATE, meaning that you put in hours and effort studying, but when you sit down to the test, you do not know the answers (proportionate to your study efforts.) THIS IS SUPER COMMON, especially for freshmen who never struggled to make good … Read more
#1 New Release: The ULTIMATE College Student Health Handbook
