Digestive Health
Traveler’s Diarrhea During the Summer Travel Months
There are few things more unpleasant during your summer travels than a case of traveler’s diarrhea. Traveler’s diarrhea can happen for a number of reasons, such as eating food or drinking water that’s contaminated or you aren’t used to. Either way, however, traveler’s diarrhea is uncomfortable, inconvenient, and can be painful as well.
If you or someone in your party is struggling with traveler’s diarrhea and it’s impeding your travels, you’ve come to the right place. This article will explore what exactly traveler’s diarrhea is, what causes it, and how to overcome it.
What is Traveler’s Diarrhea and What Causes It?
As its name implies, traveler’s diarrhea is when you contract a bad case of occasional diarrhea during your travels. It’s most common with international travelers, but it can also happen domestically. Traveler’s diarrhea happens your digestive system gets irritated by something, resulting in loose stool, nausea, indigestion, and other unpleasant symptoms.
There are several different things that can cause traveler’s diarrhea, but it always results in irritation to the digestive tract. In most cases, this irritation happens because you ate or drank contaminated food and water. It can also happen, however, due to travel stress, excessive caffeine, or because you tried food that you aren’t used to.
As with other forms of occasional diarrhea, traveler’s diarrhea is uncomfortable and inconvenient but not necessarily dangerous or life-threatening. However, to keep traveler’s diarrhea from putting too much of a damper on your adventures, it’s important to seek solutions to take care of the issue..
How to Treat Traveler’s Diarrhea
Even though traveler’s diarrhea usually isn’t life-threatening or even serious, it’s extremely inconvenient. Luckily, there are several different treatments that can help with traveler’s diarrhea.
Cutting Out Caffeine
If your occasional diarrhea is worse in the morning than at other parts of the day, it’s possible that you can remedy the problem by cutting out caffeine in the morning. Caffeine on an empty stomach, especially acidic coffee, can irritate your already tender digestive system, resulting in diarrhea.
Take Medications
In most cases, you won’t need to take medications to cure your traveler’s diarrhea. However, if you start to develop a fever, shakes, and other severe symptoms, you should visit a local doctor and have them prescribe you medications. It’s likely that your traveler’s diarrhea stems from a viral or bacterial infection, and the only cure is prescription medications.
Don’t Eat or Drink Things of Unknown Origin
Unless your traveler’s diarrhea stems from travel stress, it’s usually preventable. The likely explanation for your condition is that you ate or drank something that was contaminated with bacteria or a virus. Therefore, by simply refraining from eating and drinking things of unknown origin, you can prevent traveler’s diarrhea. You should also avoid eating food that is raw or undercooked.
Rest and Hydration
Whether you go to a local doctor or treat your condition on your own, rest and hydration are two of the most important components to making a full recovery. When you have occasional diarrhea, you are expelling a large amount of liquids from your system, often leading to dehydration. Dehydration is compounded if you’re active and constantly doing things.
Therefore, to supplement your missing electrolytes, it’s important to drink lots of clean water and Gatorade. You should also take it easy and get as much rest as possible.
Take Probiotics
Anytime you have traveler’s or occasional diarrhea, part of the problem could be poor gut health. To remedy your gut health, you need to increase the amount of healthy bacteria in your microbiome. One of the best ways to do this is by taking a probiotic such as saccharomyces boulardii.*
Saccharomyces boulardii is a potent probiotic yeast that increases your gut health and helps minimize traveler’s diarrhea. You can take saccharomyces boulardii while you have occasional diarrhea or take it before you start your journey.*
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