13 Tips To Avoid Getting Sick While Traveling
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There are many reasons why you get sick while traveling. Minimizing these reasons increases the quality of your travel.
We encounter many new environments in our domestic and international travels. New food, water, or climate, plus a busy schedule and insomnia. These are all factors that our body is not used to. Our bodies can become non-self-sufficient and tired while fighting them.
You don’t want your holiday to go bad, which you perhaps have only once a year. You can’t rely on the health system of a place you’ll visit for the first time, either. I will give some tips to avoid all these situations and have a pleasant holiday.
13 Tips To Avoid Getting Sick While You’re Traveling
1. Prepare Your Body for Travel Early
48 hours before the trip is enough time to get prepared. Do not forget to sleep eight hours a day and consume plenty of fluids during this period. It is essential to prepare your body before the trip so that your body starts the travel with a strong body and does not get tired.
2. Drink Enough Water
Drinking water is one of the things you need to do to stay active and healthy. Your body needs to stay hydrated to function properly. You should also pay attention to this during your travels. To stay active and explore more places, you need to drink a few liters of water daily. If you are in a very hot place, you can increase water consumption.
3. Get Enough Sleep While Traveling
It is crucial not to be sleep-deprived during the trip so that your resistance does not decrease. Your body's defense mechanism weakens when you are sleep-deprived. Because of this, you start to feel exhausted. Its immunity also decreases proportionally. If you want to travel and have more fun while traveling, I recommend you to sleep balanced at night.
4. Wash Your Hands Often
Keeping hands clean significantly prevents germs from entering the body. The whole world especially saw how important it is to wash hands during COVID-19. Washing your hands helps reduce germs that cause diarrheal infections and respiratory diseases. People touch their faces about 16 times per hour. For this reason, wash your hands frequently with soap to minimize the germs you get into your body while traveling.
How to stay healthy on the road
5. Carry Hand Sanitizer With You
The healthiest way to keep hands clean is to wash them with soap. But if you’re not close to clean water during your trip, hand sanitizer gels can also help to keep your hands clean. Hand sanitizers are usually produced in travel-size bottles to carry them in your purse easily. In particular, you should use hand sanitizer after going to the toilet, before and after eating, and after touching areas of high contact, such as public transport and doorknobs.
6. Keep Your Distance From People
This concept differs significantly from country to country. In some cultures, personal space is significant, and everyone respects it. On the other hand, people are more warm-blooded and love physical contact, especially in Mediterranean cultures. But now, after the increase in infectious diseases, it has become necessary to keep a distance from others. It is essential to maintain an average length of 1.5 meters.
7. Carry Face Masks
The face mask, which was widely used in Asian countries before COVID-19, is now widely used worldwide. Probably, as the contagiousness of the coronavirus decreases, masks will also decrease. However, people are warming to the idea of wearing masks while traveling. Because you should also protect yourself against other infectious diseases in closed areas such as buses or planes, where you come in close contact with people. Also, you can easily use surgical masks instead of equipped masks such as N95.
8. Watch Out What You Eat
The most common illnesses during travel are gastrointestinal problems and diarrhea. To avoid these, you need to know the ingredients of what you eat. Foods that are fresh and well cooked and fresh also reduce the risk of food poisoning. Also, when salads and vegetables are not washed well and are made in dirty areas, the risk of transmission of parasites is high. You can avoid such foods. In the same way, you can wipe the cutlery you will use with a napkin.
9. Have Well-Balanced Meals
Many people stop paying attention to what they eat and drink while on vacation and enjoy the buffet. However, consuming so much food at once can disrupt the digestive system and health. For this reason, you should eat in normal portions while traveling and consume clean vegetables and fruits to keep the immune system strong.
10. Consume Bottled Water
Many people do not know where clean water comes from where they travel. Although tap water is clean in developed countries, it may not be clean in less developed countries. Even if the people living in the area drink from the tap, it may not be a problem because they are immune to the bacteria in the water. Also, even ice in drinks can be dangerous. Consuming bottled water for brushing your teeth or drinking water is always a reliable option. If there are drops of water on the cutlery where you eat, you should also dry them. Dirty water in cutlery rather than food also increases the risk of poisoning.
11. Boost Your Immune System
Prepare your body with probiotics before travel to facilitate digestion against foods that may harm you during travel. Taking probiotics and prebiotics will help reduce stomach aches and food poisoning and facilitate nutrient absorption. Probiotics are good bacteria that aid digestion. Prebiotics are the food source of these good bacteria. You can get probiotics that are good for you by consulting your doctor or pharmacist.
12. Get Vaccinated Before Travel
Getting vaccinated is one of the best ways to prevent getting sick and provide protection. You should talk to your doctor about which vaccinations you should have depending on where you travel. I would also recommend checking the vaccinations required according to the country you go to. Most governments require that visitors get their COVID-19 vaccine before they can enter the country.
13. Take Time for Yourself To Relax
People usually return from vacation the day before they start work or school. Because they want to experience their travels to the maximum extent, however, going to work or school as soon as you return from travel means you can’t even get rid of road fatigue. This causes you to feel exhausted and tired for days. For this reason, I recommend that you take a few days for yourself to rest and heal after your trip.
The Bottom Line
There you have it! I’ve tried to give you some tips to help you avoid getting sick while you travel. Hope this will be helpful and all your travels will be safe! Enjoy traveling!
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I avoid catching a cold while traveling?
You can avoid catching a cold by eating and sleeping regularly during travel, paying attention to the cleanliness of food and drinking water, consuming plenty of water, strengthening immunity with probiotics, and vaccinating before travel.
Is it common to get sick while traveling?
Yes, it is widespread to be sick while traveling. Because people ignore what they eat on holiday, they prefer to have fun instead of sleeping, and they do not care about body cleaning. Because of the excitement and happiness of travel, they tend to ignore essential points.
How do I prepare my immune system for travel?
You can prepare your body by resting and adjusting your sleep patterns 48 hours before traveling. You can get vaccinated according to your destination. You can also prepare your body for the bacteria you will encounter with probiotics and prebiotics before you go.
Why do I get sick whenever I travel?
While traveling, you are exposed to things you are not used to and are not immune to. When faced with new foods, water, and climate, your body reacts, and immunity decreases. In addition, sleep deprivation and an unbalanced diet during travel also reduce resistance. These cases make it easier for you to get sick while traveling.
Does flying lower your immune system?
Many factors suppress the immune system while on an airplane. Your body needs to be supported in different ways when flying at 30,000 ft. Because of this suppression, your immune system may decrease.