Wellbeing Plan Reflection

My wellbeing plan consisted of reducing academic stress and personally decreasing the occurrence of eczema on my hands. As a transferring student, I had already experienced the stress of university and knew that this could be a problem for the semester. To reduce academic stress, research suggests that sleeping for 8 hours a night can help university students reduce stress levels (Welle & Graf, 2011). Consequently, I decided to record and aim to have an average of over 8 hours a week. To decrease the occurrence of hand eczema, a study found that regular exercise was connected to less or no hand eczema incidents in adults (Berglind, Alderling & Meding, 2011). Therefore I planned to exercise for 30-60 minutes a day, for 5 days a week as a personal goal to reduce hand eczema. I recorded 6 weeks of my sleeping patterns and exercise in a diary, noting any major events that could affect sleep and the occurrences of eczema.

From the 6 weeks of recorded sleeping patterns, it was found that, on average, I slept for between 9 – 9.75 hours a night. Welle and Graf (2011) discovered that regular exercise for females was considerably vigilantly against low stress levels. I noted in the first 2 weeks the low stress levels and noticed that there were no major assignment deadlines. However, in week 3 assignments were due and this was when stress was recorded. Week 6 was practicum week and therefore I woke earlier and went to sleep earlier, which was because I wanted to get the minimum of 8 hours every night. Going to sleep and waking up at the same time every day is called a circadian rhythm (Forquer, Camden, Gabriau & Johnson, 2008). In a study conducted on the sleeping patterns of college students, it was suggested that having a circadian rhyt...

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...ing and the changes in curriculum about health and wellbeing in classrooms.

Works Cited

Berglind, I. A., Alderling, M., & Meding, B. (2011). Life-style factors and hand eczema. British Journal of Dermatology, 165(3), 568-575. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2133.2011.10394.x

Forquer, L. M., Camden, A. E., Gabriau, K. M., & Johnson, C. M. (2008). Sleep patterns of college students at a public university. Journal of American college health, 56(5), 563-565

Lawton, S. (2010). Assessing and treating adult patients with eczema. Primary Health Care, 20(4), 32-38

National Eczema Association. (2014). Causes and Triggers. Retrieved from http://nationaleczema.org/eczema/causes-and-triggers-of-eczema

Welle, P. D., & Graf, H. M. (2011). Effective lifestyle habits and coping strategies for stress tolerance among college students. American Journal of Health Education, 42(2), 96-105.