The odd and embarrassing causes of leisure sickness

Those of us who fall ill as soon as we stop work may need to rethink our approach to life. Photo / 123RF

Pack bags. Go to beach. Get sick. For as long as I can remember, this has been the pattern of too many of my summer holidays.

It does not even need to be summer. One Friday afternoon late last year, just as I wrote the final paragraph of a story I had frantically typed out on the plane home after a busy work trip abroad, I began to sniffle. By 10pm, all hope of a cheering weekend off had been killed by a sore throat, temperature and cough. I was in bed until Monday.

The other week, as summer holidays loomed, I told a couple of work colleagues I might look into whether there was any scientific basis for this holiday illness thing. “Do it!” they said, adding it happened to them all the time.

Word spread. Less than an hour later, another colleague from the other side of the building approached me in the office kitchen and said he was thrilled to hear I was investigating a condition he regularly suffered from himself.

Considering all this, imagine my surprise when I tracked down the amiable Dutch research psychologist credited with coining the term “leisure sickness”, more than 20 years ago, and discovered the condition might not, as it were, exist.

“Some people don’t agree it is a real disorder,” Professor Ad Vingerhoets told me in what turned out to be the first of two striking revelations.

Before I get to the second one, it is worth saying that Vingerhoets’ research suggests leisure illness is a real condition that should be taken seriously, but also a confusing one because symptoms vary considerably.

When he and colleagues surveyed more than 1800 people about the problem, they found around 3% had experienced it. Some fell ill just before the weekend, others at the start of a vacation. Common symptoms included headaches, fatigue, muscular pains and nausea. Colds and flu-like bugs often afflicted people on holiday. A more recent study by academics in Austria uncovered ear problems.

Vingerhoets started studying the phenomenon after realising that when he got ill himself, it was often over the Christmas and New Year break. At other times, ailments started on a Friday afternoon and vanished by Monday.

He realised the problem was more widespread when he ran into a relative at a family gathering who reliably felt ill at the start of the summer holidays.

The research suggests a range of causes. The body can have greater resistance to disease when under acute stress in some cases, so perhaps we get ill once work stress subsides. Maybe we notice aches and pains once we start relaxing that made less impact when we were working. Or perhaps the stress of work raises adrenaline levels that upset the immune system or spark leisure sickness symptoms.

Vingerhoets recommends a workout on Friday afternoons, or just before heading on vacation, on the grounds that it could lower adrenaline levels.

But he told me the data suggested another important cause that all sufferers should consider, which is where our conversation took a strikingly unexpected turn.

“There are good reasons to think that the people who are especially at risk are workaholics,” he told me. This included perfectionists who are married to their work, he added, “and people who musturbate”.

“Who what?” I said. “Musturbate,” he repeated, explaining this was a term from psychology that referred to people who felt they must be the best at work, or must be the most loved, or must be generally excellent.

I was sure he was joking about this but it turns out he was not. The idea of musturbation is attributed to a late US psychotherapist named Albert Ellis. It’s defined in the American Psychology Association’s online Dictionary of Psychology as: “The belief by some individuals that they must absolutely meet often perfectionist goals in order to achieve success, approval, or comfort.”

Vingerhoets thinks that being aware of such unhelpful tendencies is a crucial first step in overcoming leisure sickness.

I am not entirely sure this ranks as news I can use, but nor am I ruling it out. Either way, I will be giving it deep thought as I prepare to head to the beach this year, after a very long session in the gym.

Written by: Pilita Clark

© Financial Times