Why Travel?
Traveling Green is
Good for the Planet,
Good for Your Health!

Travel has always been a personal battery recharge for me. Getting out of my routine and my comfort zone helps me return with fresh eyes and energy. And eco-travel has been my favorite way to explore for years, simply because it is geared towards sustaining and enriching our world, while offering green travelers profound and priceless opportunities to know ourselves and to know others from entirely different cultures.

Several recent studies have supported what we have all felt about travel and vacation time--it's good for our health. Not only does time away cut our risk of heart disease but it can cure burnout, the last stage of chronic stress. We can regather our emotional resources and come back with a renewed sense of optimism, satisfaction, and mastery. Our productivity even increases when we have had a proper vacation.

After a week of trekking, we summited Mt. Toubkal in Morocco. See all our happy smiles? Getaways...they do a body good.

But to get the maximum restorative benefits travel offers, we need to be able to vacation unplugged--no work calls or emails--for around 2 weeks. So... perhaps with a doctor's note we can all enjoy longer ecotours.

Doctor's Orders: Vacation Longer

Vacation Deprivation. An annual online travel service recently published its seventh year of findings in the 2007 International Vacation Deprivation Survey. Notoriously, employed adults in the United States receive and take far fewer vacation days than their international counterparts. Americans on average receive 14 vacation days annually, whereas in Great Britain the average is 24, 36 in France, 26 in Germany, and 30 in Spain.

Additionally, Americans usally leave 3 days of vacation untaken, in effect giving back 439 million days to the workforce in 2007. And 1 in 4 American workers take their job on vacation with them--checking email, answering calls, and conducting business when they are supposed to be unplugged and off the clock.

Vacation from Stress. Some of our workaholic behavior could stem from fear of being replaced or strcit work ethic or feeling guilt about checking out. The problem is, when we overwork ourselves for extended periods of time, we see diminishing returns at work and in our personal lives. Stress is not healthy. Stress causes mistakes and illness. And some US companies are realizing that. PriceWaterhouseCoopers shuts its offices twice a year to force employees to get their batteries recharged, and on a regular schedule reminds its work force to take their vacations when they are past due. Results have been positive.

Perhaps harder data shows more serious benefits of vacationing and why it's healthier for us than having our noses to the grindstone all the time.

Heart Sense. A study at the State University of New York in Oswego of middle-aged men at risk for heart disease determined that those participants who did not take vacations regularly were more likely to die, especially from heart problems, over a nine-year period than those who were diligent about taking vacations.

Shorter-term benefits from taking time off were also significant. For people who took more than a week off from work, their sleep improved, they felt more optimistic and energetic than before, and they had fewer physical complaints.

Depression Relief. Another study, this one at the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin, looked primarily at women and the health benefits of vacation time. Researchers found that the women in the study who took vacation time once in two years had much higher odds of being depressed and tense than the women who took vacations twice or more a year.

Our health is truly our lifeline. Without it, we sacrifice everything that is important to us: family, career, passions, travel. So the next time you are looking at an ecotourism getaway and thinking twice about it, consider your health and reach for that vacation vitamin.

Looking for more reasons Why Travel can be important? Check out Voluntourism.