Staying in the game

Or, how to avoid getting sick on the road.

Sometimes the road takes more than it gives. Between the guy in 32B coughing up a lung, the post-dinner espresso, and the 12 am second dinner after a few rounds of mezcal, health is always in question. In my experience, staying healthy while traveling isn’t about optimization or self-improvement - I’ll go where the tides take me - but rather negotiating with yourself. It’s about harm reduction and remaining functional the next morning.

As such, I’ve collected a few unglamorous guidelines and dopp kit supplies to help me walk all day, eat and drink with intention, and keep the wheels on. Plus, I’m an insufferable little baby when I get the slightest sore throat, so I’m really just looking out for anyone who has to tolerate me. Anyway, maybe these will help you too.

Quick disclaimer: my two years of pre-med technically don’t count as actual medical advice and there’s a good chance that half of this is just a placebo effect, so your mileage may vary.

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// Treat sleep as a negotiation

I love sleep, but I’m terrible at it - a cursed combination. Travel and navigating time zones make it worse. It takes about a day per hour change to fully acclimate to a new time zone. On a typical 10–12 day trip, at least half of that time is spent adjusting. I’m going to be tired, that’s just how it is. If you wake up at 3 am, try not to fight it, just keep a book nearby and read for an hour until you fall back asleep. Or I’ll get my ass up for a sunrise photo walk to take advantage of the light and the empty streets. Nothing groundbreaking here, but just accepting sleep will be rough is the bit.

But you can get a little help. Daily magnesium glycinate has improved my sleep more than anything else, so it’s the first thing in the dopp kit. Melatonin comes along too, but I use it sparingly, mostly for the first night or two after a big time change, just enough to get me pointed in the right direction.

// Walk until the city makes sense

Walking is how the body catches up. By far the most important thing you can do to keep yourself sane is to walk. Then walk some more. And walk more after that. Better yet, members can try out Meander and walk the whole damn city - it randomizes routes so you wander new neighborhoods instead of retracing the same streets.

About to eat your weight in fish at an omakase joint two miles away? Walk there. Walking should be the default transportation mode. It’s also how you’ll get to know all the textures of a city and find threads you want to pull at. Or, at the very least, stumble across something you never would have otherwise.

// Ease into the first 48 hours

Most trips are lost in the first few days. Pace yourself early and the rest usually takes care of itself. Rush it, and you’ll spend the back half of the trip recovering instead of paying attention. Maybe don’t order that second bottle of wine on the first night. There’s plenty of time for that.

// Assume you’ll get sick

Outside of sleep and movement, I keep a bring some daily supplements to boost my immune system around the edges. Magnesium is already doing double duty for sleep and immunity. The rest fall somewhere between insurance and superstition.

I’ve been taking Wellness Formula for a while, and I’m honestly not sure where and why I started. At this point, I’m a believer and feel it provides a baseline level of protection - placebo or not, I’ll take it. I also take NAC (N-Acetylcysteine), which has some interesting data behind it, and anecdotally it’s kept the severity of bugs short-lived; the last few times I felt a scratch in my throat, it disappeared within 24 hours. Vitamin D and omega-3s round things out. I’m also a proponent of the hot toddy when I feel symptoms come on, which has absolutely no scientific backing other than your old nana saying it works - though do you even need more evidence?

Food-borne bugs are inevitable, especially if you’re really going for it. For obvious reasons, I like to nod to this study showing a (very) small relationship between consuming alcohol while eating from dubious food sources and fewer incidents of food poisoning. Do with that what you will. Otherwise, keep some Imodium in your pack for emergencies. If I’m gone for a long period of time, antibiotics are tucked away like a ripcord ready to pull. Unfortunately, I’ve had to use those a few times for some really gnarly bugs.

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What can I say, this is the kind of hard-fought wisdom you get when you’re over 30. You’ll still get your ass kicked now and then. That’s part of it. The goal isn’t to avoid the wear and tear, but to stay in the game. These tenets have served me well and in them there’s a particular kind of confidence in knowing you can ruin your sleep, eat questionably, drink with intention, and still wake up mostly fine.

Good luck out there.

Skylar

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