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Health & Fitness

Want a healthier life? Take a vacation!

Can a vacation really lead to a healthier life?

The headline of a story last summer in the Cleveland Plain Dealer said it all "Your vacation is crucial to your health."  Vacations should not always be about what you want, they should sometimes be about what you need. You need to relax, refresh and reconnect.

We are getting connected at a younger and younger age and we are living with so much stress in our lives that I do believe it is doing more harm than good. Some of the more shocking statistics from that story are:

Much of what we know about heart disease, the effects of diet, exercise and taking aspirin, for example, is based on the famous Framingham heart study. This long-term, ongoing cardiovascular study on residents of Framingham, Mass., began in 1948 with 5,209 adult subjects and is now on its third generation of participants.

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That study also has looked at the effect of vacations, and results showed that over a nine-year span, men who skipped vacation for five consecutive years were 30 percent more likely to suffer heart attacks than were those who took at least one week off each year.

Skipping even one year's vacation was associated with an elevated risk of heart disease. Women who did not take any vacation time were up to eight times more likely to suffer from heart disease than were women who took two vacations a year.

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I have a client who just returned from a twelve day Mediterranean cruise. I could hear the difference in her voice yesterday when I placed a follow-up phone call. She truly was at that moment stress free. If that vacation affected her voice, imagine what it did for her entire mind and body.

Want a healthier life? Take a vacation. Planning a trip can be stressful in itself, but that is where we come in. We help you by taking away the stress of planning and the stress you might undergo planning it on your own because you ended up on a cruise or a resort that was not right. Can we help you relieve you stress?

Chuck and Laura Flagg are fee-based travel consultants.

We own The Flagg Agency in Canton, GA and our number is  770-355- 9569

We help people make better travel decisions so they may find

an experience that matches both their wants AND their needs.

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