What supplements I take when travelling

Now I do not want to brag, but the picture is me on the top of the famous Queen Mary II cruise ship recently when it was leaving Mount Maunganui. This was a holiday, but I travel a lot for work and usually do 5-6 longhaul trips a year. I was fed up with getting ill when I travelled and so I did something about it, and now so can you.

Have you ever noticed that you often get ill when you are travelling? You are not imagining it and there are many reasons why this occurs.

The phenomenon is so common that it has been called “leisure sickness” by scientists. There are many reasons why travelling can make us ill. For example, colds are more than 100 times more likely to be transmitted on a plane than in normal daily life. We come into contact with hundreds of people on planes when travelling and we breathe in millions of other people’s bugs, often ones that we have not been in contact with before and so do not have immunity from.

Also, most of our immune system is located in our intestines, and so when we change our diet when travelling, this has a negative effect on our digestion and immunity. We’ve all heard of, and probably experienced, “Delhi belly”. In many popular travel destinations you have over 50% of people suffering from this and even in places that are more similar to New Zealand there is a 5–10% chance of getting it.

Many aspects of travel such as stress, jet lag, unfamiliar food and water and disrupted body rhythms can all disturb the normally protective bacteria in our intestines, making us more susceptible to upsets.

In order to reduce my chances of being ill when travelling I used to make up and take a pack of supplements which have been shown to help with these problems.

Working with Health House I have developed the first health supplement pack designed specifically for travellers. It recreates and actually improves on what I do myself when I travel.

It costs a lot of money to travel. Many of us take out health insurance to cover us for major illnesses or accidents. Thankfully those are rare, but most of us have more minor health annoyances when we travel and this pack has been designed as a cost-effective “health insurance” for the common, more minor, but still important health issues travellers frequently face.

The Supplement Pack for Travellers has been designed to be as convenient as possible on your travels. The pack has a compartment for each day and each compartment contains 3 supplements to be taken that day. You can even use the empty packs after your trip to put all your medicines and supplements together so that they are easy to take - that’s what I do.

And finally the supplements themselves: there is one with vitamin C and zinc, both of which can boost your defences against ills and chills and they can make it less annoying if you do get a chill. There is a probiotics capsule to help settle stomach upsets and finally a B vitamin and magnesium capsule to help with stress, and support normal sleep patterns for a perfect trip.