Benefits of RVing
The world is busier today than it’s ever been before. It can be easy to get caught up in the day to day things which keep you occupied and forget about the big picture. If it’s challenging to refocus your priorities to keep yourself healthy, you may want to know more about the health benefits of RVing.
RVing is more than just something you do—it’s a lifestyle. RVing is a lifestyle that benefits your health and well-being in many ways. RVers are out on the open road, often in nature, and checking off things on their bucket list. Together, these acts contribute to overall happiness, which also positively impacts your health.
Interested in learning more about the health benefits the RV lifestyle brings with it? In this article, we’ll take a look at all the benefits that go along with RV travel, making and maintaining a bucket list, and being happy.
Health Benefits of RV Travel
Think traveling is just something you do to pass the time? Think again. It turns out traveling provides some really great health benefits. While all kinds of travel can benefit your well-being, there are specific perks that come from RV traveling. Here are the top five health benefits you can expect from RV travel.
1. Traveling Boosts Your Immune System
Traveling works to keep you healthy by boosting your immune system. By visiting new places, you’ll be exposing yourself to new germs. While this can make you want to reach for your hand sanitizer, it’s actually a great way to help your body build antibodies.
This introduction to new bacteria gets your antibody factory fired up, protecting your body from future illness. When you’re traveling, you’re frequently taking in the natural sites and spending time outdoors. It also turns out that fresh air is great for your health, aiding in digestion and improving blood pressure and your heart rate.
While you’re out and about traveling the world, you’ll also be exposing your body to different allergens. This kind of exposure helps your body learn how to process these allergens. Those same allergies that kept you housebound or constantly at the pharmacy can even be significantly lessened with frequent outdoor time.
A study recently reported by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identified that children without allergies had 25 percent more allergens in their yard. Children with fewer allergens in their immediate area were more likely to have allergies.
2. Traveling Lowers Your Stress Levels
Getting out the door before you leave on a trip can certainly feel stressful. You worry about whether you’ve packed everything you need, or if you’ve unplugged all your small appliances. It’s tempting to think that traveling increases stress. In fact, it does just the opposite.
In today’s modern life, it is too easy to become caught up in the minutia. Traveling helps you leave behind those stressors behind. It encourages your mind to settle and refocus to be in the present.
A whopping 80 percent of vacationing people report they felt a significant reduction of stress after just two days of vacation. Vacation time is linked to happiness and general well-being.
If you’re hitting the open road on your own timeline and schedule for vacation, you’re cutting some of those additional, travel-related stressors out entirely. You aren’t rushing to make a flight and, if you’re full-time RV living, you already have everything you need.
Traveling with an RV can be a cost-saving experience, as well, which helps reduce finance-related stress. For a fraction of the cost of plane tickets, hotels, and destination prices, you can vacation wherever you go with your RV.
The Recreational Vehicle Industry Association reports that RV travelers spend 23–59 percent less on vacations. Having an affordable way to travel means you won’t need to skip a vacation or cut back on its length.
3. RV Travel Can Help You Make Healthier Choices
Whether you head out for an occasional road trip, or you’re a full-timer, RV travel has some particular perks when it comes to staying healthy. What you eat and how you sleep are top the list.
When you’re on the go, it’s easy to get stuck eating fast food. Fortunately, traveling by RV helps eliminate that need. You can stock your kitchen area and reach for healthy foods and fresh produce when you’re hungry. You’re likely working with a smaller space, which will keep you from buying bulk snack foods and have you eating healthy alternatives.
A healthy diet works to keep your overall health on track. You can even reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease by 4 percent for each additional fruit or vegetable serving you eat per day. Smart snack choices will help you maintain a lower weight, as well. Cardiovascular disease is 10 times more likely in obese people, so keeping yourself at an appropriate weight is ideal.
Looking for more ways to improve your health? In addition to your travel diet, RV travel allows you to sleep in your own bed every night, even as you’re seeing the world. Sleep is key to great health and is linked to crucial elements, like productivity and helping to prevent obesity.
Sleeping in your own bed can help you get the sleep your body needs. You’ll be able to choose your own mattress, your own pillows, and linens that you love. This keeps you comfortable and promotes good quality sleep. You can say goodbye to paying additional money for late checkouts so you can sleep in.
When you travel in your RV, you’ll also be able to stick to your own sleep schedule which can help you get consistent, good-quality sleep.
Another reason not to feel bad about scheduling in that extra sleep? Drivers who sleep six to seven hours a night are twice as likely to have a sleep-related driving accident than those sleeping eight hours or more.
4. RV Travel Can Lead to a Longer Life
You’re in charge of your own destiny when it comes to traveling with your RV. See a promising road stop that’s 100 miles out of the way? Go ahead and take that detour. It turns out that feeling in control of your own destiny can actually prolong your life and reduces the risk of dying by 13 percent.
Making small adjustments that suit you and your needs results in improved happiness and less stress. So stay an extra day at that RV park and soak up the rays at the swimming pool. Or call it an early night so you can enjoy a cup of coffee and listen to the rain on your roof. Life on the road can be everything and anything you want it to be.
Health Benefits of Bucket Lists
Do you have a bucket list of your own? A bucket list identifies all those fun and challenging things you want to do or accomplish before you die? It may seem morbid, but it turns out that having a bucket list can also benefit your health.
5. A Bucket List Encourages Emotional and Mental Health
Yes, life has meaning without a bucket list. But the day-to-day grind can weigh you down and let you lose track of your priorities. Creating a bucket list can help you live more intentionally and make the way you spend your time more meaningful.
To get the most out of your bucket list, take into account the skills you want to learn and the experiences you want to have. Don’t make the list just to check off location visits. Instead, make your bucket list about personal growth and desired adventures.
6. Bucket Lists Give a Sense of Purpose and Improve Focus
A bucket list can provide an organized look at what you want to accomplish. This helps you keep track of what’s important to you, and helps you achieve your goals.
Listing your goals can also help you identify a path toward achieving them. Don’t let things become something you “used to want to do.” Instead, use that written list to push you into action and give you the motivation you need to see results.
Start checking things off your bucket list and you may discover you’re happier and more fulfilled, which leads to health benefits of its own.
7. Bucket Lists Help You Get More Done
Have fleeting thoughts or plans you think you’ll return to one day when there’s more time, money, or energy? It’s possible you’ll miss your opportunity to hone in on identifying them and creating a plan to tackle them.
Having a bucket list helps ensure you don’t forget the things you want to pursue. That checklist is always there for you to turn to in the future. Writing down your intentions means they are more likely to happen.
Did you know that planning and anticipating a vacation is frequently more satisfying than actually being on vacation? The same is true for bucket lists—simply having a bucket list inspires positive results, whether you’re currently able to tick things off it or not.
And if you do happen to be making your way quickly through your bucket list? Well, that’s great news, because it offers you the opportunity to keep adding things to your list. You’ll probably add new items as you go along anyway because experiences tend to encourage further exploration and inspire new ideas.
Health Benefits of Being A Happy Camper
You may think that happiness is just a state of being. It turns out that happiness can actually have a real impact on your physical well-being, too. Here are a few of the great benefits being happy can give to you.
8. Happiness Helps Prevent Disease and Disability
A person who’s happy experiences less anxiety, and unhappiness. In turn, this works to lower stress—especially prolonged periods of stress that can prove toxic for your body and health.
Sustained exposure to negative emotions and stress can increase the likelihood of illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. The happiest people are actually 22 percent less likely to develop cardiovascular disease. There’s even evidence that happiness can prevent cancers.
Happiness also works to prevent the continued progress of other diseases by keeping inflammation in check. In the case of recovery or treatment, being happy can also increase the likelihood of quick and successful healing.
9. Happiness Helps Encourage Healthy Habits
A recent study showed that people who identified as happy were more likely to eat fruits and vegetables and be more active in general. Eating fruits and vegetables can give you important nutrients that help your body run optimally. You’ll be taking in crucial dietary components like Vitamin C, calcium, potassium, and fiber.
Happier people are also more likely to engage in exercise. Endorphins are released during exercise; this helps improve your mood and keep you happy. If you’re exercising outside, you’re also likely to be taking in Vitamin D.
Vitamin D is crucial to your overall health. A deficiency in Vitamin D can be linked to depression, weight gain, and fatigue. A shocking three out of four people are deficient in Vitamin D in the United States.
Fortunately, Vitamin D is readily available to you through exposure to the sun. These are healthy habits the work to help you continue to be happy.
10. Happiness Keeps Your Heart Healthy
Having a healthy heart is crucial when it comes to longevity and a healthy lifestyle. Happiness works to keep your heart healthy.
Negative emotions, including depression, anger, sadness, and hostility, are contributing factors to heart attack and stroke. The inverse of this is that happiness helps protect the heart. Recent studies indicate that the happiest people are almost a quarter less likely to develop heart disease.
See the glass half-full instead of half-empty and intentionally embrace positivity. You may be surprised at how it changes your life (and your health) for the better.
11. Happy People Live Better Quality Lives
Not only do happy people live longer lives, but their quality of life is also greater. Of course, happiness is better for our emotional and mental well-being. But happiness also has an impact on our physical being as well.
Happy people retain their physicality better as they age. Being independent and active has been linked to living a longer life as well. A recent study actually determined that those who said they were happiest had a 35 percent less chance of dying prematurely.
Research also shows that happiness can help engage the brain by creating joy and positivity. Having a positive attitude and experiencing joy can help chase away stress and limit your negative emotions.
An optimistic, happy attitude, has actually been linked to a drop in risk of death through disease. Recent research indicates that happy people have a 16 percent less chance of dying from cancer. They also experience 38 percent less risk of dying from respiratory disease and a 52 percent less chance of dying from an infection.
RV Living and Travel Has Undeniable Health Benefits
It’s evident that a wealth of health benefits can be found through embracing the RV lifestyle. Choosing to RV does more than give you the opportunity to see the world, it gives you the opportunity to live a longer and healthier life.