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Why Travelling is Good for Your Health

Our brains are workhorses, constantly taking in information, processing and parcelling these out into actions. Although our minds are heavy-duty processors, repetitive information eventually wears down some functions like creativity and interest. Just like a CPU on limited processing power, our brains need to switch off in some areas in order to recharge.
In other words, our brains need a vacation too. What better way to take our minds away from the burdens of stress, mundanity, and repetition of our routines and daily demands than a vacation away from work and home.
Travelling is one of the best ways to boost mental health. Vacations away from our usual habitats give us the chance to reboot. With our minds exposed to new experiences and sensations, our stress levels and boredom get a huge kick aside, making way for creativity, curiosity, and wonderment to surface and refresh our mental wirings.

Travel Reduces Stress and Anxiety

One may love his job but the day-to-day stresses can kill the joy with a burnout. With high levels of chronic stress and anxiety, people can increasingly get disconnected with what they are doing. When this happens, the enjoyment they once felt at their jobs goes quickly down the drain of discontentment, boredom, and apathy.
It is important to switch off from the stressors for some time in order to recharge with a much needed vacation. Travelling can offer novel experiences that can positively shift the mind’s focus into other interesting occupations.
According to studies by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, those who chronically worked eleven or more hours a day instead of a regular eight, stood at higher risk of developing depression, even if they do not hold a record of prior mental health problems. When the mind is not given a reprieve from dealing with sameness everyday, it eventually gets mired in a psychological rut which bogs down one’s mental health and therefore, one’s overall well-being.

Travel Strengthens Relationships

Social interaction and deep personal relationships are necessities for emotional and mental well-being. Travelling can cause families and friends to bond over new shared experiences. New activities in a novel environment can put a spin on relationships that may not be achievable in one’s usual setting. The absence of the usual daily cares during travel may also help long-time couples focus on each other and get to know one another in a new way.
The solo traveller benefits friends and family too. One may come back recharged and in high spirits, thus lending himself as a better friend, co-worker, husband, or son.

Travel Improves Brain Resiliency

As one approaches his middle to senior years, it becomes even more important to exercise the brain by subjecting it to new experiences. Much like exercise maintains muscle flexibility and endurance, travelling, and other activities that stimulate the brain maintain its resiliency. Travelling enriches one’s life experiences and in doing so, it builds new synapses in the brain to keep it healthier and functioning well longer. Seeing new things, absorbing new cultures, and getting new sensations excites the brain and contributes to its well-being. In this case, taking regular annual vacations may actually help stave off degenerative brain diseases such Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

Travel Improves Cognition

Because one is faced with a new environment when travelling, one needs to tap on skills of making new friends, explore, remember many new details, and make decisions outside one’s normal routine. All these intellectual activities flex the mental muscles of focus, awareness, memory, analysis, and creativity.

Travel Encourages Emotional Flexibility

Because travelling allows the mind to regard the world from different perspectives, it can impact attitudes. Glitches in travel plans such as itinerary changes and long flight delays can help one exercise patience and tolerance. Witnessing problems up-front which other people in other cultures have to endure may also cause one evaluate their perceptions of their own situation. Suddenly one’s own personal problems may seem miniscule to others’ conditions. The teenager who bemoans the fact that he cannot have the latest Air Jordans may suddenly deem himself lucky to own his big brother’s two- year-old hand-me-down kicks when he sees poor boys in a Third World country playing ball in bare feet. Such reframing of one’s perspectives may lessen the focus on the self and perhaps encourage a more people-oriented attitude and behaviour. Less focus on the self could well reduce depression and anxiety.
Since the word health usually conjures images of physical fitness, there is a huge tendency for many people to disregard mental health as a major component of overall well-being. As such, many do not see the value in taking a mental and emotional break by indulging in a vacation. You however now know the value of getting away for awhile. Consider travelling as a good investment for your mental health if you want to significantly improve your productivity, creativity, or even your positivity in life.