Travel Keeps You Young
It may not feel like it as you load suitcases and kids into the family car for your summer holiday – briefly pondering whether you could get away with putting suitcases on the backseat and kids in the boot and don’t tell me you’ve never considered it – but according to scientific research, travelling keeps you young.
It doesn’t make you young-er - a trip away won’t actually turn the clock back. You won’t come home from ten days on the Coromandel and suddenly get IDed at the supermarket for your pinot gris. But you might be “less old” than if you’d stayed put.
Researchers at an Australian university posit that travel – specifically, fun holiday travel – “disrupts entropy”. And my apologies for making you read the word “entropy”. I would have avoided it if I could.
Entropy is a word which fails to conjure up anything positive. Even “moist”, that oft-despised word, can have an upside if applied, for example, to chocolate cake. “Entropy”, however, never feels aspirational. It belongs on a list with “flaccid” and “jowls”, and it’s far too close to “atrophy” for my liking. Again, apologies for putting all those words in your head now.
“Entropy” is, however, the technical term they’re using at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia where they do this kind of public research. Their study shows that getting away from our usual place and normal lives makes an actual physical difference to our body, putting the brakes on the normal rate of degeneration – not stopping it, but slowing down disorder and decay somewhat.
Why? The theory goes that, when we travel, we do all the good things - eat well, walk, engage with nature and with each other, and get mentally stimulated. All of which are terrific for slowing down the collapse and decline that happens when we’re doing the same old same-old at home with the usual suspects.
At some unconscious level, we knew this, right? You go to Italy and gorge on pasta and assume you’ll come home the size and shape of the Coliseum but in fact, because the pasta is fresh and you’re walking all day and dancing in fountains and sleeping the sleep of the happy and exhausted, you come home lithe and invigorated and – bonus! – looking not a day older.
Of course, all of this is potentially offset by negative stuff about travel, like the airline losing your luggage and someone kicking the back of your seat, or the campground flooding and the kids fighting in the backseat. (And no, you can’t really put them in the boot, stop thinking about it.)
But in general terms, a breakaway offers all the things associated with longevity, the very goals recommended by health experts. All that social interaction, communing with nature, broadening of horizons, enjoying good food and playing the odd game of beach cricket is so good for us we could think of it as important – I don’t think I’m overstating it - in terms of public health.
So this summer, hoorah for heading off on a holiday that will be good for our collective wellbeing. I’m not going to say it will reduce pressure on an overburdened and underfunded health system, but anything that reduces stress and puts the brakes on entropy – ours and its – is a good thing.
And if you can’t get away? Play tourist in your own hometown. Eat in new places, visit the local attractions you recommend to visitors but rarely do yourself, and see if you can turn some acquaintances into friends.