A holiday is more than just a break... it can do wonders for your heart
SNaKING queues just to enter an airport, day-long waits to get on a ferry, last-minute cancellations, train strikes. the travel chaos experienced by many so far this summer might put others off the idea of having a holiday at all — but I sincerely hope it doesn’t.
taking a holiday is not just a chance to get away from it all; studies have uncovered some unexpected benefits, so much so that academics from Edith Cowan University in australia last month published a paper arguing that we should see holidays not as recreation but as ‘travel therapy’.
they say getaways can be especially beneficial for your brain, as they provide sensory and cognitive stimulation, and could be viewed as an ‘intervention’ for those with dementia, for example, much like exercise or art therapy.
One of the clearest benefits I take from going away is that I sleep better. Normally I wake up at around 3am needing to go to the loo, then often struggle to get back to sleep. But when I am on holiday I find it much easier to drop off again.
and this seems to be quite common. In a 2006 study in New Zealand, a group of volunteers who were about to go away were put through a battery of tests and then asked to wear sleep monitors on their wrists. after a few days of being on holiday, researchers found the volunteers were getting on average an extra hour of good-quality sleep each night, compared with a normal night. and their mood and reaction times also improved.
PART of this is probably down to the fact that after a few days on holiday you tend to feel less stressed (unless, of course, you have also lost your luggage . . .) but it may also be because sleeping in a different bed and in a different environment helps break some of the negative connections that bad sleepers have with their beds at home.
Poor sleep can sometimes become like a phobia — you learn to associate going to bed with waking up at 3am and staying awake. the more this happens, the more likely it is to go on happening.
Being on holiday, somewhere different, can break this negative association. and this can persist after you return.
another important benefit of being on holiday is the impact it has on your heart. In 2019, researchers from Syracuse University in the U. S. invited 63 people to a laboratory where they had blood tests. they also filled in details about holidays they had taken over the previous year.
the researchers were specifically testing for metabolic syndrome, a combination of high blood sugar, high blood pressure, high blood fats and a larger waist. If you have metabolic syndrome you are at high risk of heart attack or stroke.
among the volunteers, some had taken numerous short breaks, others had taken none.
It turned out that the risk of having metabolic syndrome fell by nearly a quarter for each additional holiday people had taken. Bryce hruska, an expert in psychological stress, who ran the study, pointed out that while we don’t yet know why going on holiday is so good for our hearts, studies show that clearly it is.
he added that despite the fact americans are typically entitled to take only ten days’ paid leave a year, ‘fewer than half utilise all the time available to them’.
this tendency exists in the UK, too. Even before the current travel chaos began, surveys found that nearly one British worker in three said they did not take their full holiday entitlement each year because of the pressure of work and worries that more would simply pile up while they were away. I think that’s a big mistake, given the benefits a break can bring.
But what sort of holiday is best for you? While you don’t need to visit a tropical hotspot (I am holidaying on the UK’s south coast this year), the evidence suggests you should head for the sea.
a study last year in the journal Scientific Reports, which surveyed more than 16,000 people, found those who said they had visited the coast within the past month reported higher rates of happiness and lower rates of mental distress than those who hadn’t. I’m not surprised. I love walking by the sea shore. Just sitting on the beach, listening to the waves, puts me into a relaxed state. and this connection we have with blue spaces goes back tens of thousands of years.
When our ancestors first started to spread around the world, they hugged the coast or went up
rivers, keeping close to water. So I can’t help feeling that our love of the sea is deeply embedded.
Wherever you go this summer, I hope your journey is hassle-free and, even if it isn’t, bear in mind the benefits to be had once your holiday truly begins.