Staying healthy for travel.

0:00 Speaker 1 With us today is a good friend, doctor Peter Michelos, whose motto is Live long and prosper, and he’s with us every day. He’s a historian, he is a doctor, he is one smart guy. And doctor Peter Michelos says, what do we have in store for this week through?

0:21 Summer is coming, Spring is here, Summer is coming. What are your thoughts?

0:26 Speaker 2 Well, One of the important things that people do is traveling and when you’re away from your home base. We want to give our audience some healthy tips on traveling. And one of the most important thing is when you do travel is try to get really good sleep, and especially when you’re traveling in a different time zone, it’s

0:48 so important to try to sleep. One of the things that many doctors recommend when they want to reset what we call the circadian rhythm or is you’re built in clock, is something called atonin, which is a natural over the counter medicine that your doctor may recommend to you, and you can always ask your doctor about it, but it

1:09 does help to sleep properly when you get into your new time zone. Me personally, when I get back after a trip, if I go transatlantic, you can take one milligram which is the lowest dose, and you can talk to your doctor about a higher dose, but it does help reset the circadian rhythm. The other thing is to

1:30 stay very hydrated because one of the things that happens with travel, you’re sitting there and you can get clots in your legs and your feet. It’s go deep in frombosis. And a certain percentage of the population in the US it’s a little over three million people have something call factor five lighting, which is a genetic predisposition to increased plotting.

1:51 And that’s why you want to get up, try to wiggle your feet, wiggle your toes, try to walk around if you can. And you also want to try to avoid alcohol and a lot of coffee. Why because coffee makes you urinate a lot. It makes you dehydrated, and alcohol also caloses you to urinate more and you get dehydrated.

2:11 For long flights, you want to wash your hands frequently when you’re on these flights because there’s a lot of germs on planes. Everyone’s in there. And when they cultured airplane airplanes, they found that the tray that you eat your food on had the most bacteria on it, which was very interesting finding. One of the other thing is

2:33 you might have to take certain drops or medicines with you. If you have to take eye drops with you, it’s good to put a thermos, a good old fashioned thermost two ice cubes and a ziploc baggy you put in the thermos, and that keeps the temperature of the eye drops, keeps them cool, especially if you’re trialing to a warm,

2:52 hot climate, because certain eye drops are susceptible to damage from extremes of temperaturely under high heat. You want to try to avoid non cooked airplane food because you don’t want to upset your stomach. Because in our home base, our microbiome, our good bacteria are used to eating certain food and our soil. You want to avoid ice cubes

3:15 a lot when you’re traveling if you don’t really know about the water. And one of the things you can do also is avoid when you shower or using sink water in other countries that you’re not familiar with, and you should use bottled water when you’re into your mouth when you brush your teeth, even though it’s safe to

3:33 shower in most countries with soap. It’s good to travel with a small baby shampoo. Why because baby shampoo is great for cleaning your lids, your lashes, and preventing conjunctiveis infections.

3:47 Speaker 1 Should you boil Should you boiled water and make it make sure all the bacteria is dead in it?

3:55 Speaker 2 Yeah, Well, you can buy the bottled water, which is uh, you know, filtered water and clean water. But if you have no access to that, yes, boiling water kills bacteria in the water. And if you do end up getting diarrhea, it’s good to have in your first aid kit peptobysmal which has bismith in it, which actually helps to kill

4:15 travelers dips to stop dirhea. And you can also carry these small little packets of electrolytes which have sodium, potassium and other things that you can mix with your bottle water so that you can replace your electrolytes in case you do. Because one of the big problems what we travel abroad is our gut microbiome is very sensitive to

4:35 food and water changes, and that’s why people get a lot of travel or travelers a diarrhea. And last, but not least, I always tell people so important that in your first aid kit, have some band aids, antibiotic ointment, bring some things like allergy medicines, whether it’s aerotype benage if someone has an allergic reaction on the trip, or

4:57 a beasting, and a topical anti inflammatory steroid medicine that you can buy these things on Amazon like skin, a cool or a hydrocordizone in it in case you get a beasting or sunburn. Try to bring insect repellent. One of the natural ones is a good old fashioned skin, so soft works really good. Natural ones without chemicals are

5:20 things that are made with cactus juice that help repel insect And most important, last but not least, is travel insurance, medical evacuation and medical so you can get access to private medical care because Americans make the mistake of thinking their American health insurance will cover them abroad, but it doesn’t.

5:40 England might have socialized medicine for their citizens, but not for US citizens. So you add chest pain in England, you want to go to the hospital, you will get a bill, and if God forbid you get into some kind of car accident you need to be evacuated back to the US. You will be brought back with an

5:57 air ambulance if you have have medical evacuation insurance. But again people make the mistake. They go to the Caribbean, they get injured. I can’t tell you how many people we’ve gotten messages because we’ve talked about this on WABC, thanking us. Someone who heard a past show went to Mexico and they were told they needed five thousand dollars

6:17 for the catskin because his wife had trauma. But because that he listened to WABC and he knew to get the travel insurance and it covered it. So these are some of the things to prepare as we enter into summer.

6:29 Where hats with a brim, protect your eyes with UV absorbing sunglasses to avoid cataracts, white hats with a brim so you don’t get skin cancer or protect you from melanoma, and use a good SPS sunscreen.

6:42 Speaker 1 So at that point we could survive the vacation. Absolutely. From all the traveling, you get so tired. Maybe a vacation is staying home and turning off the phones.

6:57 Speaker 2 Yeah, sometimes that’s the best vacation. They’re called steaks. And now with the way things are happening around the world, we’re seeing more people choosing for a good staycation, hanging out with good friends, having some good dinners and conversations, and sometimes it’s a lot.

7:14 Speaker 1 Safer understood, anything else you want to tell our listeners this Sunday morning.

7:21 Speaker 2 I just want to tell people to try to eat healthy, minimize exposure to sugar, take a multivitamin, see your physician, and have your annual physical. I’d say probably even twice a year. It’s good to get labs. Try to optimize your health, and keep listening to WABC for more health tips on how to live longer and live long and.

7:44 Speaker 1 Prosper Thank you doctor Peter, me hellos, and we’re going to catch up with you again real soon. Thank you so much.

7:51 Speaker 2 Thank you John, and thanks for always getting the truth out on the Cats round Table.