Monday, July 21, 2008

Vacation

The NY Times reports on the the pressures hitting our vacations.

Skimping on vacations comes with physical and mental costs, psychologists say. In a nation where 35 percent of employed workers already leave some vacation days on the table, according to one study, this can lead to what the author and work-life coach Joe Robinson calls “vacation deficit disorder.”

Men who shrugged off vacations for five straight years were 30 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack than those who took an extended break from work every year, according to a multiyear study by Brooks B. Gump, an associate professor of psychology at State University of New York, Oswego, and a colleague, Karen A. Matthews. Vacations may boost what psychologists call the brain’s “reserve capacity,” which helps it “cope with stressors that come up,” Dr. Gump said. Vacation, he added, “is a buffer.”

Get out there and relax.