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Travel Survival Tips
Reviewed By: Illness can quickly turn your travel dreams into a nightmare. Traveler's diarrhea, motion sickness and other maladies can afflict veteran road warriors and accidental tourists alike. Don't let worries about illness keep you from pursuing your wanderlust. A few simple self-care measures can successfully banish most travel-related health problems. If such treatments fail to relieve symptoms, consult a doctor. Motion sickness Whether you travel by car, plane or boat, you are vulnerable to symptoms of dizziness, lightheadedness and imbalance known as motion sickness. This occurs when your central nervous system receives conflicting information from your receptors, including your eyes and your inner ears. One of the best ways to avoid motion sickness is to keep your eyes pointed in the same direction as you are traveling. This includes sitting in the front seat of a car and looking straight ahead, standing on deck of a ship and looking forward or looking out the window of an airplane. Other tips for avoiding motion sickness while traveling include:
Should you munch on soda crackers or drink a soda to settle your stomach? Possibly, but these popular remedies have not been scientifically tested. Jet lag If you are traveling to a destination outside your time zone, you may end up sleepier than normal, or tired at odd times, such as the middle of the day. Jet lag occurs when your body's internal clock, known as the circadian rhythm, falls out of synch with the local time zone. Preparation is the best way to blunt the impact of jet lag. Schedule your trip so that you arrive early in the evening (local time). Try to make sure you are well-rested before you start your trip—beginning with a sleep deficit will only make jet lag worse. It helps to get up and go to bed either earlier (for eastbound trips) or later (for westbound trips) for a few days prior to departure. When you arrive in the new time zone, try to stay up until at least 10 p.m. local time before going to sleep. Other tips include:
Traveler's diarrhea Most people get this intestinal illness after consuming contaminated food or water. You are especially vulnerable when traveling to developing countries. If you do get traveler's diarrhea make sure to keep yourself hydrated. Drinking plenty of safe water and rehydration solutions helps to replace nutrients lost to diarrhea. Fortunately, there are many ways to avoid traveler's diarrhea. Antibiotics and certain medicines given through shots may reduce your vulnerability. Be sure to visit your doctor at least a month before you leave to ensure that these medicines are at their most effective when you travel. After you have touched down at your travel destination, avoid all tap water. Drink bottled water only, even if you are just brushing your teeth. Do not swallow water while showering. If you must drink tap water, be sure to bring it to a rolling boil for at least one minute, or up to three minutes at higher elevations. Allow the water to cool before drinking it. Using a portable water filter capable of filtering out parasites and bacteria is another option. However, viruses that cause diarrhea cannot be removed with these filters. Other tips for avoiding traveler's diarrhea include:
Altitude sickness Symptoms of illness may occur whenever you are at a higher-than-normal altitude. Altitude sickness strikes people who are hiking up the Himalayan Mountains, but it also can afflict a business traveler from the plains of Kansas who finds herself staying in mile-high Denver for a few days. At higher altitudes, the air is drier and has both a reduced oxygen content and lower barometric pressure. If you aren't used to these conditions, you may experience symptoms such as:
Usually, altitude sickness does not kick in until a person is at an altitude of between 5,000 feet (1,524 meters) and 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) or higher. Altitude sickness is typically harmless and quickly passes as a person adjusts to the new environment. However, in rare cases it can cause potentially fatal complications in the brain and lungs. For this reason, you should not ignore symptoms of altitude sickness. To prevent altitude sickness, try to avoid strenuous activities for the first few days at your destination until your body acclimates. Staying hydrated can help prevent altitude sickness and it helps you acclimatize to high altitudes. Avoiding alcohol and other depressant drugs is also important in prevention. If you begin to feel ill, get to a lower elevation. For example, if you are staying at a ski lodge in the mountains, check out of your room and into a hotel a few thousand feet lower. Deep vein thrombosis Sitting in the same position for a long period of time can lead to a condition known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT). This occurs when a blood clot develops deep within veins of the muscles, usually in the calf or thigh. In some cases, this causes the leg to swell, but in other cases it may not cause any obvious symptoms. DVT is potentially dangerous because a piece of the blood clot can break off and travel to the lungs, resulting in what is called a pulmonary embolism. This condition can be fatal. Brief flights of an hour or two are unlikely to raise a person's risk for DVT. However, longer flights do pose significant danger to people who sit still without moving around. Long car trips and other journeys pose similar risks to those who remain in the same position for long periods of time. Fortunately, you can take precautions to avoid clotting. These include:
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