Perhaps it's a case of 'leisure sickness'

Ad Vingerhoets, an associate professor of clinical health psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, calls it "leisure sickness." Just when you take a break from your busy schedule to enjoy a little relaxation, your leisure time becomes anything but -- full of aches and pains, cold- and flu-like symptoms and other health complaints.

Bummer.

"The simple idea we have -- that when you are busy, your body is activated, and when you are not busy and have nothing to do, your body is relaxed -- is simply not the whole story," Vingerhoets says. "For some people, [a holiday or vacation] seems to be pathogenic."

Some say this is pop psychology, and there are experts who are skeptical. However, even some who dismiss leisure sickness as a wastebasket diagnosis concede there is science to support the idea that unwinding is difficult for many of us.

The underlying cause of the problem, according to Vingerhoets, appears to have a lot to do with stress. He has been fielding calls about the theory since 2001, when his team of researchers reported on their survey of 1,893 Dutch people in which about 3% of respondents indicated that they seldom felt ill during work days but got sick during weekends and vacations. Many attributed their symptoms to difficulties transitioning from work to non-work, to stress associated with travel and to balancing a heavy workload.

Respondents who identified themselves as workaholics or perfectionists tended to have a much harder time.

Most explanations for the phenomenon remain unproven.

Paul Rosch, president of the American Institute of Stress in Yonkers, N.Y., and a professor at New York Medical College who has been involved in stress research for more than 50 years, is one of the skeptics. An inability to relax on vacations and holidays has long been a well-known characteristic of Type A behavior, he says.

Leisure represents a time when Type A people are not in control, Rosch explains; the headaches, nausea and fatigue they might experience are a response to this stress. "It's all psychosomatic . . . not a bona fide diagnosis," he says.