- Effective Relaxation
Breathe. Chill out. Take 10 breaths before you eat inhaling momentness and the sweetness of what you are about to consume, exhaling tension from your belly. Eat with both feet on the floor, sitting if possible in your busy day to day. I like to call this effective relaxation. Multi-tasking (digesting your to-do list & your lunch) is ineffective relaxation 😉
- Take Digestive Enzymes
20 minutes before you eat. Take 2 if you miss that 20 minute window.
I simply mix these together in my shaker bottle
- Dandy Blend Packets. are loaded with prebiotics & liver health factors for gut helath
- Where to get? Health Nut Nutrition
Starbucks Coffee sucks & I am on my way to Portland, where I would 10X rather spend my coffee habit on Arbor Lodge, Coava, or Extracto. Plus I may as well sleep anyway. This flight is the same distance to London or a tropical vacay.
- Manuka Honey Packet KF16+.
- Where to get? Whole Foods / Thrive Market.
This is the extemely therapeutic dose to kill off any opportunistic microbes snaking their way in as your gut flora is shifting.
- Garden of Life Primal Defense Ultra Probiotics
- Where to get? Health Nut
I first discovered this product before traveling to Peru and I alternate between this one & Klaire Labs Professional Formulations. This is my fave to travel with & it is a noticeable difference taking this probiotic vs. other shelf stable probiotics.
- Epic Vanilla Lucuma Protein Powder
- Where to get? From me!
This Plant-based Protein tastes like graham crackers & is one of the cleanest most delicious proteins I have ever put into my body. They have a variety of other flavors and this is my fave for mixing with everything ! (including coffee & dandy blend)
I load up the bottom of my shaker bottle with this and put a scoop in with Matcha Green Tea Powder, Manuka Honey, or Dandy Blend or all of the above.
Why focus on Gut Health during travel?
Apart from the irregular odd foods we are eating while we travel and the loads of GMOd vegetable oil filled with heavy metals, we are exposed to about 100X more radiation, which heavily effects our microbiome.
On top of traveling at speeds that humans in this Earthly World were never ever meant to travel, we are exposed to loads of radiation. I have read unofficial articles discussing the harmful effects of radiation exposure during travel. I also had a radiologist tell me to tell a patient resistant to follow through with X-ray imaging that they are exposed to more radiation flying in an airport than they are receiving an X-ray. Ew!
The radiation exposure is actually from cosmic rays, that’s right an alien zap from Space! But it’s not nearly as cool as an alien zap. The exposure is because at higher latitudes, Mama Earth’s protective magnetic field is less strong. We are subject to receive more than 100X more than the usual amount of radiation exposure due to the high flights.
Though Flight Attendants are treated as high-risk radiation exposure in the US, and are known to be 42% more likely to develop melanoma in comparison to the population, the States does not take as many precautionary measures to protect their flight workers <insert Eye-roll emoji>
So, I began to look into NASA related research on Astronaut’s microbiome and pretty much geeked out for the next hour and a half.
Studies show the not only does our microbiome decrease in biodiversity when in space, microbes adapt different behaviors in space! How cool?! For instance, S. aureus (a not so great one to host in our guts!), developed a biofilm (that nasty mucusy crap that microbes spit up around themselves to protect their cell walls from detection and exposusre) when exposed to space.
What are the effects of decreasing the biome-diversity? Astronauts had a change in behavior and a decrease in amounting a healthy immune response. We know these are linked from studies.
So this is taking it a wee bit far, as astronauts have no real exposure to Earthly microbes via their aliment (Space Food!) & they are on Space missions for WAY longer than we are on a plane. But I do believe that taking the precautionaries of all the prebiotics & probiotics, while keeping quick go-to antioxidants is very important while we are flying. Maybe someone will pick up on this research one day: microbiota changes after flight radiation exposure and dietary changes for 24-72 hours & long term. Maybe they already have & it wasn’t readily available at my fingertips. Regardless, let’s take care of our guts when we travel guys. Folk take Zicam during flight, when really, we all know, that a healthy immune system has EVERYTHING to do with our gut health.
Cheers a big ole’ Dandy Raw Honey Blend to your Health! Because Health is Wealth <3
Citations
Alexander Voorhies-Hernan Lorenzi –The Challenge of Maintaining a Healthy Microbiome during Long-Duration Space Missions. http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fspas.2016.00023/full
Zeeb H, Hammer GP, Blettner M. Epidemiological investigations of aircrew: an occupational group with low-level cosmic radiation exposure. J Radiol Prot. 2012;32(1):N15-N19.
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