How to eat safely and healthy on a long trip?

The life of a mod­ern per­son is dynam­ic, so he has to adapt to changes, includ­ing in nutri­tion. It is most dif­fi­cult for those who have sys­temic patholo­gies and, there­fore, spe­cial needs to adhere to the rec­om­mend­ed diet. In addi­tion to the need to take pre­ven­tive mea­sures to pro­tect against infec­tions, one should take a respon­si­ble approach to choos­ing a menu dur­ing busi­ness trips, trips to oth­er cities and coun­tries.

What is therapeutic nutrition?

Diet affects peo­ple’s health. There­fore, a per­son has learned to use diets as one of the ele­ments of com­plex treat­ment and pre­ven­tion of var­i­ous patholo­gies.

There are fif­teen main and sev­er­al addi­tion­al treat­ment and pro­phy­lac­tic tables, which were devel­oped in the thir­ties of the last cen­tu­ry by the out­stand­ing Russ­ian doc­tor and sci­en­tist Manuil Isaakovich Pevzn­er. They help pre­vent the devel­op­ment of var­i­ous patholo­gies and their com­pli­ca­tions, includ­ing:

• dia­betes;
• car­diopatholo­gies;
• dis­eases caused by infec­tion;
• obe­si­ty;
• kid­ney dis­ease, etc.

Rus­sians who have dietary rec­om­men­da­tions in their med­ical records, as a rule, adhere to one of the Pevzn­er diets. A care­ful­ly thought-out menu helps to alle­vi­ate patho­log­i­cal symp­toms, improve the clin­i­cal pic­ture of var­i­ous patholo­gies, and pre­vent the devel­op­ment of relaps­es of chron­ic dis­eases and unwant­ed com­pli­ca­tions.

No one can­cels ther­a­peu­tic and pre­ven­tive nutri­tion on busi­ness trips, roman­tic trips, etc. Quite the con­trary: any lifestyle changes are fraught with addi­tion­al stress­es that can adverse­ly affect the health of any per­son, espe­cial­ly those who already have sys­temic patholo­gies, chron­ic dis­eases. Among the adverse fac­tors may be:

• change of time zones;
• dis­rup­tion of cir­ca­di­an rhythms;
• lack of sleep;
• forced phys­i­cal inac­tiv­i­ty on the road;
• adverse weath­er con­di­tions;
• unusu­al com­po­si­tion of drink­ing water;
• eco­log­i­cal sit­u­a­tion;
• unfa­mil­iar cui­sine;
• new microbes, etc.

In order to min­i­mize the neg­a­tive impact and pro­tect your own health, first of all, you should remem­ber about dietary rec­om­men­da­tions and choose safe food.

Therapeutic and preventive diet while traveling

• When plan­ning a well­ness vaca­tion, you can choose a sana­to­ri­um of the appro­pri­ate pro­file ahead of time, where they offer ther­a­peu­tic and pre­ven­tive nutri­tion rec­om­mend­ed for cer­tain patholo­gies.
• On a busi­ness trip or plea­sure trip, it is eas­i­est for patients to fol­low the prin­ci­ples of the rec­om­mend­ed diet, strict­ly adher­ing to the lists of allowed and pro­hib­it­ed foods when choos­ing a menu. When going on the road, you can find them on the Med­AboutMe web­site and save them in your smart­phone or tablet note­book.
• In the menu of restau­rants or cafes, you should look for those dish­es that are rec­om­mend­ed, pay­ing atten­tion not only to the set of ingre­di­ents, but also to the method of prepa­ra­tion. Fried, canned, smoked foods are not shown to absolute­ly every­one.
• The sim­pler the recipe, the eas­i­er it is to under­stand whether the food is healthy or dan­ger­ous.
• You should not risk get­ting acquaint­ed with the pecu­liar­i­ties of unfa­mil­iar nation­al cuisines. Curios­i­ty some­times costs too much.
• A kind of “life­saver” can be a uni­ver­sal dietary dish, for exam­ple, a pro­tein omelet (steam or baked), oat­meal on the water, cot­tage cheese casse­role, etc.
• If there is only a com­plex lunch in the cater­ing assort­ment, try to choose the least dan­ger­ous dish­es from the pro­posed dish­es: veg­etable soups, mashed pota­toes, rice and oth­er cere­al side dish­es, baked veg­eta­bles, etc.
• In any cor­ner of the world, with the excep­tion of unin­hab­it­ed islands, you can have a snack with nat­ur­al fer­ment­ed milk prod­ucts with­out sug­ar and oth­er addi­tives.
• But just in case, in order to sat­is­fy your hunger with­out resort­ing to dubi­ous fast food dish­es, with­out being tempt­ed by ready-made con­fec­tionery, chips, etc., we advise you to have a healthy snack on hand that is not con­traindi­cat­ed. For exam­ple, nat­ur­al yogurt, a bag of nuts, a jar of apple­sauce, a banana, etc.
• Keep­ing in mind that water is more impor­tant than food, and it is nec­es­sary to main­tain opti­mal hydra­tion of the body, espe­cial­ly in case of sys­temic patholo­gies, keep a bot­tle of clean drink­ing water with you, always and every­where.

Beware of infection!

Regard­less of whether a per­son is healthy or has any dis­ease, a meet­ing with an aggres­sive path­o­gen­ic microflo­ra can be fraught with trag­ic con­se­quences. When trav­el­ing, there is an intesti­nal infec­tion, a vari­ety of influen­za virus­es, her­pes, hepati­tis pathogens, helminths, etc. They are espe­cial­ly dan­ger­ous for those peo­ple whose body is already weak­ened by exist­ing chron­ic patholo­gies.

• The source of infec­tion is often water and food. The infec­tion can lurk in ice cubes. There­fore, we do not rec­om­mend drink­ing soda, fresh juices, cock­tails, tea and oth­er alco­holic or non-alco­holic drinks with ice.
• No less dan­ger­ous are var­i­ous sauces, for exam­ple, may­on­naise, mus­tard. In addi­tion to being includ­ed in the list of pro­hib­it­ed foods for patients with dis­eases of the diges­tive sys­tem and many oth­ers due to harm­ful food addi­tives and pun­gent taste, they are pre­pared with­out the use of heat treat­ment. Sal­mo­nel­la, shigel­la and oth­er dan­ger­ous bac­te­ria adore such a nutri­ent medi­um, so all mem­bers of the “raw” sauce fam­i­ly are “time bombs” for any­one, even a per­fect­ly healthy per­son.
• Be care­ful when eat­ing ice cream and oth­er chilled dairy desserts, which can under­go count­less freeze-thaws, becom­ing a hotbed of infec­tion.
• We do not rec­om­mend eat­ing seafood, which is often the cause of poi­son­ing, recur­rence of inflam­ma­to­ry patholo­gies of the diges­tive sys­tem.
• Avoid cold meat and fish snacks.
• Among the allowed fruits, you should choose those that can be peeled, or addi­tion­al­ly washed with drink­ing bot­tled water.

In order not to ruin your vaca­tion or busi­ness trip, fol­low the diet rec­om­mend­ed by your doc­tor, be care­ful when choos­ing prod­ucts and observe per­son­al hygiene.