SUMMER HOLIDAYS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 805, 24 December 1954, Page 18

SUMMER HOLIDAYS

This is the text of a talk on health broadcast recently from ZB, YA

and YZ stations of the NZBS

by |

DR

H. B.

TURBOTT

Deputy- |

Director-General of Health

‘OUR summer holiday time is just ahead, You’ve planned and saved, and you are going to make the most of it. Well, good luck to you! The manual worker manages his holidays better than his clerical counterpart or those caught up in the business world. He is seasoned to sunshine, conditioned to physical exertion, and does not subject the body to unaccustomed strains in his holiday making. The folk I’m thinking oftypists, clerks, shop people, business executives; maybe counting pennies, maybe well-to-do-are inclined to pack into one holiday all the things they should have been doing in more leisurely spread over the months. The end result of this general overdoing of things is not recuperation but exhaustion. For people under stress in their daily life holidays are important. You don’t nave to be a business tycoon to encounter strain in daily living. Anybody shouldering responsibility, anybody having to think ,and plan, will be under stress unless there are periodic times for letting up and letting leisure mitigate anxiety and strain. The longer summer holiday should be part of this recuperative pattern, not a week or two in which to pack everything possible. The first requisite is to take that summer break,

the second is to use it wisely. Those foolish folk who carry on indefinitely, with no annual relief from stress and anxiety, ‘will end up with duodenal ulcers, serious goitre troubles, or raised blood pressure. Authorities the world over are now agreeing that a period of unrelieved strain and anxiety can cause such diseases. If this be true, the relief of stress must be deliberately planned. Holiday time plays no small part in preventing stress, When a tulip is brought from the other side of the world, planted here and deprived of its seasonal rest, it doesn’t do any good the first year with us. We also can’t perform well continuously. Whether a manual or an intellectual worker, labour must be followed by leisure, For both, the summer holiday is the one great chance to relax in leisure. The spell then does what it is meant to do, recreates one for the year ahead. If you appreciate the significance of the word "recreation," your holiday will be wisely guided towards the re-creation of yourself, physically and mentally, from the energy-sapping influences of the past year. This calls for a complete change from work. It doesn’t matter what you do, so long as it is a change. Chase the sunshine and fresh air if you are an inside worker. Play the game you want to play. But don’t do these things till you are a sunburnt wreck and tired out! If the year round you work manually in the open air, spend your holiday inside if you want to, pottering about at hobbies or mending things, reading or just loafing, or going for a quiet swim or a bit of fishing if the outdoor calls. The annual holiday is a chance for father to look after the children, get to know them, and give mother a spell from her continuous overseeing. It’s the great opportunity to do anything that you feel like doing and couldn’t get round to doing during the year. In case I’ve not made myself clear, see how a health objective in holiday time can be overdone and deplete our stores of energy! To have the sunlight play on the skin in restful relaxation makes for health, but only if in moderation, To get sunburnt spoils everything. Sunburn is an inflammatory process, the redness being followed by pain or tenderness on movement or from the pressure of clothes, blisters, flaking off of skin and final brownness. Moderation, giving the skin only what it can take without feeling hot and getting that warning blush, slowly and lightly tans. To go through first or deeper degree burns to get a heavy tan quickly drains body reserves and ends up with a skin so deeply tanned that some of its beneficial power of absorbing sunlight is lost. A health objective mismanaged! Stress is the bane of modern life. Let your annual holiday be devoted to its prevention through a mixture of leisure and the pleasurable doing of the things that satisfy you and that you want to do-but-no overdoing. of anything, your whole objective being re-creation for the year ahead.