utyp Baily (Ear Hrrt
Students Should Take Time Out
To Balance Diets, Doctors Say
BYLEANNSPRADLING
STAFF WRITER
Gasses. Tests. Significant other. Jobs.
Sleep.
With all these drains on a college
student’s time and energy, most students
do not take time to exercise or plan a
healthy diet. But diet and exercise can have
as great an impact on a student’s life as
anything else.
“I don’t see a lot of malnourished col
lege students,” said Carolyn Felton, a reg
istered dietitian in Raleigh. “But I do see a
lot who don’t eat the best diet.”
Susan Holliman, directorofthe Wellness
Resource Center, said college students of
ten thought they were already young and
healthy and so were unmotivated to exer
cise or eat wisely.
She added that inconvenience and lack
of time also made college students feel less
concerned about diet.
“At home, people were used to some
one planning meals, or they could cook,”
Holliman said. “At college, a lot of people
don’t have a car to get groceries and don't
have time to cook, so they get fast food.”
Felton said a lot of students ate only
what was readily available because they
did not have time to plan meals.
“We think of eating well as a hard thing
to do. You just have to plan ahead, ” Felton
said.
Instead of ordering fast food or a pizza,
Felton suggests trying to keep foods on
hand that are easy to prepare and store and
are nutritious, such as cereal, milk, bagels,
yogurt or fresh fruit.
Felton said that instead of just counting
calories, people should think about the
content of foods whether they were
high-fat or low-fat, high-fiber or low-fiber.
Holliman agreed that food content was
more important than counting calories.
“Research shows that college students
eat less fruits and vegetables
than they need, so they’re
probably not getting enough
fiber,” she said.
“The most important single
thing is to watch fat intake.
Don’t count calories, but con
sume high-fat foods occasion
ally rather than frequently.”
A recent survey found that
61 percent of students were
getting more than 30 percent
of their calories from fat. Thirty
percent is the maximum rec
ommended percentage of calo
ries from fat.
Other research shows that
college students, as well as the
general population, get too few
vitamins and minerals as well
as too much fat.
One survey found that out
of a random sample 0f21,000 people, not
one person met the recommended dietary
allowance for 10 essential nutrients.
“I haven’t yet met a human being who ’ s
getting all the nutrients they need,” said
Ellen Man, owner of Total Wellness Ser
vices in Raleigh. “Lots of people think the
RDA is what we need, but actually it’s the
minimum we need to prevent disease.
“We’re not even getting the minimum
amounts that we need.”
Man believes everyone shoujld take
vitamin and mineral supplements to get
needed nutrients.
“I think it’s real critical to take supple
ments , but you have to be real careful. One
half to three-fourths of the supplements on
the market aren’t even usefiil because of
how they’re made. There are no govern
Tm Gonna Live Forever’: College Students and Their Health Myths
BY AMY SWAN
STAFF WRITER
It will never happen to me. Ihaveplenty
of time. Everybody’s doing it.
For many college students, these are the
reasons behind many an act of risky behav
ior. Anything from not getting enough
sleep to alcohol abuse is fair game for the
under-25 crowd. Why?
“It’s all a part of being young and not
associating risk with behavior,” said Debra
King of Orange Person Chatham Mental
Health.
“We don’t realize that there’s a cause
effect type of relationship in the world, and
that’s when we really get into trouble."
Many area psychologists agreed. They
said college students simply did not look a
few years down the road and did not con
sider how their actions would affect those
around them.
In addition, many young adults overlook
the fine details of everyday life and instead
seekoutthat “high” that comes frombreak
ing the rules.
In the case of substance abuse, the high
can become addictive, both physically and
emotionally.
So addictive that many students think
they cannot have fun without alcohol or
drugs.
“You don’t gain more social skills by
drinking alcohol. You feel more comfort
able," King said.
“The problem there is you haven’t in
creased your social skills you’ve dulled
your senses.”
“If people start to drink, they need to
drink more and more to get the same effect.
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Allowances
Nutrient For Mm For Women
Ptotein fH 60 g 55 g
Vitamin A 5.000 IU 5,0001 U
Vitamin D 400 IU 400 tU
Vitamin E 30 IU 25 IU
Ascorbic Acid 60 mg 55 mg
Folacin .4 mg .4 mg
Niacin 18 mg 13 mg
Riboflavin 1.6 mg 1.5 mg
Thiamin 1.4 mg - Img
Vitamin B-6 2 mg 2 mg
Vitamin B-12 s| tg B N
Calcium .8 g .8 g
Phosphorus ,8g ,8g
lodine 140 pg 100 fig
Iron 10 mg 18 mg
Magnesium 400 mg 350 mg
g = grams, rag = mii(pa)ns.(ig = nK9tw
ment regulations on supplements.”
Marr suggests being sure that any brand
of supplements has been clinically tested
before taking it.
Supplements can help add calcium and
iron, two minerals that college students
generally are low on.
Felton said college students were still at
an age at which they could store calcium in
the body.
“It's like a bank account. You store
calcium for a certain number of years, and
then all you can do is withdraw. Lots of
college students get into drinking coffee or
tea or soft drinks, and a couple of cups of
milk a day can make a big difference.”
Iron is a major deficiency in American
women, Holliman said. “They may not
realize why they feel tired or cold or have
no energy.
“Especially now, people who are trying
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to eat right and don’t eat red meat may not
get enough iron.”
Vegetarians need to watch nutrition
carefully, Felton said. “It’s really healthful
if you do it well. Often I’ll see a person who
has cut out all flesh, but they’re eating so
much cheese they’re hurting their health. ”
Smokers and people who drink alcohol
also have special nutritional needs. Smok
ing depletes certain B-vitamins and vita
min C, and alcohol depletes B-complex
vitamins.
“Alcohol is one of those foods that gives
lots of calories but no nutrients,” Felton
said. “If you drink one beer a day for a
week, you gain a pound.”
Some students come to college with
average weights but gain 10 or 15 pounds,
Felton said.
“1 think all too often, an
incident has to hit pretty close
to home for a person to
personalize it and realize it
could happen to them. Or
sometimes it takes having it
happen to them. ”
MARGARET HENDERSON
Director of Orange County
Rape Crisis Center
Their body’s building up a tolerance,” she
said.
Lee White, a freshman from New
Bedford, Mass., noted the impact of peer
pressure.
Just because it’s the thing to do, every
body does it, she said.
How students are perceived by their
peers can affect their decisions on just
about anything in a ( college environment.
Whether a student wears a bicycle hel
met, for instance, often is determined by
appearances.
“The reason most kids don’t wear them
is because they don’t look cool,” said John
Koestler, a salesman at Franklin Street
Cyclery.
Students who just use their bikes to get
to and from class probably do not consider
themselves serious cyclists, so they do not
think they need a helmet, he said.
“Probably on campus and on Franklin
Street, where there are a lot of cars, is
FOCUS
Holliman said people might gain weight
in college because their bodies had reached
the mature stage. “You may have a de
crease in the amount of calories you need. ”
The average college-age man needs
about 2,900 calories per day, and the aver
age college-age woman needs about 2,200
calories.
Eating disorders like anorexia and
bulimia often show up in college, Felton
said.
“There’s a message outtoyoungwomen
that if you’re not slender, you’re worth
less,” she said.
“If you look at ads in magazines,
someone has spent four hours getting a
woman ready for that one picture. That’s
not what a real woman looks like. We need
it to get it into perspective."
Marr said that just as people with eating
disorders were influenced by societal ideas,
so were people trying to eat well.
“Anybody can eat healthy. It’s based on
a willingness to be different from the aver
age person.
“For college students, the solution is to
be willing to ask for something different
and to be aggressive.”
Marr said exercise as well as diet was
important for a healthy lifestyle.
“I work with a lot of athletes who are
really into working out but don’t pay atten
tion to nutrition, and I see a lot of people
who are really into eating healthy, but they
don’t move their bodies.”
Mam believes college students should
work out three to four times a week for at
least half an hour. The fitness routine should
include some aerobic exercise and some
exercise to improve flexibility, muscular
strength and endurance.
Some students might get the exercise
they need just from their daily activity,
Felton said. “If a person lives in a dorm
two miles from classes and walks vigorously
or bikes to class instead of just strolling
along, that’s sufficient exer
cise.”
Holliman said exercise
could be recreational, like
tennis or racquetball. “It
doesn’t have to be 40 min
utes of aerobics. Think of it
as a habit instead of an or
deal. Hopefully, the new Stu
dent Recreation Center will
help people who don’t have
the money to join a spa.”
Students wanting to learn
more about diet and exercise
can visit the Wellness Re
source Center in the new
SRC. The center offers one
on-one consultation on diet
and exercise with graduate
students from the nutrition
and exercise physiology de
partments.
DTH/JASON KIRK
The FIT Stop at the center assesses the
fitness level of students and checks them
for progress six to eight weeks later.
“That helps with motivation, to see de
creased body fat or an increase in the num
ber of push-ups you can do,” Holliman
said.
“The important thing is not to wait until
after college to develop healthy lifestyle
habits.”
Mam said she believed almost all college
students could improve their lifestyle hab
its.
“Nutrition affects energy, concentration
and stamina. You get a bunch of college
kids who are constipated and have acne
and feel lethargic, and they wonder why.
“It’s real easy. It’s because of what
they’re eating.”
where they’d need a helmet the most,”
Koestler said.
Most professional racing organizations
are requiring helmets, so it is becoming
more and more common to see recreational
bicyclists wearing them, he said.
The people who require the least amount
of convincing when it comes to helmet
wearing are those who have seen or heard
about accidents in which the rider would
have been killed if they had not been wear
ing protective headgear, Koestler said.
Students tend to use the same sort of
logic when it comes to the risk of rape, said
Margaret Henderson, director of Orange
County Rape Crisis Center.
“I think all too often an incident has to
hit pretty close to home for a person to
personalize it and realize it could happen
to them,” Henderson said.
“Or sometimes it takes having it happen
to them.”
Henderson said it was especially easy
for freshmen to trust a person they met at a
party or in class.
Many students forget that acquaintance
rape happens far more often than stranger
rape, and they put themselves in risky
situations.
“It takes a while to figure out how to set
your own boundaries for personal safety,”
Henderson said.
Henderson said that while the rape crisis
center could educate men and women about
ways of avoiding potentially violent situa
tions, they could not prevent rape from
happening.
“We can never be completely safe as
individuals, but we can do things to
maximize our personal safety,” she said.
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6'4" 165-205 247 331
Using the buddy system, avoiding iso
lated areas and sacrificing spontaneity in
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let a friend
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center to this end.
The myth that “it will
never happen to me” must
be dispelled, and students
must become aware of dan- j
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avoid them. T
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that students should never *
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among the college population. Carolyn
Miller, director of clinical services for
Planned Parenthood of Orange and
Durham Counties, said 30 percent of the
Chapel Hill clinic’s patients were college
students.
“In the past several
years, people
generally
are using
condoms
with an
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method of
birth con
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students just
needed to re
member that
“just about any-
Wednesday, September 15,1993
thing is possible when it comes to sexually
transmitted diseases and pregnancy.”
Another myth popular with students is
that “my health will take care of itself
without me having to pay attention,” said
Chapel Hill psychotherapist Victoria
Tackett.
Despite hearing about the so-called
“freshman 15,” many students still con
sider pizza one of the major food groups
and think the walk from South Campus is
a good workout.
“It’s really easy to gain weight because
a lot of people aren’t eating on a regular
schedule,” White said.
“There’s no one around, like your par
ents, to help you eat healthfully.”
Susan Holliman, director of the
University’s Wellness Resource Center,
said students did not realize that what they
eat now could affect them in the future.
She noted that research had shown that
as early as age 7, people started acquiring
cholesterol, so college was the perfect op
portunity to develop healthy eating and
exercise habits.
Students think they will have more time
to exercise when they are out of school, but
they do not realize how much harder it is to
build exercise into their schedules when
they are on their own, she said.
From physicians to counselors, the ex
perts agree: College students, as a group,
are prone to engaging in risky behavior.
As Henderson of the rape crisis center
said, “Because of the activities in a college
student’s life, they may encounter more
situations in which they are at risk.”
The advice offered to students: Be aware,
and think before you act.
5