Our health is incredibly essential to our lives. It’s crucial to keep both our mental and physical health a priority, especially during these four years of high school when we may have a tendency to eat poorly and not get enough sleep. Juggling classes, extracurriculars, college prep work, homework, and exams can create circumstances where we aren’t as mindful about our health as we should be. Stress, poor diets and lack of sleep likely contribute to the frequency that we students get sick, run-down, feel completely mentally drained and create scenarios that are not healthy or sustainable for us.

As we’ve all seen throughout the past few weeks, there are a number of health-related issues inundating the media right now. COVID-19, the flu, vaccinations, and the Center for Disease Control announcements, to name just a few. Every day we see new headlines about how more and more people are being harmed by different physical and health-related issues. On top of this, mental health and mental illnesses are at an all-time high for high school students and young adults right now. High school has historically been considered a trying time for students as we leave behind childhood and enter into the complexities of the adult world. With today’s sometimes toxic cycle of school work, pressures for college and career choices, diminishing physical health, it’s not surprising that mental health is declining right alongside our physical health. 

We’ve all heard our parents and teachers tell us that we need to cover our coughs, wash our hands, get enough sleep each night and eat well. At this point, these suggestions sound like a broken record, but there really is truth in these words. 

You get one future. Make your health a priority.

Whatever your goals may be, keeping healthy, both mentally and physically, should be your number one objective. In the rare chance that this means anything more to you reading this coming from a fellow teenager rather than your parents, our advice to you is keep things in perspective, take some extra time for yourself, let that assignment go, use your resources, stay in touch with your body, do something each day that makes you happy and surround yourself with good people.

Oh, and yeah, do listen to your parents and those teachers when they say cover your cough, sneeze in a tissue, wash your hands, eat well and get a good night’s sleep. It’s important