Disordered Eating Habits

Words: 1228
Pages: 5

The third research article I read linked lack of sleep in students to disordered eating behaviors. This link was discovered in a study conducted by Bos, Soares, Marques, Maia, Pereira, Nogueira, Valente, and Macedo, in their article "Disordered Eating Behaviors and Sleep Disturbances". Two things were tested in this study; sleep initiation and maintenance; how well a person falls asleep and how long they are able to stay asleep. The study was conducted using a test that measured the aptitude for students to have disordered eating behaviors. The authors state; "Students with increased scores for bulimic behaviors and social pressure to eat based off a base-line assessments were more likely to experience sleep onset and sleep maintenance problems." …show more content…
Bulimic tendencies and the social pressure to eat were associated with both sleep maintenance and initiation. Social pressure, especially toward eating behaviors and sleep in colleges does not allow for students to have the proper feeling of support from their peers. For example, Freshmen at colleges worry about gaining the "Freshman-15" for the first time college students are on their own for making good health decisions. Some freshmen will try to avoid the "freshmen-15" at all costs. Since many students have had poor examples at home for living a healthy lifestyle, this can easily cause students to adapt bulimic behaviors to try to not gain too much weight. Sleep is influenced by social pressure as well, many students coming to school had strict curfews, with the freedom of not having a curfew college students want to stay out later. This causes students to adapt the unhealthy habit of going to sleep much later; which makes them restless while sleeping. With support from a wellness center, college students could get dietary and sleep recommendations and guidelines from professionals to make this transition …show more content…
Fitness centers are on college campuses across the US, however, they do not usually provide wellness services to help college students deal with different types of stress associated with transitioning to a new environment. Wellness centers are common in places like big corporate offices, they are for employees to have access to different services to help maintain a healthy diet and get educated on how to achieve a higher state of overall wellness. Wellness programs are provided for working adults they should also be provided for adults who are in college. Tangible support could help college students be even more successful and could help reduce the number of people who are diagnosed with hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. Tangible support services could be diet coaches or psychologists that specialize in studying behaviors like sleep. If people could get free tangible support services from there college for free many college students would likely utilize the resources provided. Resources provided to college students could also increase their eating