Is Vacation Good For Your Heart? Yes

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Is Vacation Good For Your Heart? Yes

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Vacation is supposed to be the sort of downtime which is good to clear the mind and relieve tension. It apparently has physical health benefits as well, beyond whatever exercise the vacationer might do. A new study shows that vacation is good for the heart.

Recent work by Syracuse University professors Bryce Hruska and Brooks Gump show that “What we found is that people who vacation more frequently in the past 12 months have a lowered risk for metabolic syndrome and metabolic symptoms. Metabolic syndrome is a collection of risk factors for cardiovascular disease. If you have more of them you are at higher risk of cardiovascular disease.”

The two researchers pointed out that 80% of full-time workers have vacation time available to them. Only about half the advantage of the benefit. The data that people do not take all of their vacation time is not new. A study by Ladders reports shows that over one of three people are “ashamed” to take a vacation. For that reason and others, people are reluctant to take all of the time off due to them.

The Syracuse study may mean that vacation could lead to a healthier workforce across the country, and across the economy. That begs the question of why more companies don’t push their employees to take the breaks they deserve.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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