While making travel plans for the summer with friends and family, or navigating travel for business, there are typically many logistics to manage to ensure a fun and smooth trip. Often the arranging of flight plans, hotel stays or international details are all-consuming, leaving little time or energy left for some of the basics of self-care. Taking some fundamental steps, however, to support our nervous, endocrine and digestive systems while also preparing ourselves mentally can go a long way toward not only a well-planned trip, but also a healthy one.
First off, I recommend a very simple practice of seeing your trip go exactly as you want it to. Give yourself just a little time, both during the preparation phase and again right before you leave, to sit down and give yourself some space to create a very positive feeling around your trip. Take a moment to close your eyes, have a few deep breaths and let go of all the logistics.
Give yourself time to remember why you're doing this in the first place. Imagine yourself at your destination really soaking in the experience and truly enjoying yourself—either alone or with your companions. Stick with this practice of breathing and visualizing until you really feel it in your body, allowing a sense of ease and enjoyment around your travel experience. This practice can be surprisingly helpful for setting a healthy tone in your nervous system and setting the stage for a great time while you are away.
Some degree of stress is a given while traveling, which, if overwhelming, in and of itself, can be detrimental to health. If traveling abroad, changing time zones and disturbance of our night-day rhythms can be a shock, and trying to pack too much in the beginning of a trip can be unnecessarily frazzling.
If you are traveling to the other side of the globe, for example, give yourself a few days to do nothing—or at least very little. Give your body the opportunity to adjust and for your nervous and endocrine systems to re-regulate. When you arrive, work your way toward waking up in the morning, and go to bed at a reasonable hour, local time. A few days of training the body usually does the trick for getting through the jet-lag phase. For some, a low dose of melatonin at bedtime can help encourage a good night's rest and an endocrine reset. For others just allowing a proper wind-down before bedtime, thorough daytime hydration, while avoiding too much caffeine and alcohol does the trick. Also try not to overeat—particularly late at night.
For those of us nervous types, some additional support for the adrenals and nerves can be very helpful. Many benefit from long-term adrenal support, which can be continued while traveling—there are many options of "adaptogenic" herbal formulas that are great at tonifying the crucial link between the adrenal-nervous-endocrine systems. This approach, along with adequate sleep and hydration, and again, not overdoing caffeine and alcohol will suffice.
Depending on where you are traveling, our digestive systems can really take a hit from unfamiliar water sources and food. Exposure to foreign and novel microflora is often unsettling to the GI tract, and in some cases can cause outright illness, often in the form of traveler's diarrhea. I recommend traveling with a reputable probiotic formula that can be taken at the first sign of lower GI distress. In many cases, beginning a good probiotic formula before leaving home, and continuing it throughout your travels, is the ticket for preventing symptoms altogether.
All of these previously described measures will also be supportive for a vital immune system, meaning less likelihood for getting sick from viruses and bacteria you're exposed to in airports and new environments. Additionally, some of the basics like ensuring vitamin D levels are in a healthy range before traveling is a great idea. The immune-supportive vitamin C for most is also worth throwing in the travel bag as further support for a healthy immune system.
A little extra preparation to care for yourself, body and mind, will go a long way toward an enjoyable and healthy time while you are away. Happy travels!
—Joshua Phillips, ND, is a naturopathic physician and director at Hawthorn Healing Arts Center in Bend. This article is not intended as medical advice, but for informational purposes only.
