Healthy Holiday Tips

Simple Tips to Make Your Holiday a Happier, Healthier Experience

Here are some useful, easy tips to help you have a stress-free, healthy holiday.

The days before you go away on holiday can be very stressful. We often feel tired and desperate to get away - but there's always so much to do. Have we cleared everything at work, have we done all the holiday shopping, made sure the house is in order and the pets are going to be looked after?

The build up of stress before you go away on holiday can put extra demands on your immune system. Then, when you're on holiday, you eat foods you're not used to. This, with the excess alcohol and hot climate can lead to tummy bugs and infections while you're away. But a lot can be done to avoid this, by adopting a simple, natural approach holiday health.

Here are some useful tips for the most common holiday ailments.

Jet Lag

Described as a disruption of the mind and body's natural rhythms. The symptoms often include tiredness, insomnia, headaches and digestive complaints. This is not the way you want to start your holiday. Some ways to avoid the worst of jet lag are:

· Resist alcohol prior to flying, and on the flight, as this increases dehydration.

· Drink plenty of water.

· Extra vitamin B's and C are helpful to cope with stress and tiredness and to boost the immune system.

· A facial spray of essential oils can be refreshing and can help combat the effects of dehydration of the skin. Use one drop of lavender to two drops of mandarin oil in 50ml of filtered water in plastic spray bottle.

Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT)

To help reduce the risks:

· Take vitamin E supplements for 2 weeks prior to flight as this has blood-thinning properties.

· Drink a glass of water every hour to reduce dehydration (a good guideline is ¼ litre for every hour airborne).

· Make sure you get out of your seat to stretch your legs (especially on long flights) and consider wearing the anti-DVT socks that you can now buy from shops like Boots.

Sunburn

Once you've arrived, you want to get out there in the sun, but there's nothing worse that overdoing it on the first day and having to avoid the sun for the next few days. Tips to avoid the sunburn:

· Limit exposure, building gradually over the days, and avoid the midday sun.

· Eat foods that contain carotenoids (such as lycopene). These can be found in foods such as watermelon, red grapefruit and tomatoes. These are thought to offer some protection against the effects of ultra violet rays.

· The carotenoid, Astaxanthin, is also a powerful antioxidant thought to protect against UVA and UVV light. This can be found in salmon.

· Over-exposure to the sun can produce free radicals, which can cause all kinds of damage from age-spots on the skin to cancer. To act against the negative effects of free radicals, take extra supplementation of the antioxidant vitamins A, C and E.

· Fish oils and flax seed oil (available in capsule form in health food shops) are rich in Omega 3 oils and can help skin heal and reduce inflammation.

Prickly Heat

These itchy spots can appear all over the skin (especially arms and legs) and are caused by overheating. To sooth this irritating condition:

· Splash with lavender oil and cool water.

· Take a vitamin C supplement (1000mg per day recommended) for its anti-histamine properties.

Diarrhoea

How many times have you suffered from this condition whilst on holiday? Diarrhoea is the body's system of eliminating poisons and is often caused by a poor diet or a change in diet. More often than not it is also the effect of too much sun and not enough water. Some tips:

· It's often better to try to avoid taking medicine (such as Imodium) for this condition, as all you're doing is stopping the body's natural processes for getting rid of something it doesn't like.

· Take a supply of probiotics, such as acidophilus on holiday with you (preferably a vacuum packed variety, as this is less likely to be effected by extremes of temperature). Acidophilus (available from health food shops) is a friendly bacteria that can help rebalance bacterial levels in the digestive tract - helps to fight against the harmful bacteria.

· A few drops of grapefruit seed extract can also act as a natural antibiotic. Take in boiled water or fruit juice (the extract tastes horrible, so you might find it better to take it in fruit juice).

Insect Bites

Mosquito and midges detect odour given off in sweat. To repel the insects, consider the following tips:

· Use an essential oil repellent - usually made up of essential oils of bergamot, rosemary and eucalyptus. Tea tree and citronella oils are also effective. Add essential oils to a carrier oil and apply to exposed skin every three hours.

· Eating garlic is also thought to act as a repellent, as is vitamin B1 taken on a daily basis.

· Lavender oil or tea tree oil can soothe the itching of insect bites.

· Taking vitamin C (1000mg per day) can help due to its natural anti-histamine properties.

As a general guideline, drinking 1.5 to 2 litres of bottled water a day is recommended; and when eating, always try to order freshly cooked food rather than having food from a buffet, where it is often left standing for long periods.