High gas prices should not deter people from taking a vacation this year. Their very lives may depend on it.
New research shows that the value of taking a break from the daily grind far outweighs the price at the pump.
Yet, most Americans resist taking vacations, and health statistics show that's not good in a world where stress is mounting.
The Conference Board, a business research group, recently found in a survey that only 39 percent of those responding were planning to go away on holiday, a 30-year low, down from 49 percent in 1978.
In reviewing questionnaires that women completed over 20 years as part of the long-term Framingham Heart Study, researchers found that women who vacationed only once every six years or less were almost eight times more likely to suffer heart disease or have a heart attack compared to those who vacationed twice a year.
Another study of 12,000 men over nine years found that those who didn't take an annual vacation had a 21 percent higher risk of death from all causes and were 32 percent more likely to die of a heart attack.
And health professionals cite the obvious: Simply lying on a beach is not restful if the vacationer is hooked into a cell phone and computer and essentially still connected to the stressful ways of work.
Take Back Your Time, a nonprofit group studying overwork, has prepared legislation that would require mandatory paid vacations for workers. The United States is the only industrialized country without such a law.
Other countries may know something we in the U.S. have yet to learn.
