Science Says: The Lack Of Vacations Shortens Your Life

Holidays not only make you happy and cure all ills: they make you live longer because they effectively reduce accumulated stress. This is the main conclusion of a study carried out over 40 years, which was recently presented at the European Congress of Cardiology in Munich and later published in the Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging.

In relation to its effects on health, it is important that vacations are long enough. Study leader Professor Timo Strindberg of the University of Helsinki cautioned that work overload cannot be offset by a very healthy style that does not include holidays. “These are necessary to effectively reduce excess stress,” he said.

Holidays and stress reduction are pillars of cardiovascular disease prevention

Strindberg was very ambitious in designing his research. It included 1,222 middle-aged male executives, born between 1919 and 1934, who were recruited between 1974 and 975 by the Helsinki Businessmen Studies. The requirement to participate was that they had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease, such as smoking, high cholesterol or triglycerides, insulin resistance or being overweight.

The participants were separated into two groups. One group did not change their lifestyle at all, while the other received health advice every four months: they were encouraged to practice sports, eat healthy, achieve a normal weight or stop smoking. If they did not experience improvement, they were recommended to take medication to lower their blood pressure or cholesterol.

More deaths among those who cared for themselves but did not rest

As the years went by, it was found that the cardiovascular risk in the intervened group compared to the control group was 46% lower. However, after 15 years, in 1989, they found that there were more deaths in the intervened group, who were following the advice on lifestyle. This result seemed a mockery to the doctors. Why did it occur?

The experts extended the study until 2014 (a total of 40 years). At the beginning of the study, basic data such as working hours, sleeping hours and vacations had not been analyzed. By taking these variables into account, the authors found that deaths in the control group were higher until 2004, after which the ratios were equal in both groups. And they concluded that the highest mortality in the “healthy” group was given by taking fewer vacations.

As the authors explained in Munich, shorter vacations were related to a higher number of deaths in the intervened group. In this group, men who took three or fewer weeks of vacation per year were 37% more likely to die between 1974-2004 than those who took more than three weeks.

Stress nullifies the positive effects of healthy living

As Professor Strindberg explains, “stress and lack of sufficient rest nullified the effects of the healthy lifestyle.” In fact, Strindbert acknowledged, the healthy life lessons likely “added stressors to their lives.” And in the 1970s, researchers did not take the negative influence of stress as much into account, so they did not include anxiety reduction techniques in their advice.

“Our results do not indicate that health education is harmful, but that stress reduction is a cornerstone of the cardiovascular risk reduction program. It is convenient to combine modern pharmacological treatment with health advice – which includes stress reduction – to avoid problems for people with this type of risk, ”Strindberg concluded.