What is Wanderlust Wellness and What Are Its Benefits for the Brain?
If you knew that participating in a particular activity – filled with novelty, adventure, and fun – could help boost your mood, brain function, and protect again memory loss, you’d probably want to do it, right?
Well, you can!
Travel is that magic activity that delivers so many brain benefits – and summer is an opportune time to make it happen.
Indeed, traveling to new places, experiencing new cultures, and being out of your familiar surroundings is wonderfully stimulating for something called brain plasticity (also called neuroplasticity), which helps to strengthen your cognitive function and protect against neurodegenerative brain health issues.
Travel also makes most people feel happy.
Here’s what you need to know about the brain benefits of travel.
Top 4 Brain Benefits of Wanderlust Wellness
To boost brain health, we might all do well to cultivate a little wanderlust – that is, a desire to travel somewhere new. Wanderlust quite literally means a lust for wandering. The German root of the word is wander, which means “to hike or roam about,” and lust, which means “pleasure or delight.”
Wanderlust in the form of travel could truly be coined wanderlust wellness because it’s associated with numerous benefits for your cognition and well-being. Here are several brain benefits, which have been noted by researchers.
Increased Neuroplasticity
Traveling to a new place and having new experiences – whether that’s in a neighboring town, another state, or another country – can increase neuroplasticity and overall brain function.
What does that mean exactly?
Well, when you find yourself in new, unfamiliar surroundings, your brain is forced out of “autopilot” and begins to repattern itself by forming new connections and neurons, and by making existing neural pathways stronger or weaker.
Experiencing novel surroundings may stimulate dendrite growth from your brain’s neurons. These dendrites help to communicate information between different regions of the brain. The more dendrites your brain has, the better it functions, particularly when it comes to memory and attention.
Additionally, travel is chock-full of obstacles, which forces your brain to focus and problem-solve. This also boosts dendritic growth. And if you visit a foreign country, your brain works doubly hard to understand and speak in another language, which further boosts neuroplasticity, strengthening your brain even more, not unlike a muscle that you build through working out.
Boosts Creative Thinking
Are you in the doldrums with your creativity? Multicultural traveling is like adding MiracleGro to your creative thinking. That’s because experiencing other cultures presents an individual with new concepts, customs, and ways of seeing the world. This kind of expansiveness stokes the flow of creative thinking and impulses.
Lifts Your Mood
Destinations with exquisite natural beauty, exhilarating activities, immersive cultural experiences, longer hours of daylight (such as in summer in the Northern Hemisphere) and more time spent outdoors can all increase these feel-good hormones.
This may be, in part, why people who travel more frequently report greater happiness. A recent survey of 500 people conducted by Washington State University showed that individuals who regularly travel are happier than respondents who don’t.
Even the anticipation of travel can make us happy. Researchers have found that people feel greater well-being and happiness in anticipation of a holiday. A study from Cornell University explored how thinking about a trip may increase an individual’s happiness more than the anticipation of buying things. And a 2023 travel survey found that a whopping 97% respondents reported that simply planning a trip makes them happy.
Protects Against Neurodegenerative Memory Loss and Cognitive Decline
While this area of study is still new, researchers are now looking at travel as a possible non-pharmacological intervention for neurodegenerative memory loss.
Along with the cognitive boost from new environments, travel additionally stimulates thinking, provides opportunities for increased social connection, increases movement/physical activity, sometimes involves musical experiences, and increases recollections/memories – which are all good for brain function and protecting against neurodegenerative memory issues.
Travel has been shown to reduce stress, too – which is very good for your brain. In one study, a single short-term trip produced immediate beneficial effects on perceived stress, recovery, strain, and well-being.
Severe stress is linked to accelerated brain aging and an increased risk of neurodegenerative memory loss. It can also cause inflammation, which in turn can damage brain cells and worsen age-related cognitive decline.
Book a Trip!
We all need time away from our work and routines to recreate and rejuvenate. Understanding the many ways in which travel (or thinking about travel) can boost your brain health and mood, you have an even greater reason to book a trip this summer.
Remember, even a short trip close to home can do the trick. Researchers have found that for maximum brain and mood-boosting health benefits, ensure it’s as stress-free as possible, enjoyable, new, and includes purpose or offers experiences that are personally meaningful.
Bon voyage!
At BrainMD, we’re dedicated to providing the highest quality supplements to improve your physical health and overall well-being. For more information about our full list of brain healthy supplements, please visit us at BrainMD.
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