People always expect to put down their work completely and have a good rest when they are on vacation. However, once they stop working, they will have headache, fatigue, muscle soreness and other cold like symptoms. Ed wingholt, a professor of psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, called this disease “leisure sickness” and gave a theoretical explanation for this situation.
One theory holds that when we finally have a chance to take a rest, the stress hormones that help us solve the work deadline will lose their balance, which makes people more susceptible to infection. Adrenaline helps people deal with stress and also improves the function of the immune system, which helps people resist infection and maintain health. Together with it, cortisol helps reduce stress, but this hormone can damage the immune system, especially when the transition period between stress and rest is too fast.
Another theory is that people may have been in the early stage of illness before taking a vacation, but busy work has no chance to release the virus. When they are released from the workplace, they are more likely to notice various ailments. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that the holiday itself makes people sick. For example, long-distance travel makes people very tired, especially by plane. The longer the flight, the more likely they are to be infected with the virus.
Wenger Hote does not rule out that there are other reasons why people get sick on holidays. But the good news is that the incidence rate of leisure diseases is lower than people think, about 3%.
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