Your next vacation may be better for you than you think
Research from Texas A&M University links travel to improved heart health, reduced stress and higher productivity.
Texas A&M researchers say travel can boost productivity, strengthen relationships and improve heart health.
Traveling isn’t just good for the soul — it might also make you healthier and more productive, according to research from Texas A&M University.
“I think it’s more than just memories and joy,” said Dr. James Petrick. “What our research has shown is that if we travel, our relationships with others get strengthened. Travel makes us more educated than if we don’t travel, and we become healthier.”
Traveling can increase productivity, reduce life stress and strengthen the heart, said Petrick, a professor and associate department head for research in the Arch H. Aplin III ’80 Department of Hospitality, Hotel Management and Tourism at Texas A&M.
Initial findings related to the benefits of travel were funded by three U.S. Travel Association grants. Subsequent research investigated how travel affects heart health by monitoring 20 students on a cruise. The students wore smartwatches that included a health monitoring app developed by College of Engineering associate professor Farzan Sasangohar, designed to track heartbeats, movements and activities.
“We had students keep hourly diaries detailing their activities,” Petrick said. “We used the accelerometer and gyroscope in the watches to determine what type of movements they were doing so we could match up movements with what was going on with their heart health.”
The study was grounded in the cognitive activation theory of stress, which suggests that a person’s stress response depends largely on how well they are able to cope with life’s challenges.
“Travel, from what we’ve learned, is similar to how a good athlete trains, where you work out hard in short intervals, let your heart relax, do short intervals, relax. Vacations have a similar effect. Our hearts react to exciting and novel experiences, then rest as we relax and wind down,” Petrick said. “That’s how vacations make our hearts stronger.”
Petrick’s findings also show that longer vacations have greater benefits than shorter trips. A weeklong holiday, for example, provides more lasting stress reduction than a three-day getaway. Petrick hopes future research will explore the effects of extended vacations.
“What we don’t know is what happens long term while people are on vacations,” Petrick said. “We’re assuming that after too many days outside our usual environment, we get stressed, because we miss being home and get behind at work.”
