On Not Being Sick While Traveling

Photo by Josh Meister Photo.

This is not something I choose to share when I first meet people – Hi, I’m Shari, and I have an intestinal disease – but it is a part of my life. Not fun, but manageable. Over the years, I’ve gotten a fairly good handle on it, and was averaging feeling really crummy (having flares) about one to three times a year.

Based on that history, all the different foods I’d be eating, foreign bacteria I’d be ingesting, and who knows what else I’d be encountering as we were traveling around the world, I was positive I’d have several flares during our journey. Before we departed, I had planning sessions with my GI doctor, majorly stocked up on my regular medication as well as emergency medication, and mentally prepared myself to deal with it.

But guess what? I never once had a flare the whole trip.

Why? I’m obviously not a medical professional, but I have some theories:

STRESS

Stress seems to be a big trigger for me with my gut. Even though a year of travel is just that, it’s fun stress. Everything we were doing was of our choosing, and even though things were tense sometimes (see missing our very first flight out of the US, almost not being allowed on the plane to China, and our trying WWOOFing gig in France), there weren’t often prolonged periods of stress, and the ups way outweighed the downs. And, I’m pretty sure over all, way less stress than the average year for us.

PROCESSED FOOD

It was so much easier to eat cleaner and avoid processed food almost everywhere we visited. This is something I really struggle with at home, and it never ceases to amaze me how difficult it is for the average person to find truly clean food in the US and how little we really know about where our food comes from.

VIGILANCE

Over the years, and working with a nutritionist, I’ve gained some knowledge about what might contribute to a flare, both food and otherwise. The whole reason we didn’t include India on our itinerary is because I was positive I’d get sick (because it seems that everyone who visits India gets sick), and it takes me about three times as long as a normal person to recover from something like food poisoning. And then for a crazy amount of time afterward, I’m extra intestinally sensitive (like that term?). So even though seafood is a major staple of my diet normally, I was super wary of it the whole time we were traveling. Even when Josh decided the ice was safe to use in a drink somewhere, I often went without it. When we ate street food, I typically avoided the meat options. (Sidenote: We got extremely lucky in that we never got food poisoning, but it really was just that – luck. A single drop of tap water left in a glass before a server fills it with a beer can do you in. We just really had luck on our side in this area.)

SUN

There’s some research that shows that Vitamin D can be good for the gut. It’s not proven, but we did spend more than our fair share of time soaking it up.

MEDICINE

This one is much more of a guess, but here goes. I could only obtain so much of the medicine I’m prescribed in the US prior to leaving. My doctor sent me off with several prescriptions to fill in various parts of the world as my supply ran low. Pretty much everywhere I did restock didn’t carry the same brand name I had been taking and instead gave me a similar generic. Which happened to be the same generic everywhere else but in the US. Most likely, it’s all the same makeup, but also, maybe my body just responded better to that drug?

I don’t truly know if any of these factors, or more likely, a combination of them, played a part in me not getting sick, but either way I was certainly happy to be feeling gut-healthy the whole time!

All images TM & © 2017 Josh Meister Photo and Shari Margolin (unless otherwise stated). Please don’t steal or “borrow” – just be cool, be cool.