{"id":23693,"date":"2018-08-28T13:00:24","date_gmt":"2018-08-28T19:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/?p=23693"},"modified":"2018-08-29T10:35:15","modified_gmt":"2018-08-29T16:35:15","slug":"taking-long-holidays-could-prolong-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/taking-long-holidays-could-prolong-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking long holidays could prolong life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Taking long holidays could prolong life<\/strong>. This is one of the conclusions of a study carried out over four decades and presented on Tuesday in a Congress held by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC Congress 2018) held between August 25 and 29 in Munich (Germany).<\/p>\n

Finnish researchers have followed for 40 years the evolution of more than a thousand executives with at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The results reveal that in order to reduce mortality, it is not only important to lead a healthy life and take the right medications, but also to reduce stress, and a vacation of more than three weeks helps to achieve it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

“Do not think that following a healthy lifestyle will make up for having a hard job without holidays<\/em><\/strong>,” says Timo Strandberg, a professor at the University of Helsinki (Finland) and co-author of the paper that is already accepted for publication in The Journal of Nutritio , Health & Aging<\/em>. “Holidays can be a good way to relieve stress<\/em>,” adds the expert.<\/p>\n

The study is based on data from 1,222 middle-aged male executives, who were born between 1919 and 1934 and were recruited for the so-called Helsinki Businessmen Study in 1974 and 1975<\/strong>. All the participants had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease (smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, glucose intolerance or overweight).<\/p>\n

At random the volunteers were divided into two groups: a control group with 610 men; and an intervention group with 612 individuals with which they worked for five years<\/strong>. The intervention group received verbal and written advice every four months to perform aerobic physical activity, eat a healthy diet, achieve an adequate weight and stop smoking.<\/p>\n

When these tips to improve their health were not effective, this group also received the medications that were recommended at that time to lower blood pressure (betablockers and diuretics) and their lipids (clofibrate and probucol)<\/strong>. For their part, the executives of the control group received the usual medical attention and the investigators did not see them.<\/p>\n

An unexpected result<\/h3>\n

The research of that time found at the end of the experiment that the risk of cardiovascular disease was reduced by 46% in the intervention group compared to the control group<\/strong>. However, in the subsequent 15-year follow-up, carried out in 1989, it was discovered that there had been more deaths in the intervention group than in the control group<\/strong>. What had happened?<\/p>\n

The new analysis has extended mortality monitoring to 40 years (until 2014), using national registries of deaths and examining unpublished data on the amounts of work, sleep and vacations the participants had. The researchers again found that the mortality rate was significantly higher in the intervention group than in the control group until 2004<\/strong>. Then, by 2014, the mortality rates of both groups were the same<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

According to the data, the shortest holidays were associated with more deaths in the intervention group, where it was also observed that men who had less than three weeks off were 37% more likely to die from 1974 to 2004 than those who could enjoy a longer holiday period<\/strong>. Vacation time, however, had no impact on the risk of death within the control group.<\/p>\n

Strandberg provides an explanation: “In our study, men with shorter vacations worked more and slept less than those on longer vacations. This stressful lifestyle could have invalidated any benefit of the intervention<\/strong>. We even think that the intervention itself may also have had an adverse psychological effect on these men, by adding stress to their lives<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

The professor recognizes that stress management was not part of preventive medicine in the 70s, but now it is recommended for people at risk of cardiovascular disease<\/strong>. In addition, there are currently more drugs available to reduce lipids (statins) and blood pressure (angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, calcium channel blockers).<\/p>\n

“Our results do not indicate that health education is harmful<\/em>,” stresses Strandberg. “Rather, they point out that stress reduction is an essential part of programs designed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, without forgetting that advice on life style should be combined wisely with modern pharmacological treatment to prevent cardiovascular events in high-risk individuals<\/strong><\/em>.<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: <\/strong>SINC<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taking long holidays could prolong life. This is one of the conclusions of a study carried out over four decades and presented on Tuesday in a Congress held by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC Congress 2018) held between August 25 and 29 in Munich (Germany). Finnish researchers have followed for 40 years the evolution …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":23705,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-23693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actualidad-en-la-salud","tag-casalud","cat-3-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23693"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23706,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23693\/revisions\/23706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}