Helpful rest Regular vacation extends life

Reduce stress: Holidays can extend life

Holidays not only make you happy and healthy, but can help to extend your own lifetime. This is the result of a long-term study, which has now been presented at the European Congress of Cardiology. However, the holiday should be long enough.

Simple measures that serve the health

Give up smoking, drink, lose a few pounds, eat more balanced, avoid stress, do more exercise: With such simple rules you can extend your life significantly. A study has now shown that there is something else that can increase life expectancy enormously: vacationing.

A long-term study has shown that holidays can extend life. However, you have to take a long enough time off. (Image: Nikolai Sorokin / fotolia.com)

Take a break from time to time

Stress at work and long working hours make us sick.

Therefore, you should always treat yourself to a break and fall back on his leave claim.

Those who go on vacation can not only recover, but may also extend their lives.

This is shown by a study that has now been presented at the European Congress of Cardiology in Munich.

Workload can not be balanced by healthy lifestyle alone

"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 from 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 middle-aged male 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, increased triglycerides, glucose intolerance, obesity).

The subjects were divided into two approximately large groups. While the participants in the control group did not change their lifestyle, the others received health advice every four months.

For example, they were encouraged to do sports, to eat healthily, to achieve a healthy weight and to stop smoking.

When health counseling was not effective on its own, men were also given medications that were recommended at that time to lower blood pressure and 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% lower by the end of the study compared to the control group.

Nevertheless, the researchers found that at the 15-year follow-up in 1989 there were significantly more deaths in the intervention group than in the control group.

How that could be 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 on working hours, sleep and holidays were analyzed.

The authors found that the death rate in the intervention group was consistently higher by 2004 compared to the control group. Thereafter, the mortality rates were the same in both groups.

According to the researchers, one factor in particular was decisive for the higher mortality rate in the first group: the number of annual vacation days.

Take more than three weeks off

As the authors report, shorter vacations were associated with a higher number of deaths in the intervention group.

In the intervention group, men who took three weeks or less of annual leave had a 37 percent higher chance of dying in the years 1974 to 2004 than those who had more than three weeks off.

The vacation time had no influence on the risk of death in the control group.

"In our study, shorter-vacation men worked more and slept less than those who had longer holidays," Professor Strandberg said.

"This stressful lifestyle could have helped to reverse the positive effects of health intervention. Perhaps even the intervention itself has had a negative psychological impact on these men, as it has added to their lives. "

Stress reduction to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease

Strandberg also pointed out that stress management in the 1970s was not yet a natural part of preventive medicine, but is now recommended for those at or at risk for cardiovascular disease.

"Our results do not indicate that health education is harmful. Rather, they suggest that stress reduction is an integral part of programs to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, "said Professor Strandberg.

"Health counseling should be sensibly combined with modern drug treatment to avoid cardiovascular disease in high-risk individuals." (Ad)