Maintaining a Healthy Gut While Traveling

When your routines, diet, and physical activity levels are disrupted by travel, your digestive system can become imbalanced. That’s why any kind of travel, whether it’s for a night or a week, can feel like a big disruption. Bloating, abdominal distention, cramping, constipation, or diarrhea, isn’t any fun, especially on the move. Here are six things to help maintain a healthy gut while you’re traveling. As always, consult with your doctor about any gut health concerns.

Eat a balanced diet, with peel-able fruits and cooked vegetables.

One of the biggest issues while traveling is eating different foods than we’re used to in our day-to-day lives. Trying new foods is a key part of the travel experience. So to help stabilize your gut, incorporate fruits and vegetables as much as possible because the fiber helps regulate the gut.

As an extra precaution eat fruits that have to be peeled like bananas, oranges, and avocados, and cooked vegetables. This helps reduce exposure, as much as possible, to microbes that could cause traveler’s diarrhea.

Get enough pre and probiotics.

Prebiotics balance out gut microbiota by providing food sources for healthy gut bacteria and inhibit the overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria. When you’re on the go, unripe bananas (they contain the prebiotic inulin and prebiotic-like starches that aren’t found in ripe bananas), flaxseed, and oatmeal (the less processed, the better) are some convenient ways to get them. Generally, prebiotics like inulin, fructooligosaccharides (FOS), and galactooligosaccharides (GOS) can help prevent and improve gut imbalances like constipation and diarrhea.

For probiotic foods, kimchi and yogurt are great sources to incorporate into your meals whenever you can. When you’re taking probiotics, research shows that Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Saccharomyces boulardii, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus rhamnosus, and Lactobacillus fermentum may be effective in preventing and treating traveler’s diarrhea.

For constipation, studies suggest that an array of probiotics can help, including Bifidobacterium bifidum, Lactobacillus rhamnosus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus paracasei, Bifidobacterium longum, Bifidobacterium lactis, Lactobacillus casei, and Bifidobacterium animalis. For abdominal bloating, the research is less clear, but Escherichia, Lactobacillus, and Bifidobacterium strains may help. Choosing a probiotic with as many of these strains as possible can increase your chances of the supplement addressing various gut imbalances.

Space out your meals.

Giving yourself time between meals helps your body move food through the digestive tract and regulates your gut. It allows the pattern of gut movement that’s designed to propel food down the small and large intestines to activate.

About two hours after a meal, gut movement is triggered, and it re engages every 90 to 120 minutes until you eat again. But it activates only between meals, when you’re not eating or drinking (except for noncaloric beverages like water, plain coffee, or tea). That means if your meals aren’t spaced at least three to four hours apart, you can increase your chances of constipation.

Stay hydrated.

Staying hydrated helps keep all your bodily functions flowing, including your digestive system. Drinking plenty of water is key and adding electrolytes like magnesium, potassium, and calcium can help you rehydrate.

Move your body.

Exercise is one of the best ways to help in terms of keeping some regularity with your digestive tract. Increasing metabolism and movement optimizes digestive health. It can also improve our moods by regulating the gut-brain axis.

Just simply walking and exploring a new city, you could get anywhere from four to six miles a day without even realizing it.

Create a five-minute nighttime routine.

Creating a nighttime routine can indirectly help with digestive health. It sends a message to our brain that we’re winding down for the night, which triggers our mind and body to relax. This improves digestion and sets us up for a better night’s sleep, which is when our gut movement is activated and digestive repair occurs.

It’s best to avoid food a few hours before bedtime, allowing your blood sugar levels to return to baseline, which helps your body relax. When it’s closer to bedtime, take at least five minutes to wind down before bed by doing a short meditation, listening to calming music, and putting your phone and other electronics away. The goal is to take a relaxing moment before going to bed to prepare your body for a restorative sleep.