Every time we turn on the TV or read the newspaper, it seems all we hear about is gas prices going up and the economy going down. With that kind of news dominating the media and the talk on the street, it seems hard to justify taking a vacation. But, in reality, it's now more than ever that we need to take a break from our stressed-out lives.

The Travel Industry Association (TIA), a non-profit trade organization that represents and speaks for the common interests of the $740 billion U.S. travel industry, recently released a host of survey results and data that shows just how important travel is and how everyone personally can benefit from taking a trip. TIA has gathered decades of research on how individuals and families benefit from traveling in the areas of health, education, career, relationship-building and creativity.

Among the findings referred to in TIA's report, “The Benefits Are Everywhere: The Personal Benefits of Travel and Taking a Vacation,” here are some of the most eye-opening:

€ An annual vacation can cut a person's risk of heart attack by 50 percent.

€ Blood pressure, heart rate, and levels of epinephrine - a stress hormone - decline on holidays of only one or two days.

€ Women who take more vacations are more satisfied with their marriages.

€ Even the anticipation of vacation travel generates an increase in positive feelings about one's life as a whole, family, economic situation and health.

€ Three out of four executives believe that vacations are necessary for them to prevent burnout (78 percent) or that vacations improve their personal job performance (75 percent).

€ Nearly as many - two out of three - believe that vacations improve their creativity (68 percent).

Overwork costs employers about $150 billion a year in stress-related absences. In fact, data shows that workers get no more done when they work 50-hour workweeks than when they work 40-hour workweeks.

The sad fact is that Americans get the least amount of vacation in the industrialized world, an average of 10 days compared to about 37 days for the French and 26 days for the British. But, even with our limited amount of travel time, we need to stop looking at vacation travel as a luxury and realize that because of the personal benefits gained, we can't afford not to travel.

I leave you with a quote from St. Augustine, that I think really says so much about the value of travel:

“The world is a book, and those that do not travel read only a page.”

Have a great summer vacation.

Meg Vanek is the executive director of the Cayuga County Office of Tourism