AND a classic: you spend months running to meet deadlines, calls and commitments, dreaming of the moment when you can finally close your laptop for your well-deserved holidays and the first day of vacationinstead of sipping a cocktail on the beach, you find yourself in bed with a thermometer under your armpit or a splitting migraine. Well, this phenomenon is often not bad luck. It is, however, Leisure Sickness, the “free time disease”.
The disease of free time: why relaxation sometimes “makes it worse”
There is a subtle, almost cruel irony in the way the human body handles rest: the moment we finally allow ourselves to stop, the organism seems to decide to break down. This phenomenon, which experts define it as Leisure Sickness, it is very similar to the reaction of a soldier who becomes ill only after the battle is over. The phenomenon is not unknown to medicine, on the contrary: it happens as long as the pressure is high, the body remains in war conditionignoring every sign of failure in the name of daily survival.
Adrenaline, a temporary shield
The adrenaline is flowing, the immune system is on maximum alert and every little ailment is put on standby in the name of productivity. It is a sort of biological truce: the body “grits its teeth” so as not to give in in times of need, buoyed by a cocktail of stress hormones that act as emergency fuel.
But biology doesn’t like sudden changes. When, however, the pace slows suddenly, that biochemical armor that has protected for months dissolves in a few hours. The immune system, left without the support of stress hormones, lowers its guard, leaving the door open to those viruses that, until the day before, had been timidly waiting.
From the pressure of the office to the silence of the beach: this is why the collapse of stress hormones can play tricks on you. (Getty Images)
In silence, the body raises its voice
Then there is another important issue and that is listening. In the frenzy of routine, the body speaks, but no one listens to it. The mind is too busy chasing notifications and goals to give any weight to neck tension or chronic fatigue.
When, however, the silence of free time replaces the noise of the office, those signals become deafening. The disease, in these cases, is not a new event, but a reality that was already present and that it was simply waiting for permission to manifest itself. The pain that was previously “background noise” becomes the protagonist of the day, as soon as attention stops being directed exclusively outward.
To avoid the disease of free time
The true reality is that the ability to rest is a skill that needs to be trained as much as resistance to work. Going from one hundred percent to total idleness is a shock for an organism used to running. This is why to prevent relaxation from turning into a hospital stay, the solution is not to avoid holidays, but to learn the art of gradual decompression.
Slow down your pace before you even leaveallow yourself small empty spaces during the year and don’t expect that a week’s vacation solves months of attritionare the real secrets to listening to your body and having a holiday worthy of the name.