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Why 'high-performers' get sick as soon as they go on vacation
New York Post • • health
Key Points:
- High-achieving individuals, especially women, often report getting sick shortly after starting a vacation, a pattern linked to the "let-down effect" where the body crashes after prolonged stress.
- Chronic stress keeps cortisol levels high, allowing people to push through exhaustion, but when they finally relax, symptoms like sore throat, headache, and fatigue emerge as the immune system rebounds.
- Experts caution that while the phenomenon, sometimes called leisure sickness, is biologically plausible, it is not an official medical diagnosis and research on it remains limited.
- Anyone under prolonged stress—not just high-achieving women—can experience this rebound effect, which may reveal latent illnesses or trigger inflammatory responses once stress drops.
- To mitigate vacation-related illness, experts recommend easing into time off by gradually reducing work, protecting sleep, staying hydrated, avoiding drastic changes in caffeine or alcohol intake, incorporating light activity, and allowing for decompression days.
