Holidays lower blood pressure

Travel brand Kuoni UK and health charity Nuffield Health will publish a new study reporting on the positive impact of holidays on health. The Holiday Health Experiment was conducted between summer and autumn 2012 and will be revealing how "holidays may help us live longer". The study, the first of its kind, set out to establish whether the much-discussed ‘feel good factor’ generated by vacations is based on physical and psychological fact. Participants were divided into a travel group and a non-travel group and all had stress-resilience testing and a 360+ Health Assessment by Nuffield Health. The Holiday Health Experiment found that those who took part benefited from lower blood pressure, improved sleep quality and improved stress management – with the effects continuing for at least two weeks after returning home. Findings show: the average blood pressure of the holidaymakers dropped by a beneficial six per cent while the average of the non-holidaymakers went up over the same period by two per cent. The sleep quality of the holidaymakers improved while that of the non-holidaymakers deteriorated. Holidaymakers saw a 17 percent improvement while the average for non-holidaymakers reduced by 14 percent. The ability to recover from stress (known as the stress-resilience test) saw an average improvement of 29 per cent among holidaymakers. This compared to a 71 percent fall in stress resilience scores among the non-holidaymakers