Maintaining a Healthy Gut While Traveling

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

Eat a Balanced Diet

One of the biggest issues while traveling is eating different foods than we are used to in day-to-day life. Of course, 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 digestion.

As an extra precaution, eat fruits that you have to peel, like bananas, oranges, and avocados, along with cooked vegetables. This reduces your exposure, as much as possible, to microbes that could cause traveler’s diarrhea.

Get Enough Pre- and Probiotics

Prebiotics balance out gut microbiota by feeding healthy gut bacteria and inhibiting the overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria. When you are on the go, unripe bananas (they contain the prebiotic inulin and prebiotic-like starches that ripe bananas lack), 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.

Kimchi and yogurt are great probiotic foods to add to your meals whenever you can. In addition, research shows that Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Saccharomyces boulardii, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus rhamnosus, and Lactobacillus fermentum may be effective for 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. Therefore, choosing a probiotic with as many of these strains as possible can increase your chances of 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 also lets the natural pattern of gut movement, which propels food down the small and large intestines, activate.

About two hours after a meal, your gut movement kicks in, and it re-engages every 90 to 120 minutes until you eat again. However, it activates only between meals, when you are not eating or drinking (except for noncaloric beverages like water, plain coffee, or tea). That means if your meals are not 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 keep some regularity in your digestive tract. By increasing metabolism and movement, you optimize digestive health. Movement can also improve our moods by regulating the gut-brain axis.

Simply walking and exploring a new city could add up to four to six miles a day. In fact, you might not even realize it.

Create a Nighttime Routine

Creating a five-minute nighttime routine can indirectly help your digestive health. It sends a message to our brain that we are winding down for the night, which triggers the mind and body to relax. As a result, digestion improves, and we set ourselves up for a better night’s sleep, when gut movement activates and digestive repair happens.

It is best to avoid food a few hours before bedtime, which lets your blood sugar return to baseline and helps your body relax. Closer to bedtime, take at least five minutes to wind down. For example, do a short meditation, listen to calming music, and put your phone and other electronics away. The goal is to take a relaxing moment before bed to prepare your body for restorative sleep.