20 Dez 10 benefits
It is well appreciated that those who stay healthy as they age are able to sustain active lifestyles, including travelling into our 70, 80s and beyond. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the reverse is also true: those who travel are going to be healthier, which is good both for the individual and for our ageing societies.
At any age, travel gives the mind a break from the everyday life and allows people to expand their horizons. But for seniors, travelling to a favourite city or an undiscovered place can offer an opportunity of rebirth. It gives them something to look forward to during or after an isolating, cold and icy winter.
One might think that travelling, and everything linked to it – organising, moving around, changing habits, meeting new and foreign people – might be too heavy a burden for senior people and put at risk their physical and mental healthiness, but this seems to be an old stereotype.
Even as certain mental skills decline with age, scientists are finding that the mind gets indeed sharper at a number of vitally important abilities, such as social and emotional skills.
These skills may bring huge benefits: researchers at Stony Brook, Stanford and Cornell University found that people over 50 were happier overall, with anger declining steadily from the 20s through the 70s and stress falling off a cliff in the 50s. Negative emotions such as sadness, anger and fear become less pronounced in later years than in our drama-filled younger years.
Many seniors interviewed said something along these lines: ‘I wish I’d learned to enjoy life on a daily basis and enjoy the moment when I was in my 30s instead of my 60s,’ and were likely to describe the last five or ten years as the happiest years of their lives.
Most people – active, curious and passionate ones – are indeed perfectly equipped to travel happily in their 60s, 70s 80s and beyond! Let’s see in details the 10 proven benefits of travel for senior people.
- It is good for your heart
Travel seems to have a positive effect on the healthiness of your heart, both for women and men.
A scientific study found out that women who vacationed every six years or less had a significantly higher risk of developing a heart attack or coronary death compared to women who vacationed at least twice a year.
Similarly, another study showed that men who did not take an annual vacation had a 20 percent higher risk of death and 30 percent greater risk of death from heart disease.
- It is good for your body in general
Moreover, travelling and all the activities linked to it have a positive effect on your body and its physical fitness.
Seniors can benefit from the physical activity that often accompanies travel. Whether it’s walking around museums, jaunting around new cities to see the sights or taking public transit, there are lots of physical challenges that accompany travel: different sources report that tourists often walk up to 10 miles a day while travelling. These challenges can help keep senior people healthy and in shape, so long as they don’t push themselves too hard.
- It is good for your brain
According to Dr. Paul Nussbaum, Ph.D., ABPP, president and founder of the Brain Health Center, Inc. “because it challenges the brain with new and different experiences and environments, travel is an important behaviour that promotes brain health and builds brain resilience across the lifespan.”
Ordinary activities that accompany travelling, such as listening to the radio, reading newspapers, playing puzzle games and visiting museums, have been shown to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s by as much as 47 percent.
- It is good for your mind in general
Travelling also forces an ageing brain to exercise its cognitive skills by planning ahead and staying focused. Because so many fraudsters target seniors, practising safety precautions ahead of time while at home is one way to prepare their thought processes before travel go abroad. Even researching and comparing the cities, air fare and accommodations allow seniors to shift their brains into thinking about something new and unknown.
A paper titled “Destination Healthy Ageing: The Physical, Cognitive and Social Benefits of Travel” recently highlighted some of the mental benefits that travel can bring to seniors. Things like navigating new cities, exploring museums, having conversations with new people, practicing new languages and seeing new sights can flex the mental muscles, keeping seniors’ brains active and engaged.
- It decreases your level of stress
One survey shows that after being on vacation for only a day or two, 89% of people are able to leave the stressors of work behind them and relax. This has long-term effects, as stress has been shown to play a damaging role in health and can actually speed up the ageing process.
There’s also the relaxation component. One might think that senior people, especially those in retirement, aren’t short on relaxation time, but their lives are often full of social, personal and familial events and obligations that end up creating similar level of stress of professional commitments.
- You can meet new people
If you travel you highly increase your chances of meeting new people, both if you are travelling in group or by yourself. Maintaining or initiating social participation in later life has been shown to have positive benefits on the mental health of older adults.
By travelling you can meet and socialise with people of your own nationality or from the foreign country you are visiting, potentially making new friends from all over the world, and with whom you can easily keep in touch thanks to new technologies.
- And you can share the travel with people you love
Travelling also provides opportunities for you to share happiness with your friends and family. When you travel with your friends and family, you create memories that would last a lifetime.
But it is also a very joyful thing to share the memory of a special trip with the people you love once you are back at home with them. Remember that goods have a limited life span, whereas memories last forever!
- It’s never too late to discover new perspectives
Travelling helps to enrich our lives. It increases our knowledge and widens our perspective. When we visit interesting places, we discover and learn many things. We discover new people, surroundings, plants and animals. If you want to make our travels more exciting and challenging, you can choose to plan your tour and select the specific places you want to visit. Travelling not only provides fun and adventure, it also provides marvellous insights and enlightens our minds.
- It challenges your preconceptions
When we visit places in other countries, we gain a better understanding of the people living there. We learn their cultures, history and background. We discover the similarities they have with us, as well as their differences from us. It is interesting to learn from people with diverse backgrounds even later in life, when experience and events have shaped your precionceptions in a certain way, but cultural and social encounters can keep your mind wide open.
- It is good for your wallet too!
Senior people, especially those on retirement, have the opportunity to travel in their country and abroad also in low and medium seasons, benefiting from lower prices and exploiting special offers of travel agencies, tour operators and hotels that pamper their customer in off-peak periods such as spring and autumn.
Moreover, most tourism services from transports to social, cultural and sport activities offer special discounts for seniors. Ask about what kind of discounts you can benefit from both when choosing your destination and when visiting the many attractions you find there.
November 2016 – Anna Chiara Lorenzelli
Resources
“Destination Healthy Aging: the Physical, Cognitive and Social Benefits of Travel”, Global Coalition on Aging, 2013
“Health Benefits of Travel for Seniors” Care2
“What Is So Good About Growing Old”, Helen Fields, Smithsonian Magazine July 2012.