Reduce stress: holidays can extend life
Vacation not only makes you happy and healthy, but can also help you to extend your own life. This is the result of a long-term study, which is now presented at the European Congress of Cardiology. However, the holiday should be long enough.
Simple measures that serve health
Stop smoking, drinking, losing a few pounds, being more balanced, avoiding stress, exercising more: with such simple rules you can considerably extend your life. A study has now shown that there is something else that can greatly increase life expectancy: on vacation.
Take a break now and then
Stress at work and long working days make us sick.
That is why you should always treat yourself to a break and fall back on his leave request.
Those who go on vacation can not only recover, but can also extend their lives.
This is shown by a study that has now been presented at the European Congress of Cardiology in Munich.
Working pressure can not only be compensated by a healthy lifestyle
"Do not think that you can balance the burden of too much work with a healthy lifestyle without taking a vacation," said study leader Professor Timo Strandberg of the University of Helsinki (Finland). "Holidays can be a great way to reduce stress."
According to a report published in the journal "EurekAlert!", The study included 1,222 male middle-aged executives born between 1919 and 1934 and admitted to Helsinki Businessmen Studies in 1974 and 1975.
Participants had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease (smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, elevated triglycerides, glucose intolerance, obesity).
The subjects were divided into two approximately large groups. Although the participants in the control group did not change their lifestyle, the others received health advice for four months.
For example, they were encouraged to exercise, eat healthily, achieve a healthy weight and stop smoking.
When health counseling was not effective in itself, men also received drugs that were recommended at that time to lower blood pressure, as well as high blood lipid levels.
40 years during the investigation period
It was found that the risk of cardiovascular disease in the intervention group was 46 percent lower at the end of the study than at the end of the study.
Nevertheless, the researchers discovered that in the 15-year follow-up in 1989 there were considerably more deaths in the intervention group than in the control group.
How that was possible was explained at the Munich Congress. The results are also published in the "Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging".
According to the scientists, the investigation period has been extended to 40 years (until 2014). In addition, previously unreported basic data about working hours, sleep and holidays were analyzed.
The authors found that the mortality rate in the intervention group in 2004 was consistently higher than in the control group. Then the mortality rates were the same in both groups.
According to the researchers, one of the factors that had determined the higher mortality in the first group was the number of holiday days taken annually.
Take more than three weeks off
As the authors report, shorter holidays were associated with a higher number of deaths in the intervention group.
In the intervention group, men who took leave three weeks or less each year had a 37 percent higher chance of dying in the years 1974 to 2004 than those who had more than three weeks off.
The holiday period did not affect the risk of death in the control group.
"In our study shorter vacationers worked more and slept less than those with a longer vacation," says Professor Strandberg.
"This stressful lifestyle could have helped reverse the positive effects of health intervention, and even the intervention itself has had negative psychological consequences for these men because it has improved their lives."
Stress reduction to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease
Strandberg also pointed out that stress management was not a natural part of preventive medicine in the 1970s, but is now recommended for people who are at risk of cardiovascular disease.
"Our results do not indicate that health education is harmful – on the contrary, they suggest that stress reduction is an integral part of programs to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease," Professor Strandberg said.
"Health advice should be combined in a sensible way with modern drug treatment to prevent cardiovascular disease in high-risk individuals." (Ad)
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