The Greatest College Health Guide You Never Knew You Needed: How to Manage Food, Booze, Stress, Sex, Sleep, and Exercise on Campus by Jill and Dave Henry is a self-help guide to assist readers in making the best choices possible when most people are on their own for the first time. Broken down into eight chapters described in the book's subtitle, the Henrys take a practical approach and allow for consideration of varied circumstances. These include serious issues such as the stages of intoxication and calculating one's estimated BAC to areas that may not feel like a big deal at first but will snowball if not nipped in the bud, such as emotional responses to stress, and tips on focusing on the things you can actually control.

Jill and Dave Henry do an excellent job in connecting the dots in a straightforward and easy to understand way in The Greatest College Health Guide You Never Knew You Needed. As a parent to a child who starts her first year of college in the fall, this book was of particular interest to me. I appreciate that there is no shying away from topics that are sometimes pushed aside. For example, there is an entire section dedicated to sexual consent. Further to this, there is no mincing of words with regard to what constitutes consent, and what to do if the unthinkable happens. From the point of view of a reader whose college days are no longer visible in the rear view mirror, I still found things that could be implemented into my daily life. Good running form to avoid injury on a jog and not being afraid to say no when I need some time to myself are just a couple of the nuggets I was able to take away. This is an excellent book and I can't imagine sending my daughter off in September without it.

With no parents around to lay down rules and nobody to stop them if they wish to drink multiple shots at a frat party, many college students fall victim to substance abuse, peer pressure, sexual assault, obesity, depression, suicide, sleep deprivation, and more harmful phenomena. In The Greatest College Health Guide You Never Knew You Needed, Jill and Dave Henry share their tumultuous college experiences in a bid to help college students avoid the mistakes they made and witnessed others make. Readers will learn what being healthy actually means, strategies for thriving in their environment and developing good habits, how to eat healthily, how to consume alcohol responsibly, how to get enough sleep, how to be consistent with exercise, and how to manage stress.

I wished I'd read The Greatest College Health Guide You Never Knew You Needed when I was in school as the specific guidelines would have helped me avoid some mistakes I made back then. I especially loved the section that reveals how "we’re programmed to believe that health is all about physical appearance". Here, Jill and Dave Henry explain how nutrition and exercise are glamorized on social media but sleep, which is also important, is not. The instructions are quite practical and realistic, and readers are encouraged to take moderate measures and not extreme ones. With a combination of personal examples, research data, quotes from college students, and helpful illustrations, The Greatest College Health Guide You Never Knew You Needed is a well-constructed book perfect for students who wish to develop good, healthy habits in college while faced with serious temptation.