A recent AskMen.com survey gave 10 tips to improve your travel health when flying on business. Some of the tips were lame while others are just common sense. If this is all you do to preserve your health while flying then you ought not fly at all. After frothing at the mouth at the lame advice offered I have come up with an alternative list for those who might want to retire from frequent business travel without becoming an alcoholic! So as not to deprive the seasoned flyers among you of amusement I will list the AskMen.com tips alongside real travel tips for flyers who want to stay healthy.
1. AskMen – Never check luggage. Unless you are in the habit of packing family heirlooms on business trips which if lost cause stress and anxiety, this is no way to start a tip list about better travel health. However while we are on the topic of stress the alternative number one tip is, Always arrive in plenty of time to avoid stress and anxiety before you fly. It would be a good idea to make this your golden rule as an American Express Business Travellers survey found that as much as 45% of travellers are stressed out before they get to the airport!
2. AskMen – Maintain your health. For a tip sheet on health you would expect it to deliver more than just general information about vitamins. Maintaining your health while flying has moved on from simply staying hydrated and going jogging. Covering how to handle jet lag and jet stress should be basic knowledge available to all flyers. While this tip sheet can’t deal with that topic in such a small space as this, alternative tip number two is Find the best quality vitamin c you can lay your hands on and take it daily. A major health risk from airplane travel is the being in close proximity with so many others and an atmosphere potentially loaded with health destroying bacteria and viruses. Abundant vitamin c in the body is able to combat the ill effects of any such danger. The proof of this is evident in the jungle where primates naturally exposed to higher levels of bacteria and viruses are protected from infection and disease by high blood levels of vitamin c.
3. AskMen – The Dopp Kit. Packing miniatures of all your creams and lotions is supposed to keep you healthy or so AskMen would have us believe. Alternative tip number three is Pack Aloe Vera clear gel in your allowed carry on amenities kit. Aloe Vera can be taken internally or externally and is many times more hydrating than most moisturising creams you can find on the market today. It can also be used to shave, brush your teeth (add salt), wash hair (add soap on board) and for upset stomachs. Maybe you won’t need all those little miniatures after all!
4. AskMen – Wear the right shoes. I have never seen any business men or women tottering uncomfortably down the aisle in high heels in 12 years of flying, it wouldn’t be practical and I would hazard a guess and say that most business flyers know that too. Alternative tip number four, Wear magnetic insoles in the shoes you do choose to wear when flying. Magnetic insoles will help you stay in tune with the earth’s grounding energy and is a first step to helping you on your way to recovering from jet lag.
5. AskMen – Featherweight packing. This refers to the danger of packing too much when you travel. Packing too much is only really a problem if you are a weakling unable to carry your luggage, in which case you need to grow some muscle and stop being a sissy! Alternative tip five Resistance exercise will help your general health while flying. You have to stay healthy if spend a lot of time on the road anyway so you might as well pack what you need and dead lift your overstuffed suitcase in your hotel room and pack on that muscle. Improvise, improvise, improvise.
6. AskMen – Carry a good bag. I agree with this one but the recommendation is somewhat the opposite of AskMen’s. Their recommendation is not to use a trolley bag. If you don’t use a trolley bag that leaves a bag with straps or handles. Research has shown that people using a bag with a shoulder strap tend to prefer carrying it on one shoulder more than the other. This leads to posture problems and back aches. Alternative tip six Use bags that meets airline specifications with wheels or handles and save yourself posture problems. If you have posture problems check out the Egoscue method of posture alignment to help correct them.
7. AskMen – Bring a flask of coffee or whiskey. Any thought that this survey has anything positive to contribute to healthy flying must surely be abandoned at this point. Alternative tip seven Pack hydrating supplements like Megahydrate and drink water constantly throughout your flight. Coffee and any alcohol are definitely no-no’s for anyone wanting to avoid adrenal exhaustion.
8. AskMen – Stay warm. This tip focuses on getting fellow passenger envy. Alternative tip eight Bring your own mini hot water bottle and ask the crew for hot water and enjoy uninterrupted sleep. In addition, you could also stay warm by drinking hot medicinal grade herbal teas like Holy basil, Pau’darco and Jiaogulan, all good for building immunity and easing stress.
9. AskMen – Noise cancelling headphones. These are common place in most business traveller cabins these days so this is nothing new take it to the next level – alternative tip nine Add stress relieving brain entrainment tracks to your phone so even if you can’t sleep on the plane you can relax and get off the plane refreshed after a short meditation.
10. AskMen – Wear a good watch. Good advice but again the kinds of solutions available to the flyer have grown in recent times, i.e the definition of a good watch is more than one that has dual time zones. Alternative tip ten Get yourself a wrist watch with entrainment technology to help you stay connected to the earth’s magnetic field. This will help you arrive in better shape and get you on to local time quickly.
Ten serious tips to help you arrive well and stay on course for business wherever you go. It is time travel advice caught up with the variety of health enhancing options available to flyers and stopped bandying about tired dated information. Ultimately it’s not about how you travel it’s about how you arrive.