Physical Wellbeing

Physical wellbeing consists of the ability to perform physical activities and carry out social roles that are not hindered by physical limitations and experiences of bodily pain, and biological health indicators.

Recognizing the need for physical activity, healthy foods, and sleep

— Korbin, n.d.

Think about this...

Katie Iverson talks about strategies to set and accomplish your goals.
  • What physical activity do you most enjoy? How often do you do this activity vs. how often would you like to?
  • Are you conscious of the foods you put into your body?
  • When you get regular physical activity, do you recognize a change in your cognitive ability, physical strength and sense of self-worth?
  • What motivates you to set a goal?

Physical activity, eating well and getting sufficient sleep are all important and modifiable variables in our lives that fall under physical wellbeing.

  • Eating Well

    Eating Well

    Eating Well Does Not Have To Be A Challenge.

    JERF - Just Eat Real Food

    • Eat from the rainbow and shop the perimeter of the store to make sure you're consuming a variety of macronurients.
    • Avoid processed foods that alarm your digestive system.
    • No one macronutrient is bad, but they should be eaten in moderationACSM recommends 45-65% of calories from carbs, 20-35% from fat, and 10-35% from protein. Other populations, such as athletes or people with certain medical conditions, may require a different macronutrient profile. A registered dietitian can help you determine what is best for your body.
      Listen to the webinar to learn about what purpose each macronutrient serves in fueling your body, trans vs saturated fats, and more.

    Ramon Sodano, M.A., CSCS, shares 3 principles to healthy eating so you can get on track today.

    Find out more about each food group by visiting ChooseMyPlate.gov.

    In addition to ChooseMyPlate.gov, a great resource to help track what your putting into your body is MyFitnessPal.

    MyFitnessPal provides you with a food diary to understand your habits, simplified food tracking, and connects you to the World’s Largest Fitness Community.

    Shop the Farmer's Market

    • Support your local community and enjoy the freshest foods.
    • You can even go directly to the farm, depending on the place.
    • Local Harvest helps you locate farmer's markets no matter where you are in the United States.

    Co-Op with your community

    • Food co-ops can also be a great option for finding local foods.
    • Another benefit to co-ops is that they're worker and/or customer owned, but you don't have to have a membership to shop at one.
    • They can also be a prime place to find foods that fit your medical dietary needs, such as local gluten free baked goods to suit your celiac.
    • Local Harvest has a Co-op finder, as well as an events page to help you get involved in how your food goes from farm to table.

    Dr. Michelle McGuire has her PhD in human nutrition. Dr. McGuire's webinar talks about how breastfeeding influences infant health as well as nutrient recommendations for children.

    Childhood Nutrition

    Webinar Highlights
    Breastfeeding and Introducing New Foods
    • 8-12 times/day is normal for first 4-6 months of life
    • Feeding on demand is best
    • If using formula, look for iron fortification, presence of DHA/AA fats, and milk or soy based.
    • Start new foods at 4-6 months
    • Good first foods include iron fortified cereals, pureed meat/fish and beans
    • Toddlers and Young Children
      This is when attitudes about food are formed (may suddenly refuse foods)
    • Practice responsive feeding (pay attention to hunger and satiety signals)
    • Children mirror caregiver eating habits

    Pet Nutrition

    Webinar Highlights
    Eating Habits
    • Most animals will overeat if food is left out, so stick to certain feeding times.
    • Pregnant animals don't need a lot more food early in pregnancy.
    • Senior animals require higher quality protein and minimal minerals to preserve kidney function
    • Cats and dogs can eat grains
    • Animals can have allergies too, including food allergies (only about 2% of pets seen by vets)

    John McNamara, professor in animal sciences and nutrition at WSU, discusses what should be going into your furry friend's bowl.

    Reading the Pet Food Label
    • Crude protein, fat, fiber, and moisture must be included
    • Ingredients farther down the list are in lower quantities

    Plants that could be as close as your back yard can have medical properties. Kelly Ann Nickerson, an herbalist with an MS in horticulture, speaks about 5 herbs local to the pacific northwest that have a history of medicinal use.

    Mint Family
    • Used for colds in a tea or bath due to sinus opening properties.
    • Also helps with bloating by relaxing digestive tract smooth muscle

    Food as Medicine

    Webinar Highlights
    Bull Whip Kelp
    • Contains iodine, potassium, sodium, calcium, and magnesium
    Hawthorn Tree
    • The leaves, flowers, and fruit are rich in tannin (astringent) and flavonoids (good for your heart).
    Wild Rose
    • Rich in tannin
    • Also used for aromatherapy
    • Cardiotonic, vasotonic, and hypotensive
    Stinging Nettle
    • Nutrient dense: iron, magnesium, calcium, Vitamins (A, C, K, & B), free amino acids, dietary fiber, fatty acids, formic acid, acetylcholine, serotonin, and histamine
    • Used as astringent, diuretic, hypotensive, and nutrition
  • Food Security

    Food Security

    Access Food for your Family

    The USDA reports that in 2021 the following numbers of people in the US lived in Food-insecure households:

    • 33.8 million people lived in food-insecure households.
    • 8.6 million adults lived in households with very low food security.
    • 5.0 million children lived in food-insecure households in which children, along with adults, were food insecure.
    • 521,000 children (0.7 percent of the Nation's children) lived in households in which one or more child experienced very low food security

    In this webinar, Lauren Butler from the office of Dean of Students, will walk you through resources available to help you become food secure.

    Government Assistance Programs

    • SNAP (eligibility depends on state requirements)
    • WIC (temporary for women and children)
    • Hunger Hotline USDA - 1-866-3HUNGRY (1-866-348-6479) or 1-877-8-HAMBRE (1-877-842-6273) for Spanish

    Find a Food Bank

    Specific to Children

    Organizations that provide education about gardening and food assistance

    Farm Fresh

  • Physical Activity

    Physical Activity

    Build Your Own Workout for Beginners

    Having your own personal trainer is nice, but you may not always have access to that resource. Ramon Sodano, CSCS, walks you through how to build your own safe and effective workout program in the webinar below.

    Webinar Highlights

    Basic Terminology
    • Reps vs sets
    • Rest vs active rest
    • Load/intensity
    • Volume
    • Super set, compound set, strength pair, tri set, circuit
    • 1RM
    • Pulling/pushing directions
    • Hip vs knee dominant
    • Rotary stability
    Load Protocols
    • Strength and power
    • Hypertrophy
    • Endurance
    General Training Principals
    • Specificity
    • Overload
    • Choice
    • Order
    Types of Resistance Training Exercises
    • Core vs assistance
    Key Concepts to Building a Program
    • Exercise order: warm up → power → strength → hypertrophy/endurance → metabolic conditioning
    • Your time commitment
    • Your goals

    More Information About Warm Ups with Ramon Sodano

    Learn how to increase your mobility with:

    • Foam rolling
    • Walk out sequence
    • Lunge matrix
    • Band work

    Train Smart: 7 Principles of Movement

    with Ramon Sodano and Natalie Reetz, CPT

    Get a visual representation of how to move safely in all planes (vertical/horizontal pushing/pulling and rotary).

    Other Helpful Links

    Karvonen Heart Rate Calculator

    • This method is more accurate than 220-age because it factors in your resting heart rate and heart rate reserve. Knowing your heart rate zones for different intensities of aerobic or anaerobic activity is one way to make sure you're getting the workout you planned. 

    Talk Test

    • If you don't have a convenient way to measure your heart rate during a workout you can also use the talk test. How many words you can say corresponds to the intensity you're exercising at. 

    Rate of Perceived Exertion

    • The RPE scale is another way to approximate heart rate and is based off of how you feel during the activity.
  • Sleep and Rest

    Healthy Sleep

    Why Getting Enough Sleep For Your Body Is Important for Physical Wellbeing.

    News in Health talks about what lack of sleep does to your body.

    So now you know WHY you need enough sleep, but how do you know how many hours per night is appropriate?

    Harvard provides a breakdown of hours of sleep needed for various age groups. Here you can also find:

    • Strategies to get comfortable sleep
    • Small changes to make big differences
    • Information on some things that may be affecting your sleep negatively.

    Are You Getting Good Sleep?

    That’s a question many us need to answer, In this video from Headspace, Dr. Shelby Harris discusses measuring quality sleep, sleep efficiency, quantity vs quality, and more.

    Sleep More Sleep Better

    This webinar with Gabriella Mateo will discuss:

    • Why individuals struggle with sleep
    • Tips and tricks to get better quality sleep
    • Sleep in relation to the college experience
    • Short-term/long-term changes that can be made to improve one’s quality of sleep

    Sleep apps are a great tool to help you get better quality sleep. Some popular options include:

    Some Sleep Apps to Consider

    Sleep and Mental Health

    Check out this quick video, from Psych Hub, about how sleep interacts with our mental health.

    From Harvard Health

    • The cycles that your brain goes through during sleep that lower body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing are important for proper immune function. Being sick has negative affects on mental health, especially if it gets in the way of your ability to exercise, sleep well, and eat healthy.
    • REM sleep, where your temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and breathing are similar to when you are awake, enhances memory, learning, and emotional regulation.
    • Stimulants, such as caffeine and nicotine, can make falling asleep difficult.
    • Alcohol may make you feel sleepy, but using it as a sleep aid is not effective because you will wake up when the effects wear off.
  • Mindfulness and Mental Health

    Mindfulness and Mental Health

    Using Physical Wellbeing Techniques to Boost your Mental Health

    The Value of Self Care

    Dr. Robby Cooper, a Human Development Department professor at WSU, gives you tools to use to manage your stress and be successful in college in the Global Campus webinar, The Value of Self Care.

    • How poor sleep habits can raise your blood pressure and how to correct them.
    • What gets in the way of your self care?
    • Avoiding procrastination
    • struggles of finding healthy meals
    • dealing with financial stress
    • and more

    Physical Activity Interactions with Stress Management, Anxiety, and Depression

    Stress Management

    Your body doesn't recognize a difference between the energy it takes to get out of a chair versus losing your job, even if your emotions do. Both scenarios active parts of the same pathways in your brain. The difference is in how you respond.

    • Chronic stress occurs when your brain gets locked into the same pattern of feeling pessimistic or fearful. Active coping shifts your emotions to break the cycle.
    • Allowing yourself to be challenged (but with a positive mindset) often actually inoculates your brain to handle more stress before you percieve it as negative.
    • Physical activity causes your body to produce neurotransmitters and hormones, many of which also occur in the stress response. Therefore, regular exercise also inoculates your brain to stress while producing chemicals that also improve mood.
    • Exercise mechanically eases stress by relaxing resting tension of muscle spindles. If your muscles don't feel tense your brain will relax also.
    • Cardio exercise lowers blood pressure, in turn causing the heart to produce more ANP that slows down the stress response in the HPA axis.

    Anxiety

    Anxiety is a part of the stress response in which the sympathetic nervous system and HPA axis "shift into high gear." This is a normal feeling. The context that you feel anxious is the defining factor for how anxiety affects wellbeing. 

    • Rigorous exercise tends to be more effective for reducing anxiety sensitivity, but any type of physical activity works! Be sure to pick something you already enjoy.
    • Rapid, shallow breathing triggers feelings of panic by lowering the pH of your blood. Instead, make sure to take deep breaths at all times, whether exercising or working.
    • Exercise provides distraction from whatever you're thinking about that is making you feel anxious.
    • Exercise teaches your brain to associate the physical symptoms of anxiety with something positive and even rewires your brain.

    Depression

    • Exercise produces serotonin, making more available for your brain. SSRIs, a common medication for depression, also does this. So you can boost your mood with exercise too!
    • Frequent physical activity increases your energy throughout the day (events that used to zap your energy eventually won't anymore), reducing the feeling of fatigue that is associated with depression.
    • Exercise acts as miracle grow for your brain. Another symptom of depression is shrinking certain areas of the brain. Therefore, working out creates new nerve cells to counteract that shrinkage and help you experience less brain fog.
    • High-intensity workouts tend to reduce depression better than lighter activity, but exercise in any dose can reduce depression.

    Learn more about how exercise boosts your brain from Dr. Ratey in Spark

    Fuel Your Body, Brain, and Mood

    Check out this ted talk (below) that goes into deeper detail of the strong relationship between food and our mental health.

    Feed Your Mental Health

    High-quality foods that are rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants protect the brain from oxidation stress, aka the waste produced when the body uses oxygen. In excess, this waste can damage cells. This is where the term "antioxidant" food comes from. How else does nutrition influence mental health?

    • Serotonin is mostly manufactured in your gut. Supporting a healthy intestinal microbiome with good bacteria is essential for promoting proper sleep, appetite signaling, response to pain, and overall mood.
    • Foods that cause you to feel inflamed could inhibit the intestine's ability to absorb nutrients from food and manufacture serotonin.
    • See the nutrition section of this site to learn more about how to eat healthy.

    Food For Thought

    Food and Brain Health

    This quick informational video gives us a rundown on how the food we eat affects our brain.

    It’s important to consider how food impacts our outward physical health, such as preventing chronic conditions. But it is also important to consider the affects food has on our brain and our processing functions.

    “When it comes to what you bite, chew, and swallow, your choices have a direct and long-lasting effect on the most powerful organ in your body.”

    Food in health

    Dr. Rupy Aujla discusses how food is our natural medicine. Food has a heavy impact on health, and just by making small simple changes that can already make drastic impacts on an individuals health.

    But food is so much more than a nutrient label. Dr. Aujla also discusses how food has a deeper connection with us. Food is:

    • Culture and History
    • Medicine and nutrition
    • Education
    • Food environment

    Practicing Mindfulness when Eating

    The following video from head space discusses “How to Use Mindfulness in Eating.” This is a great video to check out to have a deeper connection with your food choices. 

    It's important to shift our view on food to a more healthy and positive outlook.

    “Mindful eating does not focus on external variables, like weight or measuring calories. Instead, we turn inward to listen to the internal cues and sensations that our bodies give us”

  • Screenings and Checkups

    Screenings and Checkups

    Tune Your Body For Optimal Health

    To keep your body in optimal condition it's important to go to the doctor often for routine health screenings. But how frequent is "often?" Read on for a timeline of when to get certain screenings (cancer, cholesterol, blood pressure, etc ), resources on reproductive health, and help with overcoming addiction. 

    Cancer Screening Timeline

    *if you have family history, genetic disorders, or have risk factors.

    **Find out if you are at higher than average risk.

    ***At 55 years old you should talk to your doctor about getting tested, even if you are not a smoker or quit smoking within the past 15 years. 

    For information on how to do a self check breast exam, go here.

    For information on how to do a self check testicular exam, go here

    Taking Care of your Blood Pressure

    You can monitor your blood pressure with at home measures. Mayo Clinic tells you how. 

    Blood pressure classifications:

    Classification Systolic Reading (mm Hg)   Diastolic Reading (mm Hg)
    Normal less than 120 and less than 80
    Prehypertension 120-139 or 80-89
    Hypertension      
    Stage 1 140-159 or 90-99
    Stage 2 Greater than or equal to 160 or Greater than or equal to 100

    Cholesterol

    HDL - the "good" cholesterol

    • should be 60mg/dL or higher
    • less than 40 mg/dL for men is too low

    LDL - the one you want less of

    Less than 150 mg/dL optimal
    100-129 near optimal
    130-159 borderline high
    160-189 high
    190+ very high

    Triglycerides - lower numbers are better

    Less than 150 mg/dL normal
    150-199 borderline high
    200-499 high 
    500+ very high

    How Often To Get Checked

    • if you are over 20 get checked every 4-6 years
    • if you are over 40 your doctor will also check your 10 year risk for CVD or stroke

    Foods That Can Lower LDL/Raise HDL

    omega-3 fatty acid rich fish fiber nuts
    olive oil plant sterols and stanols

    green tea

    Sexual Health

    • Make sure to get STI testing every 6 months (if sexually active) or with each new partner. 
    • The most common symptom of an STI is no symptom, making it even more important to get checked. 
    • Hormonal birth control methods only reduce the chance of pregnancy; they don't prevent STIs! Make sure to use protection. 
    • To learn more about vaginal health, go here

    Drinking Alcohol Responsibly

    The only thing that can sober you up is time! Even if you don't "feel" drunk, your BAC could be too high for safe driving. 

    What is a standard drink?

    1 standard drink is any drink that contains about 14 grams of pure alcohol. The size of a standard drink depends on the proof. Below is a table of standard drink equivalents at various sizes of drinks. 

    Standard Drink Equivalent (and % alcohol)

    Approximate number of standard drinks

    Beer (5%)
    • 12oz=1
    • 16oz=1.3
    • 22oz=2
    • 40oz=3.3
    Malt liquor (7%)
    • 12oz=1.5
    • 16oz=2
    • 22oz=2.5
    • 40oz=4.5
    table wine (12%) 25oz=5
    80 proof spirits (40%)

    mixed drink=1 or more

    16oz=11

    fifth(25oz)=17

    59oz=39

    Tips For Drinking Responsibly

    • Eat before and while you drink
    • Stay with the same group of friends for the entire time out
    • Don't drink before the party, or at all if you feel down or upset
    • HAVE NO MORE THAN ONE ALCOHOLIC DRINK PER HOUR
    • Alternate between alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks
    • Set limits on how much to have before you start drinking
    • Don't drink and drive

    To learn about alcohol poisoning, go here