Travelling has always been on most people’s bucket list of things to do. This is understandable, because the desire to move has been ingrained in our DNAs since the birth of our species. Not to mention the fact that staying in one place all the time can be quite boring!
This is why, as humans, we have evolved and expanded our technological and social horizons to make travelling more accessible. Air travel has improved significantly, becoming faster and more efficient, visas are also easier to obtain nowadays, and to top it all off this whole process has become a lot more affordable as well.
Apart from the feeling of fascination and accomplishment travelling provides, meeting new people and learning about new cultures through travel can be highly educative and beneficial in so many ways. But, have you ever related travel with health? Did you ever think about the impact it could have on your physical well being? If you haven’t, you’d be surprised to find that travel can be beneficial from a health standpoint as well! How you ask? Let’s take a look.
- Improves immune health – How could moving from one place to another possibly enhance your immune systems? Well, there is a very plausible explanation to this. It is important to know that our body is highly adaptive and self learning, when it is used to staying in one place, it modifies itself to suit the settings of that environment, meaning it will adjust itself to better tackle the germs and bacteria that are present in surroundings that are familiar to you. But, when you go to a completely different landscape, the entire setting changes. Your body gets introduced to new bacteria, germs and other particulate matter in the air. Sure, this may cause some short term illnesses, but once you’re past that your immune system learns to tackle germs from the environment you were exposed to. It basically widens your germ database providing your immune system with more knowledge to handle new adverse situations.
- Improves heart function – Most of us lead very sedentary lifestyles, sitting behind desks all day. Sometimes we don’t even have the time to hit the gym or do any sort of physical activity for that matter. This could lead to a whole host of health issues in the long run. But, when we travel, this scenario changes. Since we are put in unfamiliar territories, we tend to explore more which equates to more movement. This means that our cardiovascular activity increases which in turn results in better heart health.
- Reduces stress – We live in hectic times. Economies are growing and people are becoming busier every single day. Work pressure is a real problem with the increased amount of responsibilities and the requirement to meet deadlines that most of us face nowadays. This can lead to a lot of stress build which is in no way beneficial to our health. But taking a healthy travel vacation now and then can easily fix this. Given that you don’t take your work along with you, the time away from your daily hustle and bustle can help you relax which ultimately plays a key role towards improving your health.
- Better Bones – Since travel forces us out of our sedentary lifestyle, we would be put in situations wherein we’d have to stay outdoors for a majority of our time. This can do us a world of good as this means that we’d be better exposed to the god given gift that is the sun. Sun rays can provide us with a whole list of nutrients. Vitamin D for example is one such crucial nutrient that we can absorb from sun rays. And when it comes to bone health, vitamin D is absolutely essential.
This is just a short list of the limitless health benefits that travel can provide. Also, apart from all these medical facts and benefits, travel can prove to be a whole lot of fun as well! So relax, unwind, take a breather from time to time. And explore!