Travel enriched your life, but do you know it can also help you live a longer life?
For people with a hunger for seeing different places and experiencing different cultures, the motivations to travel may not be health-related at all. Yet, many who have pursued it as a lifestyle opine and affirm how travel changed their health in the process. Megan Snedden talks about how it improves your health in this blog 8 Reasons Travel Can Make you Healthier and Give You a Longer Life posted in Road Warrior Voices. She says…
If one of your life goals is to become a centenarian, then you might want to dust off that passport and pack your bags. Studies have found that certain aspects of travel actually can help you live longer. Sure, things like changing your diet, exercising, and drinking wine can be done at home, but isn’t it more fun to combine those things in an organic experience?
Here’s a look at how travel might make you live longer, or at least improve your health:
- It takes you places where people live longer. Blue Zones are places where longevity has been observed to be longer. An example is Ikaria in Greece. Visiting these Blue Zones exposes you to lifestyles other than your own. You can discover healthy lifestyles that you may want to adopt for yourself to boost your longevity.
- It keeps the mind sharp. Travel puts you in varied situations. While some can be extremely challenging and you’d rather not go through, these are exactly what stimulate your brain to work harder. Going to a country where the language is different from your native tongue, can put your brain at work, even without intending to.
- It decreases depression. Travel can make you happy. It significantly eases stress, a known factor to weaken a person’s immune system. This is why travellers have less “downer days” according to GCATCRS or Global Commission on Aging and Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies.
- It decreases (the)chance of dementia. “The same study by GCATCRS surveyed retirement-age people on their frequency of travel to find lower incidences of dementia.” The beautiful and enriching experiences make happy memories they are apt to remember in their advanced years, triggering brain activity or exercise.
- It gives you a sense of purpose. Erstwhile active people wouldn’t want to spend their retirement years in inactivity. They would rather spend their old days doing something to feel a sense of purpose. Traveling gives them the opportunity to be immersed in communities that need help. Volunteerism is something anyone with spare time can do to be of service to others.
- It decreases health risks. Spending your days on a sedentary lifestyle is never the right way to live a healthy or a longer life. If you want to boost your longevity, you have to put your body at work, something you can do when travelling, and happily too. Imagine a world of unique experiences and activities you can enjoy while on travel. That should be enough motivation for you to keep travelling.
- It’s pleasurable. A happy life can add more years to your life. That is of course conditional, if you are living a healthy lifestyle – healthy diet, active body, enough sleep and rest, and no smoking and alcohol. With travel you get an overdose of fun and pleasure to keep you happy and relaxed.
- Saying cheese extends your life. How can you travel and not take souvenir shots of yourself in various landmarks that you want to show off in your Facebook or Twitter? Smiling is aid to make you live longer. So, snap as much selfies as you want for more happy years of travel and life.
There can be no more fun way of living longer than travelling. If you are starting to make a blueprint of your retirement years, boost your longevity in this most fun way.
