BayouHealth: At Home Staycation

Getting The Most Out Of Vacation Without A Vacation

It’s no surprise that vacationing is good for your health. Getting out of town and away from your daily responsibilities relieves stress and triggers a greater sense of well being. Studies have shown that the positive impact you feel from regular get-aways boosts both your mental and physical health, and has implications for your longevity.

Being stuck in a state of chronic stress triggers your body to use all of its energy reserves to deal with the constant perceived threats in your environment. This means you don’t have energy left for growth and repair, immune function, digestion, and detoxification. The stress response also has been shown to decrease blood flow in the areas of the brain responsible for focus, learning and creativity. Your brain is so tuned into what’s going on in your external environment that the healthy processes of your body’s internal environment have to be put on hold.

When you don’t give yourself time to take a break from external stressors, like a heavy workload, it becomes increasingly difficult to achieve a state of relaxation. According to clinical psychologist Deborah Mulhern, without adequate down time, the neural connections in your brain that produce feelings of peace and calm become weaker, making it more difficult to shift into “rest and recover” mode. This makes it no surprise that in a study of more than 600,000 people, it was found that those who work more than 55 hours per week are 33% more likely to suffer a stroke and have a 13% greater risk of heart attack than those who work 35-40 hours weekly. Another study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that men who take frequent annual vacations were 32% less likely to die from heart disease than their counterparts who forwent vacations. Likewise, the 20 year Framingham Heart Study found that women who took vacation once every six years or less were nearly eight times more likely to develop coronary heart disease or have a heart attack than women who took at least two vacations per year.

It’s not always easy to get out of town due to financial restraints, or maybe global viral pandemics, but you can still reap the stress-relieving benefits of a physical getaway by taking a mental getaway at home. In fact, researchers who studied 974 vacationers from the Netherlands found that planning a vacation made them happier before they went. According to their research, the mood boosting effect of anticipating a trip can have a more noticeable effect on your happiness than the post-vacation mood shift. If you don’t have the ability to get out of town right now, go ahead and plan an adventure for the future! Set a goal for when you intend to make that trip happen, whether it’s six months from now or even six years from now. Plan the dates, be specific about where you’ll go, where you’ll stay, the things you’ll see, and the activities you’ll do. The planning process and anticipation alone may have a greater impact on your mood than what you’d experience after taking the trip.

Traveling gives you the ability to discover new things and go on new adventures, which boosts levels of dopamine, a hormone and neurotransmitter strongly associated with feelings of pleasure and reward. This is because increased dopamine activity is related to being exposed to novel experiences. Leaving town isn’t required to try something new, though! Anything that deviates from your daily routine and familiar experiences can boost this “happy hormone.” When you can’t escape the area, try out a new exercise endeavor, art class, music lessons or cooking class.

Simply taking vacations from certain activities, without putting your entire life on pause, can decrease your stress level, too. Researchers in 2012 hooked up thirteen desk workers to heart monitors and asked them to avoid their email for one week. The participants didn’t stop working, they simply stopped emailing, and found new ways to contact their colleagues when needed. The results were decreased levels of stress and improved focus. You can experience the same effects by setting aside certain hours during every day, and possibly a full day of each week, to avoid your inbox. Better yet, put your phone on “do not disturb” mode during these hours and take a complete break from all social media and technology.

The act of simply imagining a scenario in your mind can have a profound impact on the state of your body. In the same way that dwelling on mistakes from the past or worrying about future bills and deadlines can increase stress levels, thinking about things that bring you joy can relieve stress. Take a few minutes each day to close your eyes and imagine being in your favorite place. Feel the sun on your face, your toes in the sand, the breeze in your hair. See the people you’d want to have with you, or experience the silence of being by yourself. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between things that are actually happening and things you simply think are happening, so the better you get at visualizing things that bring you joy, the more joy and less stress you will actually experience in your body.

As I’m writing this, our world is in the midst of the Covid-19 outbreak and our day-to-day routines have all but come to a halt. My upcoming travel plans have been cancelled, as I know yours have, too, and there’s no telling when our next vacations will happen. This is an opportunity for us either to feel trapped inside or to take advantage of a “staycation” in our homes. The former frame of mind will increase our stress and anxiety while the latter will increase our sense of peace and well-being. It all comes down to our perspective, and while we can’t choose to leave town right now, we can still choose our state of mind.