Eating Well On The Road
Staying healthy when on the road can provide more of a challenge than at home. You should make an effort to eat well, or at least no worse than you do at home. Almost anyone can go on a trip that lasts even a month long and eat everything in sight or live on pizza slices and Guinness and be home again before it’s really had a negative impact. But long-term travel must be approached a bit differently. This vacation is now your life and ignoring your diet will catch up to you eventually.
It can be difficult to eat enough fruits and vegetables while on the road. In some countries leafy vegetables should not be eaten by tourists due to bacteria concerns. You’ll read about the individual warnings for each place you’ll go so you should be fine, but sometimes an effort must be made to eat a balanced diet. If your hostel or hotel has fruit set out with breakfast in the morning try to have a piece or two. If you live on rolls and cereal for too long it might impact your mood without you even realizing it. Just try to keep it in mind and make good choices when you can.
Getting Sick
It’s quite common to come down with the normal things on the road if you are gone long enough. You’ll be interacting with new people all the time so winding up with a cold or flu once in a while can’t be much of a surprise. These normal ailments shouldn’t really cause much of a problem in the long run though. If you have a flu you might have to stay in a hotel for a couple of days, but there are worse things to have to do in life.
If you are careful about heeding the local warnings about drinking tap water and eating fruit that you didn’t peel yourself, you should be able to avoid food poisoning, although this isn’t too uncommon among long-term travelers either. After one or two hellish days you should be fine again, or at least able to resume life as you knew it.
The one you really have to be prepared for is diarrhea. Montezuma’s Revenge, Delhi Belly, or whatever cute name you want to call it, diarrhea is quite common among travelers going through exotic places. It’s not like you’ll get it every week, but you’ll probably eventually get it no matter how careful you’ve been. And being too careful about it can be a bigger drag than actually having it every few months.
Having a cold can be an inconvenience on your trip, but having diarrhea the night before you leave on a 10-hour bus ride can be a killer. Medicines for diarrhea can be obtained in pharmacies around the world, and most large cities have at least one 24-hour pharmacy, but it’s probably worthwhile to start your trip with at least a strip or two of pills just in case (Cipro is perfect for this, and your doctor at home shouldn’t have a problem prescribing it for you). If you are lucky enough not to need them, you might become someone else’s hero who wasn’t as fortunate.
Presriptions
If you are currently taking some sort of prescription, you’ll obviously want to bring a supply with you. And of course you’ll want to bring the prescription itself with you for refills on the road. Every city has pharmacies and they are usually easy to find with an illuminated green cross regardless of the language.
Depending on what you are taking you’ll want to do some research. Drugs tend to be inexpensive outside the States and parts of Europe, and most of the major ones are available everywhere, but many of them go by different names in different places. You should research worldwide availability as well as different global names for any drugs you’ll need on the road.
Tips For Staying Healthy
Most of this is common sense stuff. In many countries you are discouraged from drinking the tap water and you’ll be happy to know that bottled water is almost always cheap and easy to find in these countries. And fruit that you don’t peel yourself is sometimes not a good idea, but a little research before you arrive in a country should keep you safe in these respects.
Much of the world eats many of their meals cooked at stands on the side of the street. This is also common sense, but if a crowd of locals is eating there, then chances are good you’ll be fine too, regardless if you recognize the food itself or not. However, if a lonely stall is baking in the sun with no customers in sight, you might also want to steer clear.
There is such a thing as being too careful though. Sampling local foods alongside locals is one of the joys of traveling for most people. Spread your wings and try some exotic things when you can. If you’ve packed a bit of medicine, the risks really aren’t that great.
Exercising On The Road
Most people who exercise regularly at home fully intend to carry on with a regular workout routine on the road, but it almost never works out that way. Most cities in most countries will have gyms where you can pay to use their facilities by the day or by the week. The problem seems to be being motivated enough to actually go through with it. Check out these handy articles:
Nearly all travelers end up walking many miles almost every day just in the course of normal sightseeing. Certainly, this helps burn calories and keep a basic level of fitness. And many of those days will also include steep hills or endless staircases, and that helps even more. So after walking 5 or 6 or 8 miles a day, do you really want to pay to use a gym and run on a treadmill or use a stair-climber the next morning? If you are like most people, the answer is no.
It’s more common that even the best intentions aren’t enough to actually pull it off on any consistent basis. Most people don’t want to pack proper running shoes, and running in hiking shoes or boots is less than ideal. You can rent bikes for the day nearly everywhere, so making an effort to do so regularly can help your cause, but the reality is that most people return from their trip a bit doughier than when they started, even if they don’t actually gain weight.
Condoms And Birth Control
For the fellows, condoms are widely available almost everywhere, and they tend to be reasonably priced in countries where other things are cheap as well. Obviously you want to try to plan ahead whenever possible.
For the women, most recommend bringing whatever you can with you, although many things will be available on the road as well. There can be a conflict between malaria medication or other antibiotics and birth control pills so that deserves some research. There is a thread on our message boards that thoroughly discusses this topic in far greater detail than we can do here.
The health discussion doesn’t end here, so be sure to read up on the next topic, the ever popular immunizations discussion.
Be sure to read over the checklist for keeping all things health organized:
- Eat healthy. You can’t treat your RTW like a one-week vacation.
- Be safe with what you eat – only eat fruit you can peel, don’t drink water when it’s not advisable, only go to crowded street carts.
- Get a Cipro prescription from your doctor before leaving to help out if/when you get Delhi Belly.
- If you have any prescriptions, make sure to bring them with you and have your doctor write down any other names it may be known by.
- Make sure to get some exercise on the road besides your normal, daily walking.
- Other people have sex around the world, so wait to get condoms until you’re on the road (be sure to carry one or two with you just in case, but no need to stock up).
- If you take birth control, you probably want to stock up before leaving.
