Your Mental and Physical health during The Covid-19 Pandemic

Your Mental and Physical health during The Covid-19 Pandemic

By now, most of you have experienced self-isolation and social distancing due to Covid-19 Coronavirus Pandemic. This has left a lot of people alone and distant from their friends and family than they have experienced in a long time or not at all. Some have started to read books, use social media to stay in touch with their loved ones or their favorite indoor hobbies to stay sane. This self-isolation may not look much to people but according to scientists who have done many experiments and studies on social distancing, people will start to show signs of anxiety and depression associated with prolonged isolation. The effects of self-isolation is great on both physical and mental health of people which are studied in different groups of astronauts, immunocompromised children to Antartica researchers who spend lots and lots of time alone. Negative feelings of loneliness does not just numb our minds with boredom, they also impact our bodies. People get sluggish when they don’t have positive inputs. When people are asked to be isolated for a pre-defined specific period of time, they do pretty well but in a situation like this when people don’t know for how long they have to cope with self-isolation, it brings anxiety. People who are in solitary confinement like prisoners or scientists and researchers who are working in remote locations or astronauts who are in space and alone, when they realized their time there is coming to an end, their moods lifts up and are just waiting for a specific pre-defined period of time, unlike our situation right now, we don’t know when will this end.

To get through these rough times, we want to let you know about some activities that you can do to maintain both your physical and mental health

1.       Pray
One of the best things you could do now is to offer prayers you previously had excuses for not doing. Offering regular prayers is really good for maintaining your mental and physical health.

2.       Indoor Sports

There are a number of indoor sports you could play right now such as table tennis, badminton. Along sports, you can do a wide range of exercises such as Pullups, Pushups, Burpees, Squats, Planks to name a few.

3.       Cooking

For once in our lives, all of us have wanted to cook or bake our favourite dishes or desserts but not much of us got the chance or time to do so. What time could be better than this? So you better pile up a few basic cooking materials and head straight to your kitchens.

4.       Movies and TV Shows
Who doesn’t love movies? (I know a few people, duh), this could be in some way the best time of our lives especially for the young adults who could not get a chance to do their favourite things for a few years now due to college and jobs, subscribe to a media-services provider like Netflix and catch up on your favourite shows and movies that have been on your lists for some time now.

5.       Social Media
Social Media is the best thing you could use all day and still not get bored with all of the fun stuff and online challenges you could do along staying connected to your friends. FaceTime your friends to stay up to date on everything.

6.       Online Course
You don’t necessarily have to spend all of this spare time in leisure, there is always room for learning new things. Start a course of something on online learning platforms such as Udemy. Learn Photoshop, playing guitar or just do a course on cooking or Big Data Analysis.

It’s a Necessity and a Privilege.

Remember, using social media, buying and doing all this stuff and staying connected with your friends and family right now is a necessity and also a privilege. Many of the people out there are not able to buy food for themselves let alone spending money on all this. Before you spend all of your money on yourselves in this time of need, do a check in your surroundings if anybody is in need of anything. Feeding the poor in Africa is not an obligation upon you, but taking care of your neighbours is.
Stay safe, stay connected and make the best out of this time.

To know more about how to keep up with your physical health, read Robustness' Article and get to know what Fitness Gurus have to say about it.

Blog by Salman Khan