Health and Wellness Benefits of Travelling

Travelling means journeying around an area or country to perform, work, or be seen or used in different places. It is a very interesting part of our life. Whenever life becomes dull because of our busy life travelling refreshes both our soul and mind. Traveling is one of the best things that we can do for our health. It helps our physical and mental health, with many travelers saying that it’s also excellent for the soul.

Our modern, increasingly more connected lifestyles leave us with little time to fully unwind and appreciate the wonders of life. The majority of us have careers or jobs. We are always busy in taking care of family. Our immune systems eventually become stressed and our health begins to suffer.

At this point, a healthy dose of travel could be just what the doctor ordered. Getting away from it all is the perfect tonic for wellness. We usually think of travel as fun and exciting, but hardly ever consider the health benefits that it provides.

Well, here we will count down some reasons why travelling is good for our health!

Travel is Invigorating

The biggest benefit of traveling is the amount of movement that we will do. We typically leave the car behind when we travel. That means we will spend more time walking. A brisk hike up a mountain, a day of sightseeing in the city or an activity-filled day at the beach is more invigorating and action-filled than a day spent in front of a computer screen in the office. Even on a cruise, there are plenty of activities to keep each traveler fully occupied.

We typically leave the car behind when we travel. That means we will spend more time walking. A brisk hike up a mountain, a day of sightseeing in the city or an activity-filled day at the beach is more invigorating and action-filled than a day spent in front of a computer screen in the office. Even on a cruise, there are plenty of activities to keep each traveler fully occupied. Walking around will help us reduce your stress levels, too. We will get the release of the happy hormones, which will mean the worries and difficulties of life will go away. We’ll find other ways to deal with the stress, so it doesn’t cause as many health complications in the future. We’re at a lower risk of having a heart attack or a stroke because of our way of life. Those who take more holidays in the space of a year have a healthier life. They’re less likely to suffer many of the health complications in the future because they are far more active.

The more activity we do, the more we get our heart pumping. Remember that the heart is a muscle, and it needs to be worked at constantly to grow faster. Making it work harder temporarily will build the muscle and keep it working for longer. We’ll also support our arteries, which means we lower the risk of high cholesterol problems and high blood pressure.

The brain is another muscle that needs strengthening and challenging. While it doesn’t necessarily work in the same way as other muscles in the body, it can be developed and improved over time. Unfortunately, it can also deteriorate quickly. It is one of those parts of the body that researchers don’t quite fully understand. Just look at The Big Bang Theory at how difficult it can be to understand everything about it.

The great news is that travel has been shown to help improve the brain health. There’s the ability to challenge ourselves daily, making us think of alternate options and learn new things. We constantly expand our horizons, meaning that our brain is constantly on the go. In fact, training our brain regularly helps to improve its longevity. Doctors regularly recommend that people do puzzles daily. They encourage Sudoku and crosswords regularly to make sure your brain constantly has to work. While traveling isn’t quite the same as crosswords, it does offer many of the same benefits. This is especially the case if we go to new places and visit new places. We take in new cultures and learn all about history and plans for the future. There’s something new to remember, meaning that our brain is getting some sort of workout, even if it’s not exactly what the doctor ordered.

On top of all this, scientists have found that walking or hiking is excellent for physically growing the brain. As we get older, our hippocampus gets smaller. We have two hippocampi on either side of our brain, which are responsible for the retention of information. The smaller they get, the less information they are able to take in. They control the short and long term memory, so we want to keep them as big as possible.

When we get more activity, our hippocampi both grow instead of shrink. It will be much easier to take in all the information that we’re learning throughout our travels. Studies have actually shown that those who walk regularly grow their hippocampi by two percent every single year.

It’s a Great Stress Buster

The more we get away, the more we move away from the everyday stresses of life. We get to take our mind and body out of work, family life, and other problems.

Our lives can often be constantly busy, and sometimes we may feel that we are living each day on repeat. Travel is a great way to escape the stresses and commitments of everyday life, offering novelty and change in the form of new people, sights and experiences. Margaret J King of the Center for Cultural Studies and Analysis has said this about the stress-relieving abilities of travel, “With a short list of activities each day, freed up from the complexities of ongoing projects and relationships, the mind can reset, as does the body, with stress relief the main outcome.”

For some, travel is not about seeing new places, but rather escaping old ones that have a negative impact on our lives. Vacations can also help us to manage stress as they take us away from the places and activities that contribute to our stress levels.

Whether we are worried about someone’s health or just have a high-stress job, trying to deal with everything going on in our life isn’t going our health any good. Getting worked up about everything is causing our heart and other organs to fail. We won’t be happy, and we’ll feel exhausted every single day.

Travelling does bring its own stress. We have to make sure we stick to a travel agent itinerary or get through airport chaos. We may have to deal with delays and flight changes. Then there are the stresses of other travelers around us and fitting into a new culture as a tourist. There’s the uncertainty of what we will do the next day or what will happen in our life.

Coping with stress is essential. We will find that our overall health benefits because we don’t get the regular release of stress hormones. We’re not always looking out for the downsides in life and will find it easier to find enjoyment in everything that we do.

Research backs this up. When we start to accept deviations and problems, we start to deal with them much better. The deviations we accept can be completely different in everyday life, but our new mental attitude will benefit work, family life, and more.

Increases Our Creativeness to Boost Our Health

As creativity is generally related to neuroplasticity (how the brain is wired), it means our brains are sensitive to change, influenced by new environments and experiences. According to the Colombia Business School’s Adam Galinsky, the key to getting a creativity boost is to really immerse yourself in the place and engage with its local culture; this open-mindedness can help you to embrace different ways of living to your own, in turn influencing your own outlook on life. Having a creative outlet is a great way to practice mindfulness and so the more you are able to put it to good use, the better.

The effects of travel aren’t felt only during and after our trip – in fact, even just the anticipation of going on vacation can boost our mood. People are at their happiest when they have a vacation planned, a study by the University of Surrey found, and are also more positive about their health, economic situation and general quality of life.

A study by Cornell University also found that we get more happiness from anticipating a travel experience in comparison to anticipating buying a new possession. It turns out that money can buy you happiness, but just not in the way we expected!

Give Us Easier Way to Boost Weight Loss Efforts

If we have ever wanted to lose weight, we want to look at traveling more. Sure, we must eat out more, and don’t always get to control a number of calories we eat, but we will find it much easier to create a calorie deficit. When we do more activity, we instantly burn more calories. We make it easier to get rid of the excess calories that we eat on a daily basis. This doesn’t matter if we take a cruise holiday or we backpack around the Amazon! We can take one of the calmest of vacations, and we will still find it easier to lose weight.

The trick is to follow a healthy and balanced diet still. While we can’t completely control everything we eat, we still have some control. We can choose the better restaurants to get all our food groups and even go out and buy fresh fruit and veggies from local market stalls to make sure we get our five a day. We’ll soon find that we have far more control than we thought we did.

When we lose more weight, we instantly boost your health. Our heart doesn’t have to work as hard to do everyday things. Our blood pressure and cholesterol levels will drop. We’ll find that it’s easier to breathe and our chronic pain starts to disappear. Doing more is something that we love the idea of, and we’ll want to get out and travel more.

Of course, weight loss also leads to more confidence. We know that we can do more and aren’t ashamed of or afraid of what people would think of our weight. This instantly helps to boost our mental health, as we’re less likely to allow the depression or anxiety to seep through.

Travelling, particularly if we are in a foreign country, can sometimes put us out of our comfort zone, and so we often have to adapt to those differences. This challenge strengthens the ‘openness’ dimension of our personality, according to a 2013 paper by Zimmerman and Neyer. The paper adds that this adaptation makes us less emotionally reactive to day-to-day changes, improving emotional stability, while meeting new people can also help with agreeableness, depending on the size of our existing social network.

Try Out Alternative Lifestyles and Health Remedies

When we visit new cultures, we get to experience how other people live. This isn’t just about developing new social thoughts or beliefs, but also about witnessing health remedies and different types of lifestyles. Traveling will let us to try out the alternative lives safely and without too much commitment. It’s possible to get away from the touristy areas and focus on how the real people live. This is a chance to experience what it would be like to live there. This is definitely something to do before we take the permanent step of moving somewhere.

One of the benefits of traveling is the freedom. We don’t have to stay where our friends once did. There’s no need to go to the tourist hot-spots that the travel guides say. We can look at doing a month or two in an area where we teach and actually live, especially in Asian communities. There’s certainly the benefit of the alternate health remedies. This is the chance to see how herbal remedies really help to cure ailments and soothe problems. We get to try the remedies from the original place they were created, by practitioners who know what they’re doing.

We also help to support our mental health. We know that we have a natural and healthy way to support our body. We feel more in control, especially financially when the pharmaceutical remedies can be so expensive.

Isolation is one of the worst things in life. While we think that we may like the quiet, it can be draining on us emotionally. Humans aren’t isolated creatures. We crave the social interaction of others. Maybe not every day, but we do benefit from some social interaction regularly.

Traveling helps to cure this problem. We are forced into situations where we need to talk to others. This is something that happens even if we decide to travel alone and backpack around a country or a continent. We spend time in youth hostels and on cruises, where some of the only entertainment is with the strangers that we meet.

Connecting to strangers is much easier as we look for guidance in a new area. We want to know the best places to go and need help with various situations. There’s the ability to see how different cultures celebrate holidays and handle various stressful events that occur. Some of these connections that we build will be connections for life. We may find that the people come back into our life in the future, allowing you the chance to build the connections deeper.

There is also the ability to push our beliefs and understandings. The more connections we make, the more confidence we gain. We start to push ourselves more and force ourselves to make more connections. When we return home, we are more likely to rebuild connections with people you’ve lost. As we find what we need to improve our mental health, we make sure we get it daily. We never know what those social connections could lead to. Plenty of people has fallen in love while traveling, which has helped support their love for traveling since they meet like-minded people.

Health and Wellness Benefits of Travelling: My Own Experiences

Since my childhood I’m very fond of travelling. I’m very conscious for mental health. Travelling really helps me to get away from all stresses of my life. Travelling makes my body fit and strong.

I started my adventure journey when I was in 6th grade. As my home is in Chittagong Hill Tracts it’s natural that we have so many places to go for an adventure. I, along with my few friends climbed up hills so many time. It was so adventurous moment that after crossing two big hills we were able to watch waterfalls. Though we fall so many times and also got hurt, the moments which we got that was awesome. Whether we go to the beach, the forest or the mountain or hills, our senses will be awakened and our spirits will be lifted.

Traveling forces us to leave behind the daily grind. We are removed from stressful situations such as work pressures, the daily commute and negative relationships that wear us down.

Travelling really changes our mind and also helps us to know so many things that we have never known before. I started my international journey last year. It was my dream to travel the whole world. Soon I’ll make it true with my little progress. It really make me happy and the reason is that I can know different culture, festivals and lifestyle. When I go on vacations, I see new sights, meet different people and learn about other cultures. The stimulating experiences enrich my mind enormously. With fresh insight, my all problems may even pale in comparison. This usually has a powerful and positive impact on our thinking and our health. It also helps me to get mentally and physically fit and healthy body.

Eating different foods will increase our pleasure and enhance our mood. Food is also another reason why I travel most. Whenever I eat different kinds of food it makes me so happy.

Conclusion

Tourism has been widely regarded as a mentally and physically healthy pursuit. Thus, recent studies in tourism have paid more attention to the benefits of travel experiences. Walking, hiking, dancing and playing games are excellent heart-healthy exercises that will leave us feeling refreshed and re-awakened. Travel provides a natural high that lasts well beyond the duration of a trip, and there are no adverse side effects.