Sick on the Road?

One of the most challenging things about travel has to be dealing with illness.

Having lived through this several times in my earlier days of traveling internationally. I have put some of my best ideas in this book about things you can do to stay healthy on the road.

Enjoy this book excerpt from the Chapter called “I Don’t Feel So Good . . . Now What?”…

Even though we do our best to prevent illness, sometimes things just happen and we have to do our best to deal with them. This is why we spent so much time packing the “just in case” supplements before our trip. The suggestions I am giving you here are the ones that I would use if this were to happen to me.

As a natural health practitioner, my focus and training are on giving people the tools that they can use to take responsibility for their lives and utilize preventive health practices using lifestyle choices, nutrition, energy healing techniques, and supplements (among other things). I have found that this type of health care is excellent at prevention and helping chronic illnesses. But, when it comes to acute care – like a car accident or some other health crisis – we are so fortunate to have the vast knowledge and experience from our medical doctors. I am simply amazed by the ability of surgeons to work their magic on people who have suffered some type of major accident. As I often tell my clients, if you break your leg, go to the emergency room and get acute care right away (and be thankful that it’s there) – then call me and we can use some techniques to help your body heal more rapidly now that the crisis is over. All that to say, if you think you are really sick while traveling, then you should consult a local medical doctor immediately. The ideas and suggestions in this chapter are more related to the common, but very annoying, illnesses like viruses, sore throat, sinus infections, digestive issues, etc.

The more you work with this type of lifestyle, the more sensitive and attuned you become to your body, and your ability to feel the slightest imbalance becomes readily noticeable. For many people, the first sign of imbalance is a scratchy throat. For others, it could be sinus congestion, or just feeling “yucky.” Once an illness (especially viruses) sets in, it’s difficult for any holistic remedy to help you get rid of it quickly (i.e. in a day or two), so you really want to act as quickly as you can . . . I can’t stress this enough!

Sugar, dairy, and wheat tend to depress the immune system pretty quickly, and my purpose, once I start feeling symptoms, is to give my body extra nutritional and herbal support and remove things that might detract from the immune system’s ability to heal my body. With that in mind, I focus heavily on eating extremely cleanly, and/or very lightly. What I mean by eating cleanly is that I try to eat only fruits and vegetables (which many health enthusiasts say is the way we should eat all of the time . . . can’t argue with that, but it’s all part of the balance).

I also drink only purified water, and as much of it as I can. Water helps to flush the lymphatic system, and will aid your immune system. I take my Colloidal Silver in addition to the items above to help my body remove the pathogens that may be causing the issues. It’s best to drink warm or hot water, preferably with the juice of some lemon in it (or a few drops of YL Lemon essential oil) and maybe a little honey. You might also drink some hot herbal tea. If you are traveling internationally, you might ask the locals what they recommend. Sometimes, they have a great local remedy. If not, then any form of green tea is probably a good idea. 

I have to share a good story about green tea. On one of my trips to South America, I was leading a sales class (my IBM job) and asked the people at the hotel if I could have some green tea. Now, we had to go through some translation (té verde), but it appeared that they understood (I’m still working on my Spanish). They came back a few minutes later with a green box of tea . . . black tea. But, it was in a green box. So, I tried again and they nodded and off they went. A few minutes later they came back with another box of tea. This time the box wasn’t green. I tried to read the ingredients (all in Spanish, of course) and saw that the main ingredient was senna (which is green). Having studied herbology in my doctorate courses, I knew that senna was a laxative (yikes!). I thought about the folks that may not have known that and the wonderful surprise they would get while presenting in front of the class after drinking a few cups. So, we tried again and I finally got my té verde.

We have a certain amount of energy in our “tank” each day, and the more of that energy that we can conserve for our immune system, the better. If I can divert the energy that my body would use to digest a large meal to the immune system, then that will help speed the healing process.

The other area where you can divert energy to your immune system is in the exercise category. I talked earlier about how you can get exercise while on the road, but now is the time for giving your body rest. Take the elevator or escalator when possible. Take a taxi to the office instead of walking. Try to squeeze in a nap in the middle of the day if at all possible. And, in general, do your best to rest and conserve energy wherever possible, so that your body can use all of that extra energy to help you heal quickly. You may even have to pass on that wonderful dinner with friends, but hopefully only for one night. When I do the above items, I find that the next day I am usually back to normal.

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