HC KCL’s Guide to Combat Flu Season

With the virus that must not be named continuing to take over our world, we are slowly beginning to ease into a new normal. Therefore, it is more crucial than ever to stay healthy. Settling back into a routine, beginning a new academic year and having our workload already pile up whilst still in the midst of a global pandemic is stressful to say the least. The last thing we all need right now is to further worry about our health, especially with flu season quickly approaching and warm sunny days are becoming a memory. A bout of the hay fever and freshers flu almost feel like a rite of passage for every university student in England, but given the international situation, even the mildest symptoms can put us on edge and the additional stress and workload of university isn’t going to help keep our minds at ease. So here are some tips I picked up from my mum and grandma to keep the common cold away!

De-stress

Stress can be a huge reason to feel sick and lower your immunity. Unfortunately for us, given the situation, a lot of activities that used to de-stress us now have become cause for further anxiety as they may have potentially become a little bit more dangerous to partake in. Even though you might not have access to activities that previously gave you peace of mind, something as simple as a warm shower serves as a great way to release the built up steam and let every cell of our body exhale the days troubles away. Cleansing yourself after a long day and taking some time off for self-care after, is a great way to relax and forget about the world’s burdens for a little while.

Hydrate

A universal solution to any problem. Abracadabra! It actually works! Apparently there’s a reason people don’t stop praising H2O. Find a pretty reusable bottle and make it your partner during those isolated online Microsoft team sessions. It’s a great friend and has always got your back. British tap water is ranked one of the cleanest in the world, meeting all the European water quality standards and it doesn’t cost a penny! If you’re not in London, no worries! Clean water, hopefully shouldn’t be too far away, so grab a glass, gulp it down and watch it do its magic.

Chaud drinks 

With the sun saying its final adieu’s, and days getting shorter, its time the kettle and tea bags made their comeback. Feel the muscle pains and headaches vanish as you take your first sip of the warm aromatic beverage that also hydrates. Two birds with one stone! Replace the sugar with some honey and it’s a perfectly healthy beverage with minimal calories. Honey is also a perfect remedy for a sore throat.

Slumber

At university, we are constantly busy – be it reading the 100’s of pages assigned to us before each class, making notes on lectures we missed or even catching up with friends after a long day. When all of this catches up to us, we almost always compromise on our sleep first. And unfortunately, this lack of sleep directly means a compromised immune system. This is not the year we can afford to compromise on our immunity so lets make the best of online classes and the primarily ‘work from home’ schedule to refrain from those late nights and instead spend a little more effort on sticking to a uniform sleep schedule of at least 7 valuable hours of beauty sleep. If you can’t remember the last time you woke up without an alarm – refreshed, then perhaps its time to climb into bed with a good book that isn’t listed on your reading lists or maybe even some Netflix.

Veggies

Another over mentioned subject but eating healthy or at least relatively, will help keep us a lot stronger at university – physically and mentally. Pasta seems to be the obvious choice for a quick meal but at least a couple times a week, lets try and get some of the vitamins we need into our systems. A bowl of sauteed veggies doesn’t take much longer to whip up than a bowl of pasta and it’ll do us way more good!

Wash your hands! And wear a mask, please!

Staying safe in 2020 has become a team effort. We need to keep each other safe! Your mask protects the people around you just as much as it protects you. As annoying as they are, they’re one of the only methods we can go on living this new normal almost dystopian life of ours so lets just wear them. Living and working in such close proximity to each other that we do at university, given all the common areas, it is each of our personal hygiene that keep us all safe! So lets sanitise and wash our hands and redo these two actions as many times a day as we possibly can!

Sending you lots of love! Hoping you are safe and healthy and have a wonderful year ahead at university!