Healthy Lombard - Addressing Childhood Obesity & Promoting Healthy Lifestyle

MELISSA LOCKER wrote for Southern Living the following article that was recently published in Costal Living. She writes that when you’re on vacation on St. Simon’s Island, sitting by the water in Hilton Head, or Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, it’s easy to feel like you don’t have a care in the world. It’s not just the fact that you’re on vacation that is relaxing, though, but the ocean itself. According to several scientific studies, the beach is good for the brain as it makes happy, relaxed, and reenergized.

In a 2011 study, researchers at Washington University and UC Irvine asked over 1,000 beachgoers about their mental state before and after trips to the ocean. They found that beach trips reduce stress, increase creativity, and can reduce feelings of depression and anxiety and were overall restorative for our psychological well-being. Those who experienced more stress and fatigue in their daily life found the beach the most reinvigorating. As for conditions, they found that mild temperatures, low tides, and sparse crowds were the best conditions for restoration, which sounds like a great reason to visit the beach off-season. While the researchers focused on California beaches, there’s no reason the same theory wouldn’t apply to the Gulf Coast, the Outer Banks, or the Florida Keys.