Taking a vacation—and fully unplugging from media—can be good for your mental and physical health. To up the health ante, go on a nature-focused trip.
If you’re like most working Americans, you probably don’t use all of the vacation time that’s available to you every year. Even if you do or if you’re now retired, it’s highly likely you don’t fully unplug while you’re away and off the clock. But you might want to change that scenario if you’d like to improve your health and well-being, according to new research.
And while almost any type of vacation can be good for you, you can up the ante on your health by going on a nature-focused trip. Neuroscientists have recently shown that experiencing nature can alleviate acute physical pain. In fact, they say, nature-based therapies should be considered as complementary, promising approaches to pain management. Even if you can’t get outside, simply watching nature videos is enough to relieve some pain.
Vacations help mental health, too, in direct and indirect ways. Never before have people recorded more information about their lives than they do today, and that could help you down the line. All those photos and videos you tend to take on vacation could have implications for the way we remember our lives, how we talk about them and dementia difficulties.
All of the photos and videos you take on your vacation can help you now and in the future. People record more information about themselves than ever before, and that could have implications for how we talk about our lives and for our memories.
Boost well-being with a vacation
Job demands and job stress are on the rise. But most people think that they shouldn’t take time off work because they don’t want to look bad or lose out on a chance for promotion. We tend to think that working more is better; but, in truth, we perform best when we take care of ourselves. For our health, intense periods of work should be broken up by intense periods of rest and recuperation, say researchers from the University of Georgia, who published an analysis of vacation time and employee well-being in the Journal of Applied Psychology in January 2025.
This meta-analysis of 32 studies from nine countries suggests that not only are vacations more beneficial for boosting employee well-being than previously thought, but the positive effects of annual leave last much longer than the ride home from the airport.
How you vacation, however, makes a difference in how restorative your time off is. The researchers found that employees who psychologically disengaged from work on their vacations saw the most improvement in their well-being. Ideally, that means not answering emails, not taking work calls and not even thinking about the office.
People who engage in physical activities while on vacation experience higher levels of restoration and well-being. The exercises don’t have to be intense; anything that gets your heart rate up is a good option.
The investigation also found that people who engaged in physical activities while on vacation experienced higher levels of restoration and well-being. But that doesn’t mean you have to go on a marathon hike or participate in a sweat session on your holiday. Anything that gets your heart rate up is a good option, state the scientists. Being on vacation and exercising more is a natural fit: it’s likely when you’re away from home that you’ll engage in physical activities that you probably don’t have the opportunity to try in your everyday life, such as biking, canoeing, paddleboarding or snorkeling.
The Journal of Applied Psychology review also suggests that longer vacations offer bigger benefits for employees once they head back to work. There’s a catch, however: although longer vacation stretches appear to be more advantageous, those getting back from extended trips can also experience a steeper decline in their well-being once they’re back to reality. That’s why the periods right before and immediately after vacation are key. Giving yourself time to pack and plan your trip ahead of time reduces stress and can help maximize well-being benefits. And incorporating a day or two off when you get home to reacclimate can ease the transition back into work mode, state the researchers.
Get pain relief with immersion in nature
Not only can vacations improve your physical well-being, adding a nature component to your travels (or staycations) can reduce feelings of pain.
People report feeling less pain when exposed to natural spaces. This effect—including a reduction in brain activity associated with pain—even occurs with virtual and augmented nature, the use of technology to simulate aspects of nature, creating a hybrid between artificial and natural environments.
Pain processing is a complex phenomenon. To better understand it and identify treatment options, an international team of neuroscientists recently investigated how nature exposure influences pain. In a study conducted at the University of Vienna in Austria, participants suffering from pain were shown three types of videos: an indoor scene, a nature scene and an urban scene. The participants rated their pain while their brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results, which were published in the journal Nature Communications in March 2025, were clear: when viewing the nature scene, the participants not only reported less pain but also showed reduced activity in brain regions associated with pain processing.
From previous studies, we know that people consistently report feeling less pain when exposed to natural environments. However, the underlying reason for this remained unclear—until now. By analyzing the brain data, the University of Vienna researchers showed that viewing nature reduced the raw, sensory signal the brain receives when in pain. They explain that pain is like a puzzle, made up of different pieces that are processed differently in the brain. Some pieces of the puzzle relate to our emotional response to pain, such as how unpleasant we find it. Other pieces correspond to the physical signals underlying the painful experience, such as its location in the body and its intensity. Unlike placebos, which usually change our emotional response to pain, viewing nature changed how the brain processed early, raw, sensory signals of pain. Thus, the effect appears to be less influenced by participants’ expectations and more by changes in the underlying pain signals.
This study demonstrates how nature can help alleviate pain and suggests that nature-based therapeutic approaches could be a useful addition to pain treatment. While taking a walk outdoors is ideal, virtual nature—such as nature videos or virtual reality—appears to be effective, as well. This opens up a wide range of possible applications in both the medical and private sectors, providing people with a simple and accessible way to relieve their pain.
Just a hundred years ago, most people had only a few photos of themselves and their families. What a marked difference when compared to today, when we photographically document almost every moment of our lives.
Enhance mental health with digital memories
As recently as only about a hundred years ago, most people had just a few photos of themselves and their families. What a difference when compared to today, when we can easily capture every important and unimportant moment—from our child’s first step to a visit to a restaurant with friends to a leisurely, evening walk on a beach. And, of course, the documentation of our lives doesn’t end there. Think of the countless emails, texts and WhatsApp messages we write every day, the experiences we share with others via social media and the data we record on our smartphones and smartwatches.
This increased density of recorded life can be interpreted in various ways. Some people hope that it will allow us to reduce the distortions of human memories. Others are concerned that it will create new potential for surveillance and undermining our privacy.
As is so often the case, things are not simply black-and-white but require a closer look, say researchers from the Knowledge Media Research Center in Tubingen, Germany, who published an article titled “Understanding Autobiographical Memory in the Digital Age” in the journal Psychological Inquiry in September 2024.
Thousands of years ago, people painted on cave walls and used oral storytelling to remember past events. Today, you can refer to your paper diaries or digital notes, photos and videos.
The fact that we draw on resources outside our own minds when remembering past events is not an invention of the digital age but a constant in human history. Thousands of years ago, people left behind cave paintings and established traditions for the oral transmission of knowledge. More recently, if you were trying to remember your last birthday, for instance, you might have looked in your paper diary—if you kept one—or asked guests who were at the party.
What sets digital resources apart from these other options, however, is not only the aforementioned increased density of recorded life episodes, but also the fact that these digital resources create a searchable database consisting of a combination of different media sources that can often be accessed anywhere at any time. Digital resources do not just provide a passive means of storage but also make it possible—using artificial intelligence, perhaps—to adjust and rearrange recordings in order to create digital travel and vacation albums, among others. This can have a profound impact on how we remember and view past experiences.
But that’s not all: different digital resources are suited for different purposes. For example, quantitative data—such as tracking heart rate, running distances and sleep cycles—seems particularly suitable for discovering long-term behavioral trends. Other data—such as photos and videos—are more likely to be used when it comes to reminiscing or reflecting on past events.
Digital resources could one day be used to aid and support people with dementia or memory difficulties.
The increased use of digital data for autobiographical remembering could have both desirable and undesirable consequences in numerous fields of application. For example, there are hopes that digital resources could be used to support people with dementia or memory difficulties. Similarly, digital recordings could also help to preserve memories that are important to our collective memory, as in cases of cultural milestones, such as a civil rights movement or the end of a war.
At the same time, digital data also offers the possibility of manipulation: arguably, deepfakes could not only play a role with respect to political actors and events but also in regard to memories about our own lives.
The scientists say that in most cases, we don’t have enough reliable data to draw definite conclusions concerning opportunities and risks yet. But we do know that autobiographical memories are an important part of what makes us human. This makes further research into the subtleties of the interplay between recorded data and the memories stored in our minds all the more important. The question of how recorded data can be organized and used in such a way that it helps people to remember their pasts is particularly significant.
A lot of good comes from taking a vacation: you can escape daily routines, improve mental functioning and reduce stress. The memories that vacations create offer benefits, too; such as a renewed perspective, a sense of refuge and a stimulus for self-reflection.
Find a fuller life with nature travel
Vacations are beneficial for our well-being. They provide a chance to escape daily routines, reduce stress and improve mental functioning. The memories that vacations create can inspire self-reflection, instill new perspectives and offer a sense of refuge right now—and help with recollections later.
If you chose to use your vacation time for a nature-focused trip, you may get the bonus of pain relief. That can result in an enhanced ability to function in daily activities, an improved quality of life and a reduced reliance on strong medications.
In short, nature-travel vacations and the memories we bring back allow us to live our lives just a little bit fuller, giving us more balance, more ways to cope with what seems like ever-increasing daily challenges, and more compassion and empathy for others.
Here’s to finding your true places and natural habitats,
Candy
