There’s a strong relationship between people who don’t vacay and the risk of heart disease. Data collected in 1991 from a renowned ongoing longitudinal project started in 1948, called the Framingham study, shows that female homemakers who took vacation once every six years or less had nearly twice the risk of developing heart attacks or having a fatal heart problem than those who took time off at least twice a year.
In 2012, drawing on data from another large longterm project called Whitehall II, which collects information about British civil servants, researchers from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and elsewhere found that people who worked more than 11 hours a day (compared to those who worked 7-8 hours a day) were more than twice as likely to have a major depressive episode, even in those without previous mental health issues.
The irony: people who work less hours and take vacations are more productive than workaholics and wage slaves anyway.