Medical Tourism: America’s Top Killer on the Run from Vacationers

The Case for Medical Travel

Holiday trips should really be classified as medical travel because they help people lessen their chances of contracting heart disease, America’s top killer.  In his book, “Go Away: Just for the Health of It,” Dr. Mel Borins claims that vacations help fight off heart disease, migraines, and other ailments.   He describes how long-term exposure to stress worsens a person’s health. It causes the body to release excessive levels of protective or defensive chemicals and hormones, and to restrict blood circulation.  A normal amount of these emissions helps us cope with stressful situations, but constant stress, and hence a regular release of these chemicals and hormones, affect a person’s health negatively. Removing oneself from these stressful situations allows the body to curb the flow of excessive hormones and to recover from their damaging effects.    Taking advantage of medical tourism and getting away from such daily stressful situations is, therefore, an excellent means of improving one’s health.

A Medical Tourism Package Can Extend your Lifespan

In fact, two studies, one on men and the other on women, have established that those who took regular vacations were less likely to die of a heart attack than those who did not.  A medical tourism package can thus increase the lifespan of people who, according to the study, otherwise greatly increased their risk of dying from heart disease if they vacationed only rarely.

Medical Tourism as Therapy

According to Borins, the best type of medical tourism is one that involves traveling.   And, indeed, your medical travel could include an extended trip that removes you from your immediate sources of stress. Your medical tourism package could be an extended trip to an exotic location where you are pampered with 5 star treatments and visits to spas and health centers. But whatever the type of medical tourism one ultimately decides on, Borins strongly believes that this stress-reducing medical travel should allow for “uncluttered time,” to put one’s troubles into better perspective and to help one’s body “work out its kinks.”  A medical tourism package could, therefore, be an excellent alternative to medicine!

Source: Deborah Sanborn, “Traveller Heal Thyself”, OutPost, November 30, 2006