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The Hamilton-inspired reason you need to take a vacation
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If you haven't yet taken a vacation, Alexander Hamilton has some advice for you. Start planning one, or there will be consequences to your health and your family life. - photo by Jennifer Graham
More than 40 percent of Americans don't take the vacation days they've accrued. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton was among them, with catastrophic consequences we can learn from today.

In the smash-hit musical he composed about Hamilton's life, Lin-Manuel Miranda suggests that things might have gone differently for the perpetually exhausted treasury secretary had he heeded his wife's plea to take a family vacation in the summer of 1791.

Instead, Hamilton declined to go to New York with his wife, saying he was too busy with work. It was a decision that led to a disastrous affair and perhaps even that deadly duel with Aaron Burr, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington wrote after an interview with Miranda.

"Like other burnout aficionados, Hamilton was selling himself short. Contrary to all our collective delusions, he was successful not because of his overwork and burnout, but in spite of them. And perhaps if hed listened to Elizas advice to take a break, hed have had more time to build the nation he was so devoted to," Huffington wrote.

Miranda himself is proof of the regenerative powers of taking time off. He got the idea for "Hamilton" when he was reading Ron Chernow's biography of Hamilton while on vacation in Mexico in 2008.

"The moment my brain got a moment's rest, 'Hamilton' walked into it," Miranda told Huffington.

This kind of experience was confirmed by Saint Louis University psychologist Matthew J. Grawitch on NPRs Morning Edition. When workers come back from vacation, they have more energy, they tend to be more replenished and feel more engaged in their work, Grawitch told NPR reporter Patti Neighmond.

This month in Real Simple magazine, sociologist Christine Carter explains why: "When you're on vacation, the part of your brain responsible for creative insight comes alive and draws connections between things it didn't previously connect. That's why people often have aha moments when they return to work," she wrote.

Carter, the author of "The Sweet Spot, How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work," notes on her website that there are three essential components to a regenerative vacation.

First, you have to do no work: "None. Zip. Nada."

"While you might be able to work from your vacation, you wont reap the many benefits of a vacation if you do so," Carter says.

Second, you need to plan the right kind of vacation, one that's more about nourishing you and your family than returning with photos that look good on Facebook, and one that has plenty of downtime.

And finally, take steps to ensure your re-entry into work or family life isn't marred by stressful return travel or a day packed with appointments and meetings. "Give yourself time to get back into the swing of things," Carter advises.

If you know all the benefits of a vacation, but still find it difficult to get away with your family, there's an easy first step: Make a plan.

According to the website Project: Time Off, 69 percent of people who plan their vacations take a week or more of vacation at one time; only 46 percent of people who haphazardly take time off take that amount of time.
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From the book 'Outliers' comes proof that good health is more than just genetics
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Friends Jim Young, left, Mike Natale, Jeff Natale and Ryan Kiernan were on Greenwich High School football team together and Jim and Mike were captains. Jim, who was the youngest in Sherry Young's family, was welcome in the homes of the other three boys who still had siblings around and grandparents near. - photo by Sherry Young
As I look back on my life and the lives of others, both personally and in the reading I have done, I am convinced of the necessity of positive human contact in our lives. We are doubly blessed when we are able to make good friends or are a part of a family where we are accepted and loved.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers tells of a time in the 1950s when Dr. Stewart Wolf met a physician who practiced in the area of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Roseto was settled by a group of Italian families from Roseto, Italy, who re-created their life again in America.

This was in the 1950s before drugs and measures to prevent heart disease became important. In their conversation the physician said, You know, Ive been practicing for 17 years. I get patients from all over, and I rarely find anyone from Roseto under the age of 65 with heart disease.

Wolf was surprised by these words as, It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease.

Wolf enlisted the aid of a sociologist and friend John Bruhn to help him. They found, There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didnt have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didnt have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. Thats it.

They checked into diet, genetics and possibilities of something in the foothills of eastern Pennsylvania but nothing made sense.

What they found was that Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. (Researchers) learned about the extended family clans that underlay the towns social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.

What they found eventually convinced the medical establishment to look beyond the individual and understand the culture people are part of their friends, families and town they came from. They determined that the people we surround ourselves with and the values of the world we inhabit have a profound effect on who we are.

Likely, this study could have been done with other ethnicities. However, my family's experiences with the Italian families in Connecticut ring true to the study. Our hungry and growing sons, especially our youngest son, Jim, who was left home alone with two beady-eyed parents, all had some memorable experiences being fed and loved in the Cos Cob multigenerational families. Proof of the African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child.

We live in an age when the contact we have with people often is on the internet, and many of us live among strangers. Unless we make the effort to reach out, we will become isolated, especially as we age. The Rosetan study is proof that reaching out and communicating may be good for our health.
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