Traveling Improves Brain Health, But How?

Traveling improves brain health because getting away from daily life and discovering new sights, smells and places has some wonderful benefits. Your cognitive structures “light up” when you activate your reward systems, break routines, and loosen the knots of stress and anxiety. This frees your mind and awakens your emotions.

Everyone needs to go on vacation. But strangely enough, there are many at work who can not or will not take these needed days off. Then there are people who do not know how to really disconnect. They do not know how to slow down and relinquish their responsibilities for a few days.

This may be one reason why the heart rate, for example, just keeps increasing every year. We have become a worn out society that simply does not know how to take a break.

The solution to this problem is simple: take a walk. We are not saying that you have to go to another part of the world to do this. You do not have to travel thousands of miles to find an unknown language and time zone.

There are cities and places near where you live that you have probably never been to before that can have the same effect. They help you get away from your daily life. They also give your brain new stimuli and break the thought patterns you have been caught in at home.

Traveling improves brain health: 5 reasons why this is true

There are periods in life when it is the best thing you can do for yourself. Travel so you can get home. Get away from your daily life so you can get back to it with new energy. It is also impossible not to be changed in any way by a trip. It always has rewards. It always gives you something in return, something positive that can help you get better in every way. In addition, you get out of your comfort zone and breathe in the air in another time zone, hemisphere, or even just a nearby city, an adventure that knows no age.

The truth is that traveling is not just for people with young hearts and minds. There are several studies that say that getting away more often at an older age can improve your health. As you grow older, there is nothing better than breaking your routines and letting your mind open up to new experiences and stimuli. Now we’ll show you exactly why traveling improves brain health.

1. It activates and optimizes your cognitive processes

• Getting to a new place forces you to spend more of your brain’s resources. You need to look at maps and use your spatial intelligence to orient yourself, to remember directions, streets, meeting places, routes, etc.…
• Traveling  also improves your attention span. You are more motivated and it helps you to store memories and information more easily.

Multiple neural connections

Somehow each turn forces you to do something new and leave certain fears behind you.  It could be that you travel by plane, boat, cable car, horse or camel, force yourself to speak other languages, or just give yourself the chance to travel alone.

All of these experiences create new connections in your brain. Dopamine and serotonin levels increase, blood circulation improves, your brain gets more oxygen… All these new positive stimuli “ignite” the neurons and your brain tissue. To put it another way, it is the best type of energy you can give your brain. It’s like giving it the best possible training, which makes it faster and allows it to store more information.

3. It makes you more empathetic

Traveling improves brain health because the most important thing you do is communicate. You create contact with your surroundings, with new experiences, tastes and experiences. You also make contact with the people around you, the people you meet on all these excursions. This is as important as getting rid of your habits so you can learn new ones. It helps you look at the world in a much more humble, intimate way.

Traveling makes you more tolerant. It shows different perspectives on life and forces you to be much more flexible about things. All this leads to is empathy. It stimulates your ability to imagine yourself in other people’s shoes and see other realities that are as unique as yours.

4. Traveling stimulates creativity

Traveling has no age limit. The potential for that is always inside you, just like the ability to learn. However, jobs and routines get you stuck in repetitive cycles where nothing new happens, or only very little. Your daily life ends up making you rusty. The lack of motivation and new things reduces your ability to come up with innovative ideas and inspirational thoughts.

The reason why traveling improves brain health is that it awakens your mind. It challenges your senses. It takes you to places you’ve never seen, along with new faces, stories you’ve never heard, foods you’ve never tried, side streets full of secrets and hidden shops with weird smells and an infinitely wonderful books and artifacts.

Traveling is culture, even if you probably knew it. It also leads to an inner awakening where you can awaken the imagination and reflect on concepts, ideas and old frameworks. It means finding inspiration and letting yourself learn new things that you will never forget.

5. It improves mood and reduces stress

Traveling and enjoying your experiences and your time to relax will bring cortisol levels in your body down. This stress hormone will return to its normal state and you will feel much better because of it. You have no external pressure here, just the chance to enjoy your surroundings and all the stimuli in it. Nature, sparkling cities, culture in every street and on every balcony, good food, beaches, museums, musical events, etc.

Every vacation is a way to get the most out of yourself, find yourself again, and even transform yourself. And you will do so with a much more open, receptive and optimistic state of mind.

Traveling improves brain health because it pushes you to see the world from a broader, brighter perspective. So do not hesitate. It is always worth it to obtain a passport full of stamp along with fascinating stories only you can tell. Because at the end of the day you are the only one who has experienced them.