3 Top Tips to Avoid Missing Classes through Illness

There's nothing worse than being bedbound with a bug. Not literally, of course, that'd be rather odd, but rather curled up in the foetal position as a truculent infection gnaws away at your immune system and leaves you feeling decidedly feeble.

Instead of reaching for your laptop or coursework, you're struggling to clench a Kleenex as your nose streams and your voice makes you sound like Marge Simpson after a One Direction concert.

For any busy student, the scenario above can be a living, breathing nightmare, as deadlines loom and impatient tutors shake their heads at what they believe is simply a horrible hangover.

As a student from a foreign land, your mother won't be around to mop your brow and bring you chicken soup with a sympathetic grin - which is why protection against illness is better than a cure.

But how?

1) Keep Your Hands Clean

When you're ambling around campus, mingling with hundreds of other students, you'll come into contact with more bacteria-laden surfaces than you can shake a bottle of hand sanitiser at. This can lead to you picking up nasty illnesses such as flu and food poisoning.

Consequently, you should make sure you're taking full advantage of washroom soap dispensers after you've visited the toilet, before you handle food, when your hands are visibly dirty or after coughing or sneezing into your hands.

2) Step Away From Your Smartphone

The last thing on your mind as you check Facebook for the 112th time in an hour is the germs calling your iPhone home. However, in a study by Which?, tests revealed smartphones, tablets and keyboards harbour "hazardous" levels of germs.

Alarmingly, infections such as e.coli can be found on your device, with germs combining to cause vomiting and diarrhoea, which is the last thing you need when you have an essay due or an important presentation to give. The takeaway? Wash your hands before and after handling your phone.

3) Get Your Five a Day

If you've heard it once, you've heard it a million times: EAT YOUR FIVE A DAY! If it's a message that you're fed up of hearing, however, it's easy to dismiss it as something you'll eventually get round to - but its importance cannot be denied.

Quite simply, loading your diet with fruit and vegetables gives you a great source of vitamins, minerals and dieterary fibre, which helps reduce your risk of digestion problems, as well as the risk of heart disease, stroke and some cancers also being reduced.

Now it's over to you...

How do you keep fighting fit during term time? Let us know by leaving a comment below - we'd love to hear from you.

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