Traveller Heal Thyself

After a gruelling internship left him 10 pounds overweight and totally wiped, Dr. Mel Borins decided a good long trip was what this doctor needed. So for 14 months he and wife Bonnie hit the road, travelling across Asia - and it not only gave him a bigger perspective on life and the world, he writes in Go Away: Just For the Health of It, it also made him physically healthier.

“I lost the 10 pounds, relit the shine on my skin, toned my muscles and got into the best physical shape of my life.”

Now a family doctor, Borins says he’s seen many patients improve both emotionally and physically after taking a wellneeded vacation. Take the 51-year old university professor, who for 10 ten years suffered from dermatitis - it finally disappeared during a two-month trip to New Zealand and Fiji, but was back within weeks of his return to Canada.

Many such problems are “emotional in nature,” says Borins - migraines, chronic stomach ache, irritable bowel syndrome, hives, even asthma to an extent - adding it’s possible up to half “the things we complain about” are connected to the mind and stress. That’s because our autonomic nervous system can be greatly affected by internal tension. The less relaxed we are, the less effectively it functions.

When we’re under stress, hormones and chemicals are released in the body to help us physically deal with the situation. When we’re attacked, for example, adrenaline and insulin help boost energy and stamina. Typically known as the “fight or flight” response, the heart beats faster, blood pressure rises and blood flows from organs to muscles. Much the same happens when you’re under stress. So if you’re under constant stress, your body is in a kind of constant chemical over-drive. It’s like you’re always in battle, says Borins, but “the battle’s not happening.” Over time this physiological response - the excessive release of chemicals, normal blood flow interrupted - can have a negative impact on health. When you leave stressors behind - as when you flee an attacker - your body reverts to normal. Often this “flight” response is actually healthier, says Borins, conceding that’s what his book is about.

Studies are bearing this out. A substudy done on participants in the Framingham Heart Study followed 750 women over 20 years, all of whom initially had no evidence of heart disease. The idea was to investigate what impact “psycho-social variables” had on heart health. Among the findings was that women who vacationed less frequently had higher rates of heart disease. More surprisingly, homemakers who rarely vacationed had a substantially increased risk of developing heart problems, or dying from heart disease. Though based solely on data gathering, “it’s pretty scientific,” says Borins, when a study shows women who vacationed at least twice a year have half the risk of dying.

The Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial drew a similar conclusion on men. Two U.S. researchers followed over 12,000 middle-aged men who were at risk for coronary heart disease due to blood pressure, smoking history, cholesterol levels and age. But like the Framingham women, they had no clinical evidence of coronary heart disease when the study began. The men were monitored for six years and as part of the study asked how often they vacationed; they were then followed up with another nine years later. Overall findings indicated that those who took regular vacations were 21 percent less likely to die, and 32 percent less likely to die of a heart attack, than those who had not.

The MRFIT report, published in 2000, also pointed out that previous studies show stress to be “positively associated” with a variety of health problems, including atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), heart attacks, metabolic syndrome and infectious disease. And that being under stress influences behaviours like smoking and alcohol consumption. What’s so compelling about both studies is how they accounted for other factors that typically affect health - health status, behaviours - before concluding vacation frequency crossed most lines and groups. Heart disease, after all, remains the number one killer in North America.

Borins argues travelling is the best way to take a vacation, as it distances you from your burdens and anxieties. You have “uncluttered time,” he writes, where problems can fall into perspective on their own. It also upsets routine - and boredom is another big psychological stressor. It also enables your body work out its kinks, like the dental hygienist who told Borins how she cured a chronically stiff neck through a week of swimming and dancing in an exotic locale. An antiinflammatory hadn’t helped, neither had physiotherapy. Now relatively pain-free, she has no doubt, he says, it’s because of that one little week away.

Approximate Paid Annual Leave:
AUSTRALIA = 4 weeks
DENMARK = 5 weeks
FRANCE = 5 weeks
IRELAND = 3 weeks
JAPAN = 1.5 - 3 weeks
USA *No federal law in place
CANADA = 2 weeks

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.