Healthy Travels: Maintaining Wellness on the Road

Join me on a travel journey with tips and tricks on how to stay healthy while your on the road or in a foreign country. 

Links: 

Equal Eats Food Restriction Card

Electric Ceramic Pan

Transcript

0:40

I am so glad that you joined me today on Design Your Well Life. This week I wanted to take you on a journey. Literally I'm traveling right now, and that got me thinking, how do we stick to our healthy lifestyle when we're away from home? Whether you have a health condition, a food intolerance, or just simply wanting to keep your body filling its best. There are so many great ways to stay on track. Today I'm sharing my tried and true tips for traveling while prioritizing your health. Without stress and without sacrificing the joy of new experiences. From food choices and hydration to sleep, time zones, and detoxing from travel toxins, we are covering it all. So let's get started. At first the thought of traveling with my conditions was really daunting. I used to think, how will I manage my food sensitivities? What if I can't find clean meals, will I feel terrible the whole trip? But over the years, I've developed a system that allows me to travel freely while feeling good. I now regularly travel across the US for work, visit Japan with my family, and explore places like Mexico without sacrificing my health. The best part, I enjoy traveling because I don't come home feeling sluggish, inflamed, or regretful about my choices. I've learned that being prepared allows me to be fully present and enjoy every moment. Now food is one of the biggest hurdles while you're traveling. If you have food intolerances or just want to avoid processed junk, you're gonna need a strategy. Now I wanna share mine with you. So step one, research before you go, before every trip I research food options where I'm staying, here's what I look for. Are there any Whole Foods, Trader Joe's or other healthy grocery stores nearby? Are there restaurants that offer clean whole foods? Does my hotel or rental have a fridge or a kitchenette? And what are the best local farm to table restaurants in the area? This simple prep work ensures that I'm not stuck in a situation where I have to eat something that will make me feel awful. Now, even Walmart has great organic produce options, so don't overlook those big chain stores. Sometimes they have exactly what you need. The second thing that I do is call restaurants in advance. If I find a restaurant that looks good, I actually call ahead and ask if everything is pre-prepared, or if I can customize my meal. I ask if the meats are pre-marinated. Now most marinades have sugar and they use seed oils in them, so I definitely try and stay away from those. And then I also ask if they can cook my food with just olive oil and salt and pepper. Now, mid to high end restaurants are usually much more accommodating, and you can often mix and match sides to create a really healthy plate. If a restaurant serves grilled fish or steak, this is usually your cleanest option. Just ask for it to be cooked without butter or marinade. Now, step three for me is travel with your own food. I almost always bring my own food for the airport and the plane ride. Why? Because most airport food is ultra processed high in inflammatory seed oils and just packed with those hidden sugars. Here's what I just packed for the trip that I'm on right now. I made a container of homemade hummus with some slices of celery, a sliced apple, a homemade nut mix that I do myself. It has a combination of pistachios, macadamias, pecans, walnuts, and Brazil nuts. I'm trying to get the biggest boosts of vitamins and minerals from this nut combination, and I brought a kale and arugula salad with strawberries, raspberries, and a squeeze of lime. Meanwhile, my seatmates were munching on sun, chips, cookies, and coke. Let's just say that my meal was way more nourishing, and I'm sure they wished they had the same thing. So how do you keep things cold and fresh while you travel? Did you know that you can take freezer packs through TSA on a plane ride? As long as they are completely frozen, they don't count against your three ounce liquid rule. I use these to keep my food fresh for up to 10 hours. If my packs have started melting before my return flight, I just throw them in my checked bag instead. Now once you get to your destination, many hotels will bring a fridge or a microwave to your room if you request one. This isn't something that everybody knows about, and most hotels will always be able to accommodate this. I've never been denied a fridge when I've asked. Now, microwaves are a little more hit and miss. But another favorite travel hack I have is a portable ceramic cooking pan that plugs into a standard outlet. It's perfect for heating up food in a hotel room when there's no microwave. I add a little water, I put the lid on and steam my meals In minutes, I'll put a link to my favorite travel cooking pan in the show notes so that you can get the benefit from this as well. Now navigating international travel with food restrictions can be a little more tricky and a little extra planning is required. One of the things that I started doing was bringing a food restriction card with me. I print a business card sized food restriction card that lists what I can eat on one side and what I can't eat on the other. These are so helpful when ordering in not only stateside restaurants, but also foreign restaurants, especially if you don't speak the language. I have the cards translated into the language of the country that I'm visiting, and I've had multiple chefs tell me how they love this because it makes their job so much easier in preparing a healthy meal that I can eat. You can order these cards online through a company that's called Equal Eats or make them on your own in multiple languages. I'll add a link to these as well. Now, the other thing that I do when I'm traveling internationally is I really try and understand the importation rules for food. Some countries have strict rules about bringing food in. And when I visited Japan, for example, I was able to bring a whole bunch of freeze dried fruits and vegetables that were allowed because they were in sealed food containers. In many countries, if you follow their rules and declare your food at customs, you won't have any problems at all. So before traveling to a foreign country, make sure you research and understand what that country's food restrictions are and be familiar with their rules. Now, a big thing that I want you guys to understand and do is embrace healthy choices without apology. One of the most important mindset shifts when traveling is you shouldn't have to apologize for being healthy. You're not difficult for making intentional choices about what you put into your body. The world is waking up to the importance of real food, non-toxic environments and holistic wellbeing, and there are more options than ever before. Many hotels, restaurants, and travel hubs now cater to health conscious travelers offering organic, gluten-free and allergen friendly menus, clean label products, and sustainability focused accommodations. There has been a real rise in health conscious travel lately. According to a 2023 Global Wellness Institute report, the wellness tourism industry is growing at a rate of 12% per year. Now, this completely outpaces traditional travel growth. This means more hotels, airlines, and restaurants are investing in health forward choices to meet demand. A few examples. Um, Marriott hotels have Staywell rooms, and these come with air purification, organic mattresses and filtered water. Airlines like JetBlue and Delta now offer better in-flight food options like nuts, hummus, and clean protein, snacks and organic and farm to table restaurants are popping up everywhere in airports and a lot of major travel destinations. So if you ever feel awkward about asking for a healthy modification at a restaurant or requesting a fridge in your hotel room, just remember you're part of a growing movement and businesses want to accommodate you. Now the best healthy airport food and a must visit spot in Salt Lake City is Vessel Kitchen. If you ever fly through Salt Lake International Airport or take a trip up to Park City or downtown Salt Lake. Vessel Kitchen is a must visit. At the airport it's located in Terminal A near Gate 26. It's one of the few airport restaurants offering Whole 30 compliant and really clean nutrient dense meals. Whenever I fly, I grab a to-Go meal and eat it later at my hotel. It's such a game changer compared to the typical airport food. Now, it's so tempting to grab fast food when you're tired and on a long layover, or you're dealing with delays. But fast food is actually one of the biggest culprits of PFAS, those forever chemicals that are linked to hormone disruption and immune dysfunction, and even cancer. Now, if you remember on our detox episode, we talked about PFAS and why they are so harmful to our body, and it will surprise you that they're in so much fast food. So these are those synthetic coatings that are found in non-stick pans. They're actually also in food packaging and even those grease resistant wrappers that they use in fast food restaurants. Dr. Mark Hyman, a leader in functional medicine, has stated."Fast food is one of the biggest sources of environmental toxins that we consume regularly. PFAS, seed oils and artificial preservatives are a perfect storm for chronic disease." Now the top PFAS contaminated foods from a consumer report investigation found really high levels in fast food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags, takeout containers, and prepackaged bakery goods. So better choices while traveling. Opt for whole Foods, grab a piece of fresh fruit, have some nuts, a salad or grilled protein. Look for organic markets and healthy grab and go spots. And if all else fails, just pack your own meal and snacks. Now let's talk about fasting a little bit while traveling. If I know that I'm heading somewhere with limited healthy food options, I will actually time my intermittent fasting to align with my travel schedule. There's a lot of benefits actually to intermittent fasting while you travel. It reduces inflammation and bloating from travel stress. It supports your circadian rhythm regulation, especially when you're crossing time zones. And it helps avoid the low quality airport and airplane food. I still pack some emergency travel snacks when I'm doing this. My homemade nut mix that I mentioned before, I get Prolon bars, which are fasting bars. They're fantastic. This really helps support my mitochondrial health and I make sure I have some filtered water with me. Now, speaking of filtered water. How do you stay hydrated and avoid toxins? Hydration is huge when traveling. Planes are extremely dehydrating and dehydration makes jet lag, fatigue, and inflammation even worse. So here's my personal hydration routine. I bring a glass water bottle and I fill it at the airport water station, after security. At my hotel, I refill my bottle at the gym's filtered water station. Now, this may surprise you because a lot of hotels you might think your only choice is tap water from your hotel bathroom, but it's not. If you go into the gym, most hotel gyms have filtered water that you can fill your bottle with. I try and avoid plastic bottled water whenever possible, especially due to the nanoplastics. A 2024 NIH study found that bottled water contains 240,000 plastic particles in one liter of water. That's a lot of plastic. If you want some more information on that, we did a previous podcast where we talked about the plastic contaminants and water bottles. Now, I mentioned before as I was researching which bottled water to buy, if I have to buy bottled water, I'm still researching this, but for right now, I opt for things that come in either glass or aluminum disposable containers, or if you have to go plastic, Nestle Pure Life is the one that I usually choose. It's not avoiding the plastic in the bottle, but the water itself is pretty clean. I really try and avoid drinking soda, juice and bottled water on any flight for two main reasons. The first one is airplane tap water is often contaminated. A 2022 Environmental Protection Agency report found high levels of bacteria, heavy metals, and chlorine in onboard water tanks. Now I also try and avoid those sugary drinks because sugar really weakens the immune system and traveling already exposes you to new germs. So I don't wanna make it easier for my body to get sick. Instead, I boost while I travel. Traveling exposes your immune system to all of those new environments, germs and other stressors, and to make sure that my body is at its utmost peak, I boost with vitamin D, which helps regulate the immune system, vitamin C, which supports antioxidant defense and vitamin B12, which helps with energy and jet lag recovery. Now, if you personally choose to take any extra vitamins, please follow specific direction for your body, from your physician or your functional medicine doctor. I'm just giving examples of what I personally do. So let's talk a little bit about time zone adjustments and circadian rhythm hacks. If you are jumping time zones, your body's rhythm can take a big hit. Now, one of the big things that you can do to help, this is grounding, and we just did an episode on this. Last week. Grounding is one of the best ways that you can reset your body's clock, especially when you stand barefoot on the earth, when you arrive at your new destination. I also bring a travel grounding mat and use it in my hotel room to help regulate my energy. Now, besides grounding, you can use light to help adjust yourself. Traveling east is a lot harder than traveling west. Your body takes one day of adjustment for each hour of time zone that you jump. So one of the things I like to do is use blue blocking glasses, especially on night flights, to preserve that natural melatonin production that my body's making, and then I get morning sunlight exposure as soon as I possibly can when I get to my new destination. In our previous light episode, we discussed Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford, and he shared that morning light exposure is one of the most powerful ways to regulate your sleep wake cycle. Now, another often overlooked travel hack is adjusting your eating schedule to match your destination's time zone. And you wanna start this a little early. Your circadian rhythm is actually heavily influenced by meal timing. A study published in cell metabolism found that eating on a schedule aligning with the local daylight hours can reduce your jet lag symptoms, regulate your digestion, and improve your sleep quality. So how do you do this? The day that you're gonna be heading to the airport, I would actually look at what time it is in the destination that you're heading and start that pre-day meals to be in alignment with the new travel destination. So if you are just getting on the airplane and the destination you're heading to, it would be their dinner time. I would shoot to eat dinner about that time as you're getting on your flight. Now definitely avoid heavy meals late at night to prevent digestive disruptions. And you could even consider that intermittent fasting on the long travel days. This will help your body reset a lot faster. Now, a quick note about my non-food products while I travel. One of my biggest travel game changers is to pre-pack a travel go bag with all my clean essentials. Most hotels provide cheap, chemically laden personal care products. If you're sensitive to fragrances, preservatives, and other toxins, I suggest bringing your own products. One of the things I do is I get small refillable containers that meet the TSA rules, and I fill them with my favorite non-toxic shampoo, conditioner, lotion, and deodorant. I also bring along my own favorite toothpaste and my own soap, which is Dr. Bronner's peppermint scented soap. Since it's always pre-packed, I can grab it and go on any trip without stressing about last minute packing and making sure I have all my clean products with me, because as we all know, travel can definitely be a stressful time, but it doesn't have to be. With the right mindset and a little planning and some built-in self-care, you can actually make traveling a really rejuvenating experience. The key is to be intentional about your schedule, your habits, and your mindset, so you're not just surviving travel, you are thriving through it. Travel inherently comes with a lot of unknowns. You're outside of your normal routine in a different place. You're eating different foods, possibly in a different time zone, and often balancing a schedule that's busier than normal. The American Psychological Association states that travel stress is often caused by lack of control, unpredictability, and the effort required to adjust to new conditions. But the good news is, is all of these stressors can be significantly reduced with preparation and a mindset shift. So how do you shift your travel mindset? Instead of viewing travel as an inconvenience to your healthy lifestyle, shift your perspective. You need to reframe that experience. Think of travel as an adventure rather than a disruption. Expect small challenges. Know that flights might be delayed. Know that your meals might be different or a little more challenging to coordinate, and that schedules might shift and that's okay. Focus on what you can control, your hydration, your movement, your response to that stress and your mindfulness. Give yourself grace. If these things don't go perfectly, just don't stress over it. Your health is about consistency over time, not perfection in the moment. This mindset will not only help you enjoy your trip more, but also reduce the biological effects of stress. Studies show that when we perceive something as stressful, our body releases cortisol, which as you know, can negatively impact your digestion, your immune function, and even inflammation. It is still really important to try and keep up with all those daily habits that you've built while you're traveling. One of the best ways to stay well while traveling is to keep those foundational habits that you're starting to form. Your body thrives on consistency and even small daily habits make a huge difference. So the first one, if you're trying to support your digestion while you're traveling, I've talked in previous episodes about Qigong abdominal massage, and it's especially helpful during travel. Why? Because air travel slows digestion and sitting for long periods on a plane and changes in cabin pressure can disrupt your gut motility. Also changes in your routine and your time zone can create bloating and constipation. And the increased stress can impact your gut brain connection with the vagus nerve, which also affects digestion. So as a reminder, how to do a Qigong abdominal massage while you're traveling. Lie on your back in bed or stand somewhere comfortably. Use both hands and start massaging your belly in clockwise circles. Apply gentle pressure starting below your ribs on the left. Move down towards your hip, then across to the right hip and back up. Repeat this for two to three minutes in the morning and before bed. This practice will help support your digestion. Your lymphatic drainage and your circulation, all things that can get sluggish while you're traveling. Now, another great thing to keep up on while you're traveling is deep breathing. Breathing is one of the simplest but most effective tools to help regulate your nervous system while you're traveling. As we discussed with our guest speaker, Suzy Price diaphragmatic breathing lowers your cortisol. Activates the parasympathetic nervous system and helps maintain that balance in the gut-brain access. So try this. It's a simple 4 7, 8 breathing technique. When you're feeling anxious or overwhelmed while you're traveling. Inhale for four seconds. Hold for seven seconds now. Exhale slowly for eight seconds. Doing this for just one to two minutes can lower your heart rate, reduce your anxiety, and help your body adjust to new environments. Now, the third thing that I do while I'm traveling is I make sure I do nightly stretching and body mobility. Travel often involves a lot of extra walking or standing, sitting for long hours. Carrying a backpack or other things that you normally wouldn't carry with you the whole day, and this can leave your body feeling achy and stiff. That's why incorporating gentle stretching is a game changer for keeping your body feeling great on the road. Some of the best travel stretches you can do is putting your legs up on the wall. This will help relieve the swelling from flights and long days of walking. You can do a seated spinal twist, which is great for hotel rooms or while you're seated in an airplane seat and really keeps your spine mobile. A hip flexor stretch opens up tight hip muscles after long travel days, and a forward fold will really help release the tension in your lower back and hamstrings. Some of my favorite stretches I actually do when I get back to the hotel room and I do a cat cow yoga stretch so that my spine and my back really stretches out and elongates again after a long day of traveling. Now, if you're traveling somewhere with long flights, make sure you remember to get up about every hour and move around to prevent stiffness and support your circulation. So I wanna spend a little time and talk about the power of getting outside and why outdoor time is so essential for travel recovery. One of the biggest mistakes people make when they're traveling is staying indoors the whole time, whether it's at a conference in an office, or even sightseeing inside museums and restaurants, getting outside first thing in the morning is a biological reset for your body. Science-backed benefits of getting outside while traveling. Include that morning light, which resets your circadian rhythm and helps with jet lag that we just spoke about. Also, we spoke about grounding, which is walking barefoot on grass, sand, or soil. It really reduces the inflammation in your body and regulates your nervous system and fresh air is just great. It helps your body increase its oxygen levels, which help with focus, mood, and digestion. And walking around keeps your lymph system circulating and cleaning up any toxins or other invaders that are in your system. So a few simple ways that you can incorporate more outdoor time while you're traveling. Take a walk in the morning. This is especially helpful when you're adjusting in a new time zone. Eat your meals outside whenever possible to get fresh air and natural light. And do a short grounding practice. Spend five minutes barefoot in nature, whether it's at a beach, a park, or another great grassy area. At the end of the day, travel is meant to be enjoyed. It's easy to get caught up in worrying about food schedules and logistics, but don't forget to also be present and enjoy the experience. Take time to look around and appreciate where you are. Smell the fresh air. Take in the scenery and embrace the uniqueness of the place that you're visiting. Be intentional about the people that you're with, whether you're traveling for work or a family trip, or just a solo getaway. Be present and engage fully. Give yourself time to unwind even on busy work trips. Make sure you build in 10 to 15 minutes of quiet time to simply recharge. And lastly. Make sure you unwind at the end of a long travel day and focus on resetting your body and your mind. I wanna challenge you on your next trip. Try at least two of these wellness strategies and see how you feel. At the end of the day traveling should be fun if you live a healthy lifestyle 90% of the time. Don't stress about enjoying yourself on the road if you have strict dietary needs like I do, these tips will also help you navigate travel with ease. Travel should be an experience to savor, not something to stress over. Remember, keep prioritizing your wellbeing, embrace your new location and cultures, and give yourself grace and flexibility. Most importantly, take time to experience your surroundings. Walk the beach in the morning, explore new places, and enjoy the adventure. Your wellbeing isn't just about what you do, it's about how you live. That's all for today. If you loved this episode, make sure and leave a review and share it with a friend who loves to travel. Travel safe and stay well. The information provided on Design Your Well Life is for educational and informational purposes only, and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or health concerns. The views and opinions expressed by the host or guests on this podcast are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organizations they are affiliated with. While we strive to provide accurate and up to date information, we make no warranties about the completeness, reliability, or accuracy of the content shared. By listening to this podcast, you acknowledge and agree that neither the host nor any guests or contributors are responsible for your health decisions or outcomes. Always make choices that are right for you in consultation with trusted professionals.