How To Stay Healthy While Traveling Abroad

Traveling abroad can be a rewarding experience for many, however, the health and welfare of the traveler must be safeguarded while away from their normal surroundings. So, how do you stay Healthy While Traveling Abroad?

Each country has its own health risks and being aware and prepared is the key to staying healthy, avoiding problems, and enjoying the time away more.

In this article, we will explore some practical advice on how to stay healthy on your travels, both in preparation you might consider doing before going abroad, as well as advice on how to handle some common travel health problems.

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How to Stay Healthy While Traveling Abroad

Pre-travel Health Preparation

One of the most important things you can do to ensure a safe and healthy trip abroad is to plan ahead and protect your health. Seeing a healthcare provider before your trip for a pre-travel health check-up is critical.

Your healthcare provider will review your medical history along with your travel plans, give you any needed vaccinations, prescribe any medications, and provide advice on healthy travel.

Vaccines are the most critical aspect of preparing for a safe and healthy trip since you can avoid serious diseases that may be present at your travel destination by immunization.

You should also research health risks for the place where you will be traveling. Each region of the world has specific health problems such as infection with mosquitoes or food- and waterborne diseases.

Being able to identify these potential risks can help you to prevent illness while on your trip. Pack your own travel health kit with, for example, medications, first-aid supplies, and insect repellent to help you manage minor health problems.

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Healthy Travel Practices

When traveling, it is essential to keep good habits to avoid falling ill. Staying hydrated is very important. Although our bodies contain a large amount of water, in warm countries or on a long flight, water is lost through our bodies.

By drinking sufficient water, we can avoid dehydration. We need to regulate it carefully. It helps our body to excrete waste more effectively and quickly, ensuring that we continue functioning regularly.

Additionally, eating healthy is essential. We could be interested in trying the local cuisine. However, we also should maintain our normal diet and eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains to maintain a healthy diet.

This helps us not to gain so much weight compared to living in your usual country.

This is especially important when it comes to jet lag, where adjusting your sleep schedule to fit the itinerary – for example, arriving in Zurich in the evening and waking early – will prevent you from staying up late and continuing to be jet-lagged.

Keeping yourself as well-rested as possible while traveling can also help you fend off illness. When traveling long distances, hygiene also plays a major role. For example, washing your hands often when on an airplane or train or trying not to be around sick people is a good idea.

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Avoid Travel-related Illnesses

Avoid travel-related illnesses/problems such as upset stomachs by exercising great caution in food and bottled water intake. Avoid tap water, even for drinking, brushing your teeth, and making ice cubes.

Instead, drink bottled or purified water, and avoid raw or undercooked food (such as fruit salads, salads, greens, and raw fish), as well as dairy products, unless they're wholly and thoroughly cooked.

You should also avoid food served at room temperature by street vendors, as it's too risky.

The other thing, protecting against bites is very important and especially when you are going to places where there are a lot of insects. Places where there is malaria, there is dengue fever, and that kind of stuff.

Using the insect repellant; using the DEET, putting it on your skin, and wearing long sleeves and long pants, and in case you are sleeping, having mosquito nets is important to protect yourself against mosquito bites.

Another thing, safe sex; which means using condoms for safety during sex.

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Managing Common Travel Health Issues

However much you plan, common travel health problems such as traveler's diarrhea or motion sickness might still hit you.

It helps to be prepared to treat these symptoms when necessary. Pack medicines to help with common health issues such as diarrhea, nausea, and motion sickness.

Know where you can go to see a doctor if you become ill while travelling and check what medical expenses are covered by your travel insurance.

Staying Healthy During Long Flights

Scrambling home for the holidays? Long flights can be exhausting, but you can still arrive feeling fresh and raring to go by taking steps to keep your body healthy.

A serious risk of long-haul flights is deep vein thrombosis, where blood clots develop in the deep veins of the legs. The single best thing you can do is to get up and move from time to time to keep the blood flowing.

Take a short walk up and down the aisle every now and then, or do some leg exercises in your seat. Drink plenty of fluids to avoid dehydration, which increases your risk of DVT.

Packing extra water to drink, and avoiding drinking alcohol, as well as caffeine, can all help you to stay hydrated. If you are taking a long flight with a change in time zones, such as crossing the international dateline, your flight might also be affected by jet lag.

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Cultural Considerations For Health

When abroad, in addition to learning about norms for personal health, respecting current local health practices may require you to accommodate your beliefs surrounding health and healing – particularly if those beliefs differ from the health and healing beliefs of others.

For example, in many cultures, individuals use non-Western or traditional-style medicines or practices in which they may be unfamiliar.

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