Travel Health
Information and Advice

'You can't have more bedbugs than a blanket full' Spanish proverb

General Travel Health Protection: Food and Drink | Sun | Altitude Sickness
Intercourse Abroad | Jet Lag | Malaria | Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT)

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General Travel Health Information

Travellers to developing countries should start with long term basic health protection. This means vaccinations against Polio, Tetanus, Typhoid and Hepatitis A.
Other vaccinations will depend on where you are going, local conditions at that time, and your anticipated environment. Visitors to Yellow Fever areas such as West Africa should definitely be vaccinated against it.
Consult a health specialist or a travel advisory service and start early, a series of jabs may take up to six weeks to complete, so get on with it! Check links for the latest news.

Food and Drink

Water: In developing countries avoid drinking or even brushing your teeth with tap water. Drink bottled water and check that the cap is securely sealed when you buy it. Turning it upside down and watching for drips is one method of checking.
If you can't buy it, sterilize it by boiling or dropping in purification tablets or iodine.
Do not take ice in your drinks, unless it is clearly frozen mineral water.
Tea, coffee, soft drinks and booze are fine from a bacterial point of view, though not so fine from a dehydration standpoint.
Don't share water bottles with other travellers unless you want to share their bugs too.
Water filters are ok in theory but can break easily and usually don't filter some serious viruses, such as Hepatitis A and E.

Force yourself to drink clean water, lots of it, if you want to avoid headaches and lethargy from dehydration. And no, beer will have the opposite effect by dehydrating you even more.
Water requirements at home are 6 glasses per day, so multiply that figure by at least 3 in tropical environment.

Food: Avoid ice cream from dodgy sources, raw fish, food kept warm, salads and uncooked food - unless you can peel it or shell it yourself. Most cases of rampant diarrhoea come from unhygienic food, not unclean water.

Eating in local restaurants in developing countries:
1] Start acclimatising your intestines slowly. e.g. First day, don't eat street. Second day, try a small well cooked snack. etc.
2] Eat where it's busy. This means that turnover is fast so fresh food has less chance to go off in a hot climate [where there may be little or no refrigeration]. It also means that the food is good or cheap or both!

Suffering Ramases Revenge?
The Inca Two-step? Delhi Belly? aka diarrhoea...If there is time, do the natural cure:
Drink a lot of water.
For maximum absorption of water generally, add 1/2 a teaspoon of salt and 3 teaspoons of sugar to a litre [2 quarts] of water, and in the case of Ramases Revenge, double the salt and sugar levels. [Don't take salt tablets, they can cause stomach irritation and vomiting].
Don't eat for half a day at least, and then restart solids slowly, with plain, easily digested foods such as boiled, watery rice or plain bread. This will encourage your body to develop a stronger health defence system and Ramases will have more difficulty next time.

If you're in a hurry Lomotil/Imodium or similar works well - but doesn't kill the bug; it just stops your insides turning to water every thirty minutes.

Altitude Sickness

Otherwise known as AMS, Acute Mountain Sickness. Here are some popular destinations where you might get AMS without climbing mountains : Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, Tibet. The problem is lack of oxygen and is especially relevant to smokers and those with heart problems.

Symptoms:
Stage 1: dizziness, nausea, headaches, insomnia, breathlessness, loss of appetite.
Cure: rest, eat well, drink lots of water and don't ascend further. You'll be fine in a couple of days. Probably.
Stage 2: dry cough, vomiting, confusion, loss of balance and co-ordination. Pulmonary oedema.
Cure:
AMS comes on slowly - over a day or two days so descend! or see a doctor for medication.
Prevention:
a] ascend slowly e.g. In the case of Peru, go to Arequipa for 2/3 days before Puno/Cuzco.
b] get fit.
c] get a prescription for acetazolamide[diamox] and start taking it before the trip.
d] chew coca or drink coca tea [in Peru/Bolivia].
e] homoeopathic health advisors suggest taking aconite 6c to treat initial symptoms and arsenicum album 6c for further help. Both together is fine, x 4 per day, Amax 4 doses.
An iron supplement, Floridax, and/or ginkgo biloba, taken daily for 2 weeks before travel are also supposed to help.

Insurance Advice

One in seven British travellers on overseas trips don't have any insurance. This is madness, and I speak as one who has been robbed three times, had bags crushed once and had to cancel a trip through family illness on another occasion. In every case I was fully reimbursed by my insurers.
Problems and accidents are far, far more frequent abroad, and local assistance may be very costly. For example, a broken leg in the USA may cost up to £10,000, yet a year's worldwide insurance with a good company will cost well under £100. Me, I'd rather skimp on home insurance than travel insurance.

Sunbathing

Positive: Moderate sunbathing boosts vitamin D production which may help protect the body against some cancers. New York's Brookhaven National Laboratory completed a study in 2007 indicating that UVB stimulates vitamin D production, helping to fight cancers of the breast, lung, colon and prostate.
However, moderate sunbathing does not include using sunbeds [that tend to produce UVA radiation], nor overexposing to strong sunlight such as midsummer, midday rays.

Negative: There is no point in lying around in the sun at midday in the tropics or subtropics. This will not only earn you a good chance in the melanoma lottery and add an unpleasant red highlight to your tan, but it will probably burn the tan off altogether after a few days.
You will brown up more smoothly and lastingly by sunbathing before 11am and after 3pm. And you may live longer too.
'I never thought the price of getting a tan would be so high' Anna West, 21, speaking a week before dying of skin cancer.

So, don't go in the sun in the middle of the day and be especially careful when swimming, snorkelling [wear a T shirt], motor-biking, and getting wrecked on the beach.

p.s. Recent research in the US suggests that skin care products containing AHAs [alpha hydroxy acids] increase the skin's sensitivity to sunlight in some cases, so be particularly careful about applying sun protection if there are AHAs in your choice of skin creams.

Malignant Melanoma signs:
- An existing mole is getting larger
- A mole has a ragged outline
- A mole has a mixture of brown/black colours
Non-melanoma skin cancer signs:
- A new growth or sore does not heal within 4 weeks
- A spot or scab continues to itch, hurt or bleed
- Skin ulcers persist without apparent reason

Source: Cancer Research UK

Sun, Se* and Sangria

So you go abroad, get plastered on the local brew, dance like a loonie, bang anything receptive and go home with sensational memories - and some less welcome health-threatening souvenirs...
Syphilis, that's an easy one to deal with, but how about herpes, gonorrhoea, hepatitis B or even HIV? These are all transmitted by heterosexual relations as well as homosexual ones, and are on a steep rise in India and other tropical countries, ex-USSR countries, and sub-Saharan Africa.
In Europe the most common source of heterosexual HIV is Spain, including, of course, the popular party islands.
The more promiscuous the partner the more likely it is that he or she will leave you with more than memories, and alcohol is the fuel that drives most of these fun, casual encounters that ruin your health months or years later.

Facts:
Hepatitis B: Over 10% of young adults in many tropical areas have it. It's highly infectious, and can permanently damage the liver. It can be transmitted during sex or via dirty needles [including blood transfusions]. The incubation period is 2-6 months, plenty of time for you to pass it on to others unknowingly. You can be immunised against it. Condoms give good, though not perfect protection.
Syphilis: recent epidemics in post Soviet countries. Can cause sterility, brain damage and death, though it's relatively quick to diagnose and easy to treat. Condoms give good, though not perfect protection.
HIV/Aids: over half of UK cases - many heterosexual - aquired the disease abroad. It causes more deaths than malaria. The incubation period could be years and even tests take up to 6 months, plenty of time for you to pass it on to others unknowingly. Condoms give good, though not perfect protection.

So...male or female, take plenty of good quality condoms with you when you travel and carry them when you're planning to get wrecked, avoid oral satisfaction, and if you do indulge in wild bonking scenes have a check up at your local health clinic when you get back - it will be completely confidential and may save your local relationships and even your life.

See also Bugbog's: Jet Lag | Malaria | DVT pages. Other useful, mostly free Travel Health links:

24dr [UK] | FitForTravel [UK] | Foreign Office [UK] | Disease by Destination [US]