Essay --

HEALTHY EATING â€Å"Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food.†- Hippocrates In order to be healthy, it is important to nourish your body with healthy foods. Not only does food create energy for your body to run optimally, but the food you ingest also affects your mood. First suggested by Hippocrates in the 4th century, the healing power of food was not further explored until the medieval ages when people started to discover how certain foods can alter their mood and temperance. Culinary textbooks dating back to this time described the relationships between food and mood. Written in medieval Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and early English dialects, these textbooks described food items along with the good or bad effects that came from eating them (Prasad, 1998). Over the past century, immense progress has been made in researching the connection between the food we eat and brain structure, chemistry, and physiology affecting mood and performance. It is shown that foods directly influencing the brain neurotransmitter systems have the greatest effects on mood. The relationship between food and mood is very complex and depends on many factors, including the time of day, the composition of food, the amount of food, age, gender, dietary history, and circadian rhythms. However, we are able to draw some conclusions on how different foods generally affect our moods and brain chemistry. Neurotransmitters and neuromodulars are units of chemical communication within our nervous systems. Used by the brain and nerve cells to communicate with one another, neurotransmitters tell us information about our environment and control our moods (Challem, 2007). Without the correct amount and balance of neurotransmitters, the brain wil... ...en they hear spirituality, they are not necessarily synonyms. While the definition is different for everyone, the essence of spirituality is the search to know our real self in order to discover the true nature of consciousness. Developing spirituality can offer many emotional and physical benefits for you, including a more conscious knowledge of your own perception and personality. This is also called self-awareness. Self-awareness allows you to understand other people and your interactions with them. By developing self-awareness, you will be able to make changes in your thoughts in order to have more control over your own emotions. College can be a very stressful and trying time, but if you are persistent in putting your health first and implement some of the techniques we’ve discussed for stress reduction and healthy habits, you are bound to be successful.