The next tool in the fight against aging might not come from a lab or a pharmacy shelf — it might come from a suitcase. Researchers at Edith Cowan University have proposed something counterintuitive: that the right kind of travel could help slow some signs of how the body ages.
To get there, they borrowed a concept from physics. In a study published in the Journal of Travel Research, the team applied the theory of entropy — the universe’s natural drift toward disorder — to tourism. The question they set out to explore: can something as ordinary as a vacation actually influence how the body ages? The answer, it turns out, is more nuanced than a simple yes.
When physics meets tourism: the entropy framework
Entropy, in physics, describes the universe’s relentless pull toward disorder. Left alone, organized systems break down. Researchers at Edith Cowan University asked whether that same principle could explain what happens inside the human body as it ages — and whether travel might push back against it.
The 2024 study in the Journal of Travel Research, led by ECU PhD candidate Fangli Hu, proposed exactly that. Positive travel experiences, the researchers argued, may help the body resist its natural drift toward biological disorder, supporting the self-organizing processes that keep systems functioning well. The work draws deliberately on physics, tourism science, and health research in combination.
The scope matters here. The study doesn’t claim travel stops aging — that process, as Hu noted, is irreversible. What it proposes is more modest but still meaningful: that the right kind of travel may help slow some signs of aging by keeping the body better organized and more resilient.
Four body systems that travel may influence
The researchers identified four major body systems that positive travel experiences may affect. First, novel environments can raise metabolic activity and activate the self-organizing biological processes that help keep cells and tissues functioning efficiently.
Second, unfamiliar surroundings may engage the adaptive immune system — the part of the body’s defenses that learns to recognize and respond to new threats. According to Hu, this can make the body’s self-defense system more resilient over time. Third, relaxing travel experiences may reduce chronic stress and calm an overactive immune response, easing the kind of persistent inflammation that researchers associate with accelerated aging.
Fourth, restorative travel may trigger the release of hormones linked to tissue repair and regeneration. As Hu put it, these hormones may “promote the self-healing system’s functioning” — supporting the body’s ability to recover and maintain itself.
Movement, social connection, and the active ingredients of a healthy trip
Travel is rarely passive. Most trips involve far more physical movement than a typical workday — walking through cities, hiking trails, or simply spending long hours on your feet. That activity has real biological consequences. Hu noted that moderate exercise can improve blood circulation, accelerate nutrient transport, and support waste elimination, all of which contribute to the body’s repair and resilience systems. Bones, muscles, and joints benefit from consistent moderate movement too.
Beyond the physical, travel tends to generate social interaction and positive emotions — factors that already appear in established wellness research. These elements align closely with what researchers in wellness tourism, health tourism, and yoga tourism have long identified as meaningful contributors to well-being. The entropy framework gives those familiar observations a new theoretical foundation.
An emerging field with open questions
The 2024 study opened a conversation that subsequent research has continued carefully. Follow-up work published in 2025 described travel therapy as a promising but still-emerging approach, emphasizing the importance of weighing potential benefits against real risks. A separate 2025 paper called for closer collaboration between travel medicine and tourism research — fields that have historically operated in parallel rather than together.
A 2025 systematic review found that the intersection of tourism and healthy aging remains underexplored, with researchers calling for stronger methods and clearer research directions. Scientists are still working to understand how significant these effects are and which travelers benefit most.
Not every trip is therapeutic
The same researchers who proposed travel’s potential benefits were careful to flag its risks. Poorly planned, stressful, or unsafe travel can push the body in the opposite direction — increasing entropy rather than reducing it. Infectious diseases, accidents, unsafe food or water, and exposure to violence are all documented hazards that can harm health rather than support it.
Hu cited COVID-19 as a clear illustration of how tourism can become a vector for serious public health harm. The point isn’t to discourage travel, but to underscore that the benefits the study describes are conditional — dependent on the quality, safety, and character of the experience itself.
That distinction is worth sitting with. The idea that a well-planned vacation might support healthier aging challenges how most people think about both travel and longevity. It suggests the two aren’t as separate as they seem — and that how we rest, move, and connect with the world around us may matter more to our biology than we’ve previously appreciated.