After 4 years of almost-permanent travel, one pregnancy and 1 year of travel with a baby later, my body kept trying to tell me something…
It wasn’t anything big, just little niggles here and there, but it was enough for me to know – with the additional knowledge of being a former holistic health, fitness & nutrition coach – that my body needed some serious TLC.
Health and wellness isn’t a topic many permanent travellers or entrepreneurs talk about – many of us know that we could be doing better – we pay lip service to it and talk about how we are the #1 asset our business has and therefore we need to take better care of it, but not many of us do it very well.
I read somewhere once that we can only focus on 2 out of 3 areas of our life at any one time – business, family or health – so when you add travel into the mix, it’s likely you’ll be dropping 2 of those 4 balls.
If you think this article isn’t relevant to you, see how many of the following warning signals your body is giving you that apply to you:
- Problems losing or gaining weight
- Athlete’s foot or other chronic fungal problems that never go away
- IBS or other digestive problems
- Acne, niggling rashes and other skin problems
- Light headed-ness, blood sugar problems and mood swings
- PMS, hot flashes and other hormonal issues
You may not have the worst symptoms in the world – in fact, they may be so mild you wouldn’t really consider doing anything about them – but they’re there and you *do* notice them.
This is your body’s way of telling you something is out of balance – that something is not quite right and that it needs attention. If you keep on ignoring these signs and symptoms and you keep treating your body in the same way, then it will start to give you even clearer signs that all is not right in its (your) world.
These sorts of things are easy to ignore when you’re having fun, gorging on all the Thai curry you can eat, Zorbing down New Zealand’s green pastures or bungee jumping along South Africa’s Garden Route but they’re not so easy to ignore when they prevent you from doing the fun stuff.
Health is a tricky thing to maintain on the road or when your focus is on building a stable income or growing a business; there are too many other things crying out for attention and you know, you can always deal with your health later, can’t you?
If you’re wondering about the specifics of the impact of travel on your health, here are a few up-close-and-personal ailments I’ve suffered from in the past (all directly travel-related):
- A worm parasite which buried into the skin on my leg from a beach in Belize – turns out the treatment for it is a very weak form of chemotherapy and even then, it didn’t get rid of it fully.
- Threadworms, picked up by Mali in Thailand which I then got.
- H. Pylori parasite picked up from some raw fish sushi at a fancy (and expensive) restaurant in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa.
The reason these can be so debilitating is that many parasites reside in your digestive system and gut; 80% of your immune system is in your gut which means that anything which impairs its function and health, also impairs and affects your overall immune system and health.
A compromised digestive system can cause all manner of unrelated, random symptoms including hair loss, fungal infections, eczema, acne, PMS, IBS and more. Just Google “leaky gut syndrome” for more of the the “how” on this topic. It’s quite shocking.
It is a tough road to focus solely on healing your body – on repairing the damage you’ve done to it and on regaining optimum wellness. It is not for the faint of heart. I know, I’ve been there and done it – twice.
But if you’d like to start somewhere, here’s what I suggest…
You Are What You Eat
It is tempting to indulge when you travel – trying local delicacies is a huge part of the cultural experience of travelling – but it is all too easy to forget that your body needs good nutrition if it is to maintain optimal balance and health. A few basic rules when it comes to eating include:
Eat protein at every single meal – proteins are the building blocks of life; every single cell in your body is made of a protein. If you don’t consume enough, you’re starving your body of the basic building materials it needs to construct itself (that’s why vegetarians and people on super low fat/low protein diets can still be overweight – the body is in starvation mode). Good quality proteins are a MUST for optimal health.
Eat local, fresh and as natural/organic as possible – we’re organic freaks, we eat almost 100% organic but this can be tough to do when you’re on the road and the food quality standards are so different. Eating locally grown produce that’s as fresh as possible is a useful rule of thumb to stick to. You don’t necessarily know if it’s been sprayed with chemicals but if it’s produce that’s indigenous to the area, it likely grows prolifically of its own accord and therefore doesn’t need chemicals (bananas and coconuts are good examples of this).
Pay attention to food hygiene – it’s very easy to fall into a laissez-faire attitude when you travel, especially when you see the cheap prices of street food and other food stalls which are too tempting to miss. While many travellers will likely deem me as boring, not a “real” traveller and not adventurous enough (I’ve eaten my fair share of unrecognisable meat balls, fried insects and street food), if you are concerned about maintaining good gut health, you will need to pay attention to the hygiene standards of the places you eat.
Take probiotics – with your digestive system compromised, your whole body is compromised. Consider taking probiotic supplements wherever you go (or eat locally, naturally fermented foods which also contain natural probiotics – sauerkraut, for example) and especially if you ever need to take antibiotics which kill off all the good (and bad) bacteria in your gut (antibiotics = against life; probiotics = pro life).
Your body runs and is built with the food and fuel you put into it; if you choose to put crap into it, don’t expect to get much more than crap out of it.
You Are How You Sleep
Time zones, jet lag, night owl tendencies of entrepreneurs – all of these can lead to severe disruption of your sleeping patterns and natural circadian rhythms.
Your body does all of its healing and regeneration while you sleep (usually during the hours of 11pm-2am) so if you consistently miss this window, then your body will be slow to heal and you’ll notice your health and performance (ability to concentrate, ability to focus, ability to get stuff done) gradually decline in the long term.
Make sure you pay attention to your sleeping habits and consider the following tips, especially if you already have sleep problems:
Adjust slowly – whenever you arrive in a new destination, it is worth giving your body some time to adjust rather than hitting the ground running. This is especially important if you’ve had a stressful time or transition period since your body will need to heal from the damage the stress has done.
Go dark – light on any part of your body (not just your eyes/eyelids) triggers a response in your body to wake up. Always sleep in as dark a room possible to get the best quality sleep you can.
Detoxify – if you consistently wake up between the hours of 1-3am, then it could be a sign that your body is struggling to detoxify itself every night. Your liver (one of the main detoxifying organs) does most of its work between those hours and if it struggles, it may well cause you to wake up.
You may think that it’s just because your body needs to go to the bathroom – your bladder is big enough to hold almost a litre of fluid (or on average around 600 ml), with the need to pee at around the 150-200 ml mark. Which means that it’s more than big enough to go through the night without you needing to go – unless of course you downed too much before you went to bed. The most likely cause of waking in the night to go to the bathroom is your body struggling to detoxify.
Even if you’re not nomadic or travelling, you still need to pay attention to your sleeping patterns. If you’re anything like us, you work best at night, into the small hours of the morning. The same applies here – if you consistently miss your body’s window for healing and repair, this will have a long term negative impact on your health.
Toxins, Toxins Everywhere
Part of the reason we eat organic and use organic skin care products is to reduce the toxic load our bodies are exposed to. When you fly, live in polluted cities, eat additive-filled foods and slather chemically-laden skin- and hair-care products and cosmetics on your body, you expose yourself to a cocktail mix of chemicals that has not ever been tested (in combination at whatever doses you use).
So what do you do? Here are a few suggestions:
Research the air quality and consider where you stay - this may seem extreme but if you’ve ever seen young kids suffer from a chronic cough because they live in one of the most polluted cities on this earth, it hits home.
Make your own cosmetics and skin care – lugging your own organic skin care products everywhere is a hassle and not conducive to travelling light so why not make your own? It’s very simple to make your own facial skin scrub, a toner and a moisturiser for all skin types if you know how. While you may not be able to get organic ingredients everywhere you go, you will at least know your home-made products are as free as possible from chemical nasties.
Drink plenty of clean, fresh water – if you can’t reduce the amount of toxins your body is exposed to, then at least help your body to deal and eliminate them. Always drink plenty of water, do skin brushing and keep your digestive system in good working order to help your body process and eliminate your toxic load more efficiently and effectively.
Stress Is a Primary Cause of ALL Disease
Running a business is stressful. Running a business from anywhere while leading a nomadic life is even more so – not all the time but the ups and downs can be way more extreme than if you’re settled in one place.
The physiological process of stress can be extremely damaging to your body if it is prolonged, sustained and you never give your body the chance to recover (by eating the right food, by sleeping the right hours and by giving yourself physical and mental downtime).
The point is not to avoid stress but to enable your body to better deal with it. Here’s how you can do this:
Establish a base level of wellness – follow the above advice and eat well, hydrate well, establish good sleeping habits and avoid toxins as much as you can – ideally 80% of the time (remember the Pareto principle?). All of these will help you establish a base level of wellness which will enable your body to better cope with excess stress.
Practise exercise relevant to your stress levels – sometimes a long, hard run or workout at the gym will do more damage than good to an already-stressed body. Most exercise is a physiological stress (that’s the point – it’s a controlled stress to stretch the body and trigger its repair systems so that it recovers and repairs itself stronger). But in an already, chronically stressed body this additional stressor can push it over the edge and do more damage that the body can’t recover from so easily. Sometimes a gentle yoga session or even meditation and breathing is all the exercise you need. In fact, if you feel stressed, then it is the only exercise you need.
Listen to your body – your body sends you many signals throughout the day to tell you what it needs. Ignoring these over and over and over again results in 2 things:
- You lose the ability to notice or interpret these signals
- Your health deteriorates in ever more serious ways – those little niggles become full blown “conditions”
Learn to listen to your body again and you’ll know when you’ve eaten something which doesn’t suit you (you get spacy, light headed, feel weak or bloated), you’ll know when your body is overly stressed and needs a break and you’ll know when you need to switch your focus on to your health for some overdue healing.
Prolonged, sustained stress goes hand in hand with a nomadic life of travel…the rigours of travel should come with a health warning. Your body will, at some point tell you that it’s had enough and that it needs to heal – commonly experienced as travel burnout.
If you push on through and keep forcing it, your body will fail you. Maybe not in a big way at first but it will catch up with you at some point.
If some of this advice seems extreme and not something you want to do or can do while enjoying your adventures, that’s ok – it’ll be here when you do need it. Don’t forget to bookmark it and share it with those who matter to you.
