Build Good Health Habits: Choose Exercise, Nutrition, or Sleep

Prompt

You may choose any 1 of these 3 podcasts.You may wish to coordinate with your Health Habit project #2’s goal, or branch out in a different direction. Your choice – they are all terrific listens.

Discussion Questions: Think about how this info might relate to working with patients to benefit them, to your own personal life as a student, and to public health in general.

• What tips did you learn about your health habit topic of interest ?
• Was there anything that surprised you or intrigued you ?
• Was this podcast or video motivating to you as far as making a health habit change, now that you know more ? What challenges do you think you will face ?
• What challenges do our patients face when they try to make a positive health behavior change with a daily habit ?
• Did you learn any new information to help patients trying to improve their exercise, nutrition, or sleep ?

Option 1

Benefits of Exercise for the Brain, Dr, John Ratey

Dr. Ratey, author of Spark: The Revolutionary Science of Exercise, discusses how exercise benefits the brain, leading to better learning and more effective studying. He reviews how exercise impacts mood, as well as his school-based programs to increase exercise and improve test scores. Though done a few years ago, the research is still completely valid. Highly motivating if you are interested in increasing exercise and in studying/learning more efficiently. 33 min.

Google Discovery Talk: Exercise is the Best Medicine for Our Brains (Links to an external site.)

College info Geek , 43. 5 min

How Exercise Improves Your Brain (Links to an external site.) 2017

Media Lab: How Exercise Improves Your Brain (Links to an external site.) 56 min 2015

Option 2

Baby’s First Bite: How We Learn Our Food Preferences, Bee Wilson

Picking up on habit change, this podcast with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross and food writer, Bee Wilson, looks at how we learn our eating habits and food preferences. You’ll be amazed at how early this starts, and how much what we eat relates to how we humans are creatures of habit. Entertaining, and relevant if you have children, have pregnancy in your present or future, or just want to understand your own eating habits as part of preparing to change them. 38 min.

Baby’s First Bite: A Chance to to Shape Lifelong Food Habits (Links to an external site.)

Option 3

Why Sleep Matters Now, More Than Ever. Dr. Mathew Walker

Join Dr. Walker for a riveting look at why sleep is so crucial. Most students are sleep deprived, and this interferes with learning and taxes one’s health. Find out how to know if you are sleep deficient and how to change your sleep related habits so you can get more sleep, feel more rested, improve your mood, and be more effective with studying. 60 min.

TED Talk: Why Sleep Matters Now More Than Ever (Links to an external site.)

Questions for Reflection:

Guidelines

• Your initial response should be 250-350 words in length, reflecting on the prompt above.
• Reply to at least two classmates’ posts. Your response to your classmate’s discussion should be around 50 words (each) and add to the discussion (i.e. reflecting on their response, asking questions, etc.).