I’m battling my 4th cold this year and it’s not technically winter yet!
Does my immune system need a boost? Should I eat more oranges? Should I stop catching public transport and start carrying hand sanitiser? Maybe my chakras need realigning. There are more myths surrounding the common cold than in an Ancient Greek textbook. The common cold is an infection in the upper respiratory tract caused by a virus. Symptoms include coughing, sneezing, runny nose, headache, sore throats and blocked nose, and usually last up to two weeks. There is no cure for the common cold because different viruses can cause a cold so it’s tricky for scientists to isolate the culprit. Over-the-counter medicines don’t attack the virus, they just make the symptoms more bearable so we can get a good nights sleep while our bodies battle the invading virus. Belief: Colds are cause be being cold Fact or Myth: Myth How often did your mother tell you as a child to wear a jumper or you’ll catch a cold? Turns out being cold doesn’t give you a cold, but during cold weather people tend to spend more time indoors and close to other people. This close proximity helps the virus spread in cold weather. Also, there is less humidity in autumn and winter which helps the virus spread. Belief: Having Vitamin C with prevent you catching a cold Fact or Myth: Myth Vitamin C won’t stop you catching a cold, but it may help you recover faster. A 2013 study revealed that taking 200mg of Vitamin C per day reduce the duration of colds by about 8% in adults and 14% in children. That’s about 1 day shorter. But that’s for people who have that much Vitamin C everyday – not just when they feel a cold coming on. Most doctors recommend eating a healthy diet rather than taking supplements everyday because we can get enough Vitamin C (as well as other nutrients) from fruit and veggies. Doses of Vitamin C above 400mg start to come out in your urine, so there’s no point having that much – unless you want nutrient rich (and expensive) pee. Belief: Regular hand washing will prevent you catching a cold Fact or Myth: Fact The common cold spreads via airborne particles or by touching secretions from an infected person. This is why you should cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze on the train. Wash your hands regularly, especially after touching handrails, keyboards, phones, buttons, and door handles, and before eating or touching your own face.
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By 2050 the world must have negative net carbon emissions to have a chance at keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius and avoiding ‘dangerous’ climate change.
That’s the story I was told throughout my bachelor degree. Arguably, we’re already experiencing ‘dangerous’ climate change. Scientists can now dust for climate change fingerprints in individual weather events using a technique called detection and attribution. Hurricane Harvey and the southeast European heatwave, nicknamed ‘lucifer’, were likely made worse due to climate change than if these events had occurred before the Industrial Revolution. By 2050 we must stop emitting greenhouse gases. Reducing emissions is like procrastinating a university assignment, where the more you put off doing the assignment, the more work you have to do right before the due date. If you’d worked on it a little bit each day in the weeks leading up to the due date, you would have endured far less stress and panic. Except this is a group assignment, and one group member is going on holidays before the assignment is due. A considerate group member would do their share of work before going on holidays so everyone in the group does a fair amount of the work. A terrible group member, the kind every student dreads being paired with, would do no (or very little) work before buggering off to Bali. In 2050 I’ll be 54 years old. The average age of Australian politicians in the 43rd Australian federal parliament was 51. In 2050, me and my peers will be governing this country. That means we’ll be the people submitting the assignment. The current leaders are the group member who is going on holidays. The less effort and money spent on emissions reductions now, the more me and my peers will have to pay – that’s not including the cost to repair damage due to more intense weather extremes we’ll have to endure anyway. We’re not just bleeding heart rebels without a cause trying to ruin the economy. We are interested in climate change policies because they affect us socially, economically, politically and personally. We will bear the consequences of current leaders failing to act. “Silence is an advocacy practice,” declared Gavin Schmidt, head of NASA’s climate division, when he spoke at the annual Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society conference in February this year. I won’t be silent when our politicians fail to do their share of the group assignment. I won’t be silent when my own university department invites fossil fuel companies to visit the school. The ‘future generations’ people like to talk about in regards to climate change mitigation are no longer an abstract entity. We are here now and we want a fair go too.
Do sabre-toothed tigers lounge in empty lecture theatres? Have you seen a grizzly bear queuing for coffee?
They sound like ridiculous questions, but one-fifth of Australian university students would subconsciously answer yes…including me.
A typical lecture during my undergraduate degree went something like this.
I’d walk in to the theatre and run a mental algorithm to find the perfect seat. The perfect seat was close to an exit, preferably in the aisle seat and not too close to the front. I had to be able to escape the lecture theatre without drawing much attention...just in case. Next, I would sit down and take out the materials I needed for the lecture: a note book, pen and glasses. Not too many items. I had to be able to scoop them up in a hurry…just in case. My stomach would groan. My logic told me if I didn’t eat breakfast, I wouldn’t have to worry about vomiting it up. But, I worried anyway and carried a spew bag with me everywhere I went…just in case. My mouth would feel like the Sahara desert, but I’d hesitate drinking water because of my constant nausea. In every lecture, every tram, every crowd and every pub, my heart beat soared and my liver released extra sugar so I was pumped full of energy ready to fight…or flee. Fight or Flight The fight or flight response, which I just described, was useful for ancient humans who did encounter predators like grizzly bears and sabre-toothed tigers. Fighting or fleeing in the face of danger without needing to think about it was vital for cave-dwellers’ survival. In fight or flight mode, our amygdala tells our hypothalamus we’re in danger and it needs to prepare our body to attack or run away. Our hypothalamus signals to our pituitary gland to release adrenaline and cortisol (the stress hormone). These hormones boost our energy and make us hyper focused on any danger nearby. By the time this process occurs, our conscious mind has probably only just realised there is a threat. The fight or flight mechanism is incredibly important for our survival.
But, sometimes the amygdala is too trigger happy. Like a smoke alarm beeping every time someone burns the toast, the amygdala sets of the body’s fight or flight response when there is no fire. This is called an anxiety disorder.
Why are university students so prone? Seventy-five percent of people with mental health disorders have their first episode before the age of twenty-four. University is a time when many students move away from home and are usually under serious financial stress. Trying to balance full time study with a job, plus the pressure to perform, and perfectionist tendencies make universities a petri dish for mental health disorders. And anxiety is the most common. Did you notice the past tense? You may have noticed my description of a typical lecture was in past tense. Earlier this year I sought help from my GP. She prescribed medication and referred me to Melbourne University’s counselling services. The medication stops my serotonin (the happy hormone) from breaking down and the counselling helped me identify anxiety triggers and gave me tactics to deal with the anxiety. My quality of life has improved a thousand percent. I no longer look over my shoulder for sabre-toothed tigers, I look forward with hope. If this raised any issues with you, or you can relate to the symptoms I described, please seek help. These services are free for students and young people. www.beyondblue.org.au www.headspace.org.au You just started university. Congratulations. O-week flew past in a blur with a hundred new names and faces you’ve already forgotten, countless free snags and drinks, an occasional information session, weird building names, people trying to get you to sign up to their club, and a bag full of brochures you might read, but probably not.
Now, it’s week one and your lecturers are already talking about assignments! I decided to look back at the things I wish I knew when I was just starting my undergrad. 1. College movies lied Wild parties every night, pranks on the Dean, meeting the love of your life, and enigmatic professors wearing waistcoats who throw the textbook in the bin as symbolism for destroying conformity. That doesn’t happen. There will be some wild parties and there will be some students who do turn up to every lecture hungover, but most people tend to hang out with their smaller friendship groups or spend the weekend in bed watching Netflix. You probably won’t even know the Dean’s name or what they actually do...I still don't. Some of you might find the love of your life but a lot of you won’t and that’s okay. Professors just want to teach you the content of the syllabus and encourage you to take their subject in later years. 2. The first semester is likely to be the hardest You’re in a new environment, surrounded by new people and have to master a new way of learning: lectures. Even if you got 95% on every test in high school, you may now struggle to get in the 70s. It’s completely normal. Getting 75% on a university assignment is good. Getting 80+% is amazing. Getting 90+% is incredibly rare. Despite doing fewer subjects, you're doing what feels like way more work than high school. And most of the learning process takes place outside of class, by yourself. You may have to create your own activities and practice questions to reinforce the material learnt in class. But, it gets easier which each semester. The content may be harder, but you’ll learn how to learn. You’ll work out how to take good notes and study efficiently. First semester is about experimenting. Try studying in the morning, try studying at night, try taking notes on your laptop or with good ol’ pen and paper and see what works best for you. Don’t worry about getting amazing grades in first year (your final year grades are considered more important anyway) just focus on learning how to learn. 3. Having one friend to whine about that annoying professor or difficult assignment will reduce stress levels 4. Bring lunch from home at least 3-4 times a week to save money and your health 5. Student discounts are everywhere 6. Take up one extra-curricular activity that looks good on a resume It might take an hour or two per week but it could be the difference between getting a job after your degree and….well, not. If you’re studying journalism, volunteer for community radio or the university magazine. Plan to do an internship in second or third year. Join the committee of a club. 7. You’re allowed to say no without needing an excuse 8. There is so much help available, but you have to ask for it From academic help, to financial help, to free counselling, and legal help. These services are expensive outside of university world, but they are free for students. Use them. Can’t quite get your head around integration by parts, your maths tutor will have a designated time when they help students outside of class. Constantly feeling sick, always worrying or find it really hard to get out of bed, it could be a sign of an undiagnosed mental illness, book a free psych appointment. Unfair parking fines or issues with your landlord can be discussed with legal experts. Help is there, but you have to go to it. I realise I haven’t painted a very rosy image of first year university. That’s because I started university with extremely high expectations about my grades and my social life and was hugely disappointed. I hated first year because my ridiculous expectations were not met. I learnt the hard way that it’s okay to mess up and not be perfect every time, it’s okay to get a bad grade once in a while as long as you pay attention to the feedback from your tutor, and it’s okay to not have an amazing social life and carpe-diem-style-realisation moments during university. Sometimes you just plod along and that’s okay. But, second year was better than first year and third was even better. I made friends, I scored well in subjects I liked, a couple of Professors knew my name and I actually looked forward to coming to university. Now, in postgrad, I love it. Do your best, but remember, it’s okay if sometimes you don't. |
AuthorPostgrad scientist. Researching rainfall and stumbling into the wild world of science research and academia. ArchivesCategories |