If your job requires frequent trips to the airport, then you already know what two professors in Europe have recently demonstrated about business travel: It's not as sexy as it seems to outsiders. In fact, there's an unhealthy dark side. 

The academic research, summarized earlier this week in The Economist, takes a deep dive into that dark side. Here's a brief list of how you may be hurting yourself while flying the friendly skies: 

1. Disorientation.

This is the geographical and cultural displacement you feel when you've been in numerous places and time zones in a short period of time. "The demand to effectively operate in unfamiliar environments and navigate cultural differences can be an intensive one, particularly when business travel requires meeting rigid schedules," write professors Scott A. Cohen of the University of Surrey in the UK and Stefan Gössling of Linnaeus University in Sweden.

Plus, the small routines of your home life--the ones that normally relax and orient you, like your exercise and coffee habits--are often on hold while you're on the road. Even the act of figuring out what time it is requires a modicum of extra thought. 

2. Pre-trip anxiety. 

It's easy to feel nervous "even before movement begins, through the stress of anticipating, organizing and preparing for a trip," note Cohen and Gössling. 

Even in an era of mobile technology, travelers must tie up loose ends at the job and at home before leaving town. It's one thing when this stress precedes a vacation. But when it precedes business travel, you pay a psychological toll, because "time spent traveling will rarely be offset through a reduced workload," the professors observe.

In other words, work continues to pile on your desk while you're gone, as if you're still there.  

3. The stress of travel itself. 

When you're at home, severe weather patterns might change what you wear to work, or how you get there. When you're traveling, severe weather becomes a source of severe stress, with the potential to delay or imperil flights. 

And even when the weather is pristine, the airport is stressful. It's difficult to relax when you're going through security checks, and when you're exposed endlessly to "breaking news" on the ubiquitous television monitors.

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