How longer holidays can add years to your life

People who took less than three weeks off work in a year were 37 per cent more likely to die during the course of a 40-year study.

Work without regular, long breaks away can shave years off your life.

Taking more than three weeks’ holiday a year could lengthen your life, according to results that give another reason to look forward to summer.

Doctors should prescribe time off to people with heart problems to ensure that the stress of trying to live more healthily does not kill them, researchers said.

People who took less than three weeks off work in a year were 37 per cent more likely to die during the course of a 40-year study. “Don’t think having an otherwise healthy lifestyle will compensate for working too hard and not taking holidays,” Timo Strandberg, of the University of Helsinki, who led the research, said.

His findings arise out of research that he began in the 1970s on 1,200 businessmen. It produced the puzzling results that men who were given intensive health advice and reduced their risk of heart disease by more than half were more likely to die early.

An otherwise healthy lifestyle won’t save you in the long run if your work is stressful and not interrupted by time away from the daily grind.

Professor Strandberg has concluded that these deaths were concentrated in those men who did not take enough time off work. “There was a clear, significant difference,” he said. “The men who had shorter vacations, which means less than three weeks annually, had higher mortality than those who had longer vacations.” He said it was logical to think that trying to live more healthily brought its own stress. “A businessman with a high status goes to the doctor, who says that you must reduce weight and stop smoking. If you can’t do it you get stressed,” he said.

The findings were presented at the European Society of Cardiology congress in Munich. Martin Marshall, vice-chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said that family doctors “often recommend that patients take some time away from work or go on holiday if they are stressed”. Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director of the British Heart Foundation, said: “Taking time out can be a great way to relieve tension, but you can also talk to friends and family to share any troubles.”

The Times