The Traveling Brain is a Healthy Brain

Adventure is a State of Mind

With the rising rates of dementia from multiple causes, most of us have at least a passing concern as to how to keep our brains healthy. While your brain benefits from a healthy lifestyle beginning as early as childhood, most of us don’t start worrying about our brain health, especially how to avoid cognitive declines and the extreme declines of dementia, until we are approaching or well into middle age. This may be because we become aware of the more observable changes to our body, such as reduced stamina and strength. Sometimes our awareness of brain health develops because we have parents, other relatives, or in some cases even friends, who are showing symptoms of dementia.

While cures for most of the types of dementia have yet to be discovered, researchers are sharing more and more information regarding prevention. Most of the advice is similar to what Dr. Sanjay Gupta recommends in his book Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age — be more physically active, keep the brain active (through purpose, learning, and discovery), get restful sleep, maintain good nutrition, and develop close social connections. There are many ways to follow these recommendations, but a particularly enjoyable way to achieve many of them is through travel.

Travel as Prevention

While all travel, even with a large tour group, can include some or all of the healthy elements recommended by Dr. Gupta, independent travel — a trip which you plan yourself and undertake by yourself or with just one or a few friends or family members — provides even more benefits than jumping onto a tour bus does. (See the post Adventure is a State of Mind.) Researching an area and making decisions about what you and your travel companions want to do, coordinating your plans, and putting the plans into action once you arrive will give your brain more of a workout than picking which tour company you want to use and passively listening to the tour guide tell you what you are seeing out of the bus window.

Travel, even if you are adventuring alone, will involve socializing with others. Obviously a prepackaged tour will include other people — you and your friends and family as well as the other tour participants — but your interactions will probably be more with the other people on the tour (who are likely to be similar to you culturally) than with residents in the area you are visiting.

It is better to wear out than to rust out.

Richard Cumberland

Traveling independently offers you not only opportunities to interact with your friends and family as you’re planning the trip but also opportunities during your trip to interact with people who are culturally different from you. Research has shown that the brain loves novelty, and all of the “unknown” that we humans are often afraid of (The Voice of Fear) is the novelty that promotes a healthy brain, so interacting with and learning about another culture is giving your brain a health-promoting experience.

Being Open to New Experiences

Research has shown that of the “Big Five” personality traits (Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, and Extraversion), individuals who score highest on “Openness to Experience” may have a decreased risk of developing dementia. Previous research had also identified a significant relationship between Openness and better memory performance. Given that wanting to travel includes a desire to see and try new things, I would argue that most individuals who choose to travel would score high on the Openness to Experience trait!

Although research suggests that the Big Five personality traits are fairly stable over time, there can possibly be some change, so my recommendation is to be curious about the world and open to new experiences to improve your odds of developing this healthy personality trait, even if you don’t feel it comes naturally to you. There is a never-ending supply of new things to be found in this world, and traveling independently increases your likelihood of finding those things and experiences.

Other Brain Healthy Travel Benefits

In addition to socialization and having new experiences that keep the brain healthy and active, many people find that they are more physically active while traveling. This is often due to having a break from a sedentary job, but it also may be related to spending more time walking and taking advantage of public transportation, something that is more likely to happen while on an independent travel adventure rather than on a bus tour. Also, for many, walking becomes more enjoyable because of the excitement of exploring a new location.

There are many reasons why we choose to be adventure-ish and plan our own travel. Whatever the reasons that inspire you to travel, you can add brain health to that list.

What part of the world are you curious about? What new experiences would you like to have?