During or right after finals, many students come down with head colds, she said. That's no coincidence, because stress has had a negative effect on the their ability to ward off infection. It seems we either eat our stress or we don't. The same thing goes for sleep. Either people start sleeping a lot or not at all.
Stress can effect virtually every aspect of our lives, so it is important to manage it properly.
Exercise is a great place to start, Woodiel said, because it to has the potential to spill over into every aspect of our lives. However, there are several other things we must keep in mind when managing stress. Davis said the best thing for students to do is try to maintain some sort of balance in their lives between their diet, exercise habits, sleep and social contacts. Woodiel said a summer weekend workshop on stress for students minoring in health education discusses some methods for managing stress. These methods are called the five R's.