Vacationing

I write a lot about different ways to improve your health, but I have missed writing about one of the simplest and most enjoyable health aids – vacations. So much in the health arena involves doing things like exercise, diet, proper sleep, and avoiding toxic environmental elements. These things are necessary, but not fun. Well one activity that is fun that reaps huge health benefits is vacationing. Taking time off from the usual routine of daily living and engaging in a time doing something you enjoy is just as valuable to your health as any of the other things on the usual health list.

Joy is a special and powerful nutrient for the body. That is why en.joy.ing yourself is so powerful. It means that you are choosing to do something that brings you joy. This is a creative self-empowering act. Your choices and your actions are supporting and nurturing feelings within you that promote a more positive relationship with living. You are doing what you want to do instead of the usual grind to survive. More than that you are engaging in different things which expand your experience of life. So even if you love what you normally do day to day, the opportunity to embrace new experiences provides a whole new dimension to your life. And when those experiences are enjoyable, that dimension adds to your mental, emotional, and physical health.

For some people the ideal way to experience these benefits is traveling to new locations to experience new cultures and lifestyles. For others their joy comes from connecting with nature through hiking, camping, and outdoor adventuring. Still others may get their joy going to a comic convention or spending a week at a cooking school or maybe even going to the desert for star watching or some craziness like Burning Man. Vacations take on a thousand forms and faces. They are similar to the smaller moments of joy that we set up in our lives like going to a concert, playing pickleball, or even attending a book club with friends. The main difference is the amount of time you spend.

Fun activities are another vital nutrient we need on a regular basis, but they are not the same as a vacation. A couple hours away from the daily grind is different then a full week or two away from everything. There are special benefits to giving our brains the time to adapt to a whole new life for a bit. Research has shown that it takes about a week for this to happen. The vacation magic lies in giving our brain a rest from the usual habits it typically engages in. It takes about a week for this brain reset to happen. Does that mean we have to travel to have a vacation? No it does not. Staycations were a big thing the last few years. But to make a staycation work as a vacation, you have to break away from the routines of daily living you normally engage in. You can’t do your daily chores, fix your usual meals, clean up your usual messes, or watch your usual shows and get the beneficial effects of a vacation. Vacations are a time to break loose from the usual and do different things, specifically things you enjoy that you don’t usually have time for. The brain recharges by embracing things that it likes or positively anticipates.

What benefits are there to vacations you ask? The top of the list is that it lowers your risk of heart disease. This is the most frequent finding when vacationing benefits are researched. Along with this is a rejuvenation of your immune system. Both of these seem obvious to me because of the discovery that our immune system is really just an extension of our emotional system. How we feel controls our immune cells. Likewise, how we feel has been known to directly affect cardiac function for over a hundred years. These days we say that we are reducing stress. Chiropractic has been saying forever that the brain runs everything. So anything you do to refresh your brain will also refresh everything else. I recall years ago listening to a tape series (remember cassette tapes?) twenty five years ago called the Pleasure Principle for healing. The idea was that major health challenges could be overcome by immersing yourself in an extended time simply enjoying yourself. Many case studies were highlighted of people that overcame life threatening diseases by spending weeks to months watching comedic movies and reading funny stories. These people were giving their brains a vacation from the life that created their disease and allowed it to reset its inner functioning.

Well, this is what we want to do in our lives on a regular basis. A patient recently told me that in Italy workers get six weeks of paid time off. This is a huge health benefit for the average worker. Being able to take a week off every couple months to vacation and relax their brains actually improves their effectiveness while at work. Our brain stagnates under boring repetition. Chronic stress is about a chronically unsatisfying life. If you are not getting regular bursts of joyful engagement with life, your hormones get out of balance, your immune system dysregulates, your digestion turns to crap, your thinking gets more difficult, your whole system goes downhill. It acts just like another nutritional deficiency. You get diseased. We need vacations much like we need protein, vitamin C, and good clean water. Opportunities for the brain to let go of its usual concerns and just enjoy the moment for a few days in a row has vast healing potential.

One benefit of vacation that is a very real thing in our modern life is that on vacation we not only sleep better, but we on average get more exercise than we usually do. Maybe we are running around sightseeing or shopping, or maybe we are hiking to a lake we have not been to before. When the average person’s job entails sitting behind a desk or working remotely by sitting at their kitchen table, vacation generally offers much more time moving around than our typical work environment these days. So this is a whole different benefit to taking a vacation – movement.

The last big benefit I want to focus on is the opportunity for creativity. Our brains need to be creative. They are designed to be creative. I am not talking about painting or writing, but about creative problem solving. Lives filled with routine may quell our fear of anything new, but they starve our brain’s need to creatively solve novel problems. Vacations offer us many opportunities to do little bits of creative problem solving all the time. Just deciding what you want for dinner by looking at a menu full of new food items is a creative act. Our brain needs adventure; it needs novelty. The same old, same old will gradually kill us. If you are traveling, practically every few moments you have to figure something out. Where are you going, what are you going to do next, how do you find your way back to the hotel? It may not seem creative, but figuring out where you want to set up your umbrella on the beach is a creative act. This includes lots of taking in what is in your immediate environment and noticing where the sun is going to be over the next hour and whether or not you need to put on sunscreen, and so on. Our brain thrives on novel problems, and it enjoys solving them to produce a pleasant time. These are simple joys.

If you are reading this on Sunday morning as most of my readers do, while you do this I will be relaxing out on the patio of my suite overlooking the blue Pacific ocean watching the fishing boats heading up the coast for a day of sport fishing. I am vacationing in Cabo San Lucas with my younger son and his wife. Ellen is at home with her sister getting into who knows what sort of trouble. While the cat’s away, the mice will play. With luck there is a hot tub on the patio where I can warm up before looking for breakfast at one of the resort’s seven restaurants. Maybe I will take the shuttle into town and wander around later or maybe I will head down to the spa for some water therapy and deep quiet. The weather will be in the mid 70s with blue skies and high clouds. March is the best time of year in Cabo.

I will see some of you later this week.

Take care,

David

Ellen 

Ellen is not able to go with me to Mexico as Cabo san Lucas is completely handicapped unfriendly. You can’t even get off the plane. They still roll the stairs up to the plane for disembarking. Instead she will be staying home with her sister staying over. As such she needed a few extra supplies to hold he over while I am gone. I complied with what I hope is enough emergency peanut butter cups.