Norman C. Hill is a retired ExxonMobil executive, author of several self-help books and university lecturer.

As a teenager, I wondered if I would ever have the chance to fly in an airplane. I was 21 before I took my first airplane flight.

I've flown a lot more since then -- including one business trip where I literally flew around the world on the same flight, only stopping occasionally at designated cities along the way.

Now, teens and younger children fly by themselves and think nothing of it.

Air travel has become second nature for most of us and has burgeoned in recent years. For instance, in 1980, airlines flew 800 million passengers globally. In 2019, they flew a whooping 4.6 billion of them.

That's a lot of people flying the friendly skies.

Is it too many? Some people think so. Overtourism to popular tourist destinations like Rome, Paris and Tokyo makes it more likely you will meet other travelers than you will meet locals.

And what about the hassles of flying? Flight delays, airport security, crowded plans, and the like can all make travel challenging.

And what about all those time zone changes and interrupted sleep patterns?

Can that all be good for us?

New research suggests the answer is "yes," traveling may be an important way to slow down the aging process and revitalize our outlook. Researchers from Australia writing in Science Daily have concluded that by stimulating stress responses and elevating metabolic rates, traveling can positively influence the body's natural self-organizing capabilities.

These events and responses trigger an adaptive immune system response, they say. According to the researchers, "Put simply, the body's self-defense system becomes more resilient. Hormones conducive to tissue repair and regeneration may be released and promote self-healing functions.

So, beyond the mental health benefits of getting away and relaxing, travel actually triggers physical responses in our physical bodies that enable our immune system not only to kick in but also recharge. Despite the weariness that may sometimes come with travel, we get an extra boost from our hormones that help us resist ordinary diseases.

Besides these scientific benefits, the many benefits of travel have long been noted by celebrities and ordinary people alike.

Centuries ago, Augustine wrote that "the world is like a book and those who do not travel read only one page. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the so-called Grand Tour -- what today might be called a gap year -- was the hallmark of education. Without firsthand observation of other places, a person's education was considered incomplete.

As Mark Twain wrote: Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.

Traveling can be the midwife of new outlooks, new perspectives -- about ourselves and others.

Of course, the mindset we have when we travel likely affects both what we see and how much we enjoy it, writes Alain de Botton in his well-read book "The Art of Travel."

He emphasizes that when traveling we discover more when we learn about a place beforehand and limit our perceptions on how things "should" look or sound or smell.

Each year, a few tourists are treated for what is called the Paris syndrome: extreme disappointment that the Eiffel Tower and other historic buildings are not bigger, classier, taller -- like they appear in postcards. "A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity," du Botton writes, "so new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain."

Travel gets me out of my comfort zone, Kris Garn Lewis says. "I not only see new places, but I also see myself in new ways. It's not the same as reading about them. When I experience a new place, I have a visceral response to people sitting on a park bench, eating on a sidewalk café, or talking to their children. It's more than seeing and hearing, it's connecting on a unique personal level. It never ceases to amaze me that I am changed with each of these encounters in various ways large and small."

Columbia University professor Adam Galinsky agrees that international travel can have multiple benefits if we really engage with the local culture of the places we visit.

Galinsky states, "Foreign experiences increase both cognitive flexibility and depth and integrativeness of thought."

Whoa, "intregativeness of thought"? Is integrativeness even a real word? Spell check on my computer says "no" but apparently it is used in academic circles when nothing else will quite do, like such words as combining or unifying or consolidating.

Travelers, unlike tourists, are curious. They don't just take photos, they ask questions about people, places and preferences.

Larry Grossman, who has seen all of National Geographic's "50 Places of a Lifetime," says travel is more than taking a journey, it is a way of living. "It's like reading a really good book," he says. "There's unexpected twists and turns, character development, exciting action and some resolution at the end. Travel is the same."

But this can only happen if a traveler really engages with the local culture and environment. Interestingly, Galinsky also found that such travel increases our sense of trust not only of foreigners but also of people back home. It seems the more we learn to trust others in a foreign country the easier it is to trust neighbors in our own backyard.

Now, there's something we can all use: more trust among our neighbors, more willingness to see their peculiarities as part of the culture they experienced growing up. Maybe we don't even have to leave home to experience the benefits of travel, maybe we can just be curious about others around us.

It could make us more trusting, more curious, and create a new set of memories and postcards we can show our children and grandchildren.