Ask Gadling: What do you do when you get food poisoning while traveling?

by Melanie Nayer on

No one wants to get sick while traveling. Unfortunately, sick happens – and it’s usually in the form of bad food caused by bad bacteria from things you just don’t want to know about. Food poisoning is no laughing matter, especially when you’re traveling, and while it usually when you least expect it the good news is you can prevent it (and usually cure it) with a few simple steps.

Most of the time, food poisoning is mild and goes away after a few days, but anyone who has suffered through it will tell you it’s miserable – and we agree. All you can do is wait for your body to rid itself of the germs causing the illness. However, food poisoning creeps up when you least expect it – would you know what to do if you suddenly get ill in a foreign country, or on a flight? While we can’t guarantee you won’t get sick while traveling, we can help you ease the pain with a few preventive measures, and some tips to quick healing if the worst should happen.

Disclaimer: We’re not doctors at Gadling; we’re seasoned travelers who have seen our way through some of the best – and worst – travel situations. The information in this article can offer tips on what to do if you get food poisoning (or something similar) while traveling, but should in no way replace the care you would receive from a medical professional. Call your doctor immediately if you get sick on the road.

[Photo from Flickr/ChicagoGeek]

What to do if you get food poisoning while traveling

View more Ask Gadling: Travel Advice from an Expert or send your question to ask [at] gadling [dot] com.
If you’ve had food poisoning you’re pretty well aware of how bad it can be – and we don’t need to go into details. The bottom line: hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Your body loses a lot of water and fluid when you’re sick with food poisoning and the best thing you can do is replenish with water and/or sports drinks. Stay away from sodas and fruit juices – there are too many sugars in those drinks and it will have the reverse effect on your body.

Antibiotics are often used to treat food poisoning but can only be used if directed from your doctor. Some travelers do carry an antibiotic with them for this exact reason, but it’s best to check with your doctor before taking anything.

If you become seriously ill while traveling, your country’s embassy or consulate can help you find medical care. The CDC offers the following rules of advice for travelers who become sick on the road:
  • Travelers’ diarrhea is the most common illness when traveling. It typically starts abruptly but it runs it course. Most doctors recommend trying to keep to your normal diet as much as possible. Try drinking clear liquids and watch for signs of dehydration, such as a dry mouth and dark-colored urine. If possible, drink rehydration drinks to replace lost fluids and electrolytes.
  • The over-the-counter remedies like Pepto-Bismol and Imodium can sometimes prevent traveler’s diarrhea and ease the food poisoning pains. Follow the directions exactly.
  • Most cases of travelers’ diarrhea resolve within 1 to 3 days without medical treatment. See a doctor if diarrhea or vomiting doesn’t subside or you have a high fever.
  • For a complete list of embassies and consulates, see the U.S. Department of State Web site at www.usembassy.gov. You can also get the contacts for local doctors and medical clinics.
What to do if you get food poisoning in flight

Getting sick at 35,000-feet is one of the worst feelings; getting food poisoning at 35,000-feet is even worse. I was on an 8-hour flight to Rome when two hours into the flight it hit me – whatever I ate was bad, very, very bad. It might have been something I ate prior to the flight, or it might have been the airplane food (which looked to have been left over from the very first commercial airline flight) – either way, this was not going to be a fun a flight. Then the turbulence happened, and it got worse. On the flip side, I learned first-hand what to do when you get sick in flight:

Immediately alert a flight attendant. No one wants to be sick in the 2×2 lavatory at the back of the plane, but when you’re sick – you’re sick. The FAA allows passengers to be in the bathroom for 15 minutes before the flight attendants are allowed to come knocking. Mention your sick to a flight attendant and they’ll take care of you, including monitoring you in the bathroom to make sure you’re OK, and bend the 15-minute rule, if needed.

Water. Water. Water. NO Soda or fruit juice – too much sugar counteracts the rehydration.

Doctors recommend trying to eat normally as soon as possible, so ask the flight attendant for some crackers or pretzels.

If you’re stuck in your seat due to turbulence, there’s not much you can do but grab your air sickness bag and hope it doesn’t last long.

The bad news is that food poisoning takes a toll on your body, as does being up in the air. The good news is that once it makes its way through your system, it’s gone for good.

As soon as you land, stock up on sports drinks (Gatorade, Pedialyte, etc.) to try and regulate your body back to normal.

How can you prevent food poisoning?

While you can’t prevent what other people do, you can take steps to decrease your chances of getting food poisoning:
  • Wash your hands often and always before you touch food.
  • Don’t eat raw meat, poultry or fish if it’s not from a clean area. While raw food is a delicacy, in some parts of the world it’s not prepared according to standards. The basic rules apply here: if it doesn’t look right, don’t eat it.
  • Make sure that meat, chicken, fish, and eggs are fully cooked.
  • When in doubt, throw it out. If you are not sure if a food is safe, don’t eat it. This goes for our beloved “street meat” and off-the-cart food.
We hope you never get sick when traveling, but if you do, just remember to take it slow, give yourself time to rebound and drink plenty of water.

Gadling readers, we want to hear from you: Have you ever gotten food poisoning while traveling? What advice do you have for other travelers?

[Photo from Flickr/mr_t_77]

Catching the travel bug: Midair malaise

by Kent Wien on

Welcome to Catching the Travel Bug, Gadling’s mini-series on getting sick on the road, prevailing and loving travel throughout. Five of our bloggers will be telling their stories from around the globe for the next five weeks. Submit your best story about catching the travel bug in the comments and we’ll publish our favorite few at the end of the series.

It was 1989. In an effort to build flight time after earning my private pilot’s license in college, I managed to convince my boss at the hobby shop where I worked that it might be a good investment for him to loan me the $5500 I needed to buy a two-seat 1946 airplane called a Luscombe.

After tiring of touring around the local airport, shooting ‘touch-and-goes’ well into the night and giving rides to share the fuel costs with everyone I knew or even the strangers I sat next to in my classes at W.S.U., I decided to venture out on a cross-country flight.

What better excuse than the annual Luscombe fly-in which was held at a beautiful airport near the mountains in Columbia, California. The event attracted over 100 of the durable little airplanes and their owners, allowing the pilots and spouses a chance to socialize about two things they were sure to have in common: a love of flight and an interest in a small part of aviation history.

I flew out to Seattle the day before so I could join up early in the morning with another Luscombe that was attending the event. Since my airplane didn’t have a baggage compartment, I stuffed the full size suitcase, tent, portable VHF radio, Sony Walkman and a bag of groceries into the right seat of the airplane, strapped down so nothing interfered with the second control stick on the right.

We were to meet up at 6 a.m. on an early May morning before heading south toward San Francisco. Seattle isn’t known for it’s good weather in May, and this morning was no exception. A low layer of clouds hovered over Puget Sound, and if I weren’t following an experienced Northwest captain out of the area, I’m not sure I would have been comfortable flying an airplane with virtually no navigational equipment that day.

I stuck close to the other airplane as we worked our way around the Tacoma area, listening on the pilot-to-pilot frequency while a half dozen Cessnas were reporting their locations to each other and patrolling up and down I-5 to report on the local Seattle traffic conditions.

As we crossed into the state of Oregon, the clouds lifted and we made our first fuel stop. The formation flying made the trip go by in no time, and I was really enjoying the experience. I would follow the captain for another few hours before he had to make a detour towards San Francisco to visit his sister before arriving at the fly-in.

We parted ways as we flew past Mount Shasta and I broke off to land at another airport for refueling. The airplane held 14 gallons of gas, enough for at least two hours of flying. I dug into some yogurt and a breakfast bar before leaving again.

The final stop before Columbia was a little residential airpark in Cameron, CA that sold fuel. I visited with one of the residents who told me that Columbia was just another two hours south.

Up to this point I had been either following another airplane or navigating from town to town using my map, since I had no navigational instruments and my compass had a rather persistent tendency to only point east regardless of my true heading.

But this leg would be over the western portion of the Sierra Nevada mountains, over Yosemite park. I soon discovered how difficult it was to match up the lakes and mountains depicted on my map with what was on the ground below me.

I’d pass over a lake and then try to find it on the map with little luck. There were so many lakes and mountains, it was hard to be sure just where I was. I elected to stay a bit further east, so I would know the airport would likely be off to my right side after two hours of flying.

I began to doubt the wisdom in my routing as time went on. To make matters worse, something was happening to my stomach. A sharp pain hit me above my seatbelt, as if I had just swallowed an ice-pick. It’s funny how quickly the blame came together in my mind to identify the breakfast bar as the culprit. It might make more sense to blame the yogurt, but I knew that breakfast bar was bad news.

As the pain became debilitating and I was feeling nauseous, I discovered that not only was I completely lost, but the batteries in my handheld radio had died.

Fortunately I had come prepared, with an extra set of eight AA cells to pop into the radio. But doing that wasn’t exactly easy. As I flew along, heading south, indicating east, I had to take apart 4 philips screws in my lap, looking down while bouncing over the afternoon bumps that naturally occur over the mountains. I had the Terra radio apart in my lap as I opened the new AA batteries that were packed in their theft-proof plastic.

And then it hit me. I was going to eject one breakfast bar and a cup of yogurt in the next ten seconds. The only question was, where?

I frantically looked around the cockpit. There was no plastic bag, only a duffel bag and my suitcase. I had no choice. I threw open the side window of the airplane and leaned my head out the tiny window, knowing that I would have to explain the mess that ran down the left side of my airplane when/if I made it to my destination. Perhaps it would blend in with the green strip running below the window on the otherwise white airplane.

After this traumatic event and still trying to fly an airplane that had an annoying habit of pulling to the right while I snapped the batteries in place and slipped a few screws into their holes, I began to assess my chances of finding the airport. I checked the time. Two hours exactly. I needed to turn west and hope for the best.

At this point, I was ready to land in whatever flat spot I could find. The “E” was visible on the fuel tank that was mounted above and behind my head and I knew I needed to be on the ground as soon as possible.

I tried to call out on my weak hand-held radio.

“Columbia traffic, Luscombe 71808, anyone in the pattern at Columbia?”

I’m not sure what I would have said if someone responded.

There was no reply.

As populated as the state of California is, the Sierra Nevada mountains looked like the Alaska range. There were no airports, roads or gravel bars below. And it was getting dark.

Maybe it was lucky that darkness had fallen. I scanned the horizon and then it hit. The brightest airport beacon I’ve ever seen. It was an old fashioned airway beacon that was used to navigate from point to point in the 1930’s, back when airplanes were equipped about as well as mine. But was it located on an airport?

I grabbed the full sized pillow next to me and put it in front of my stomach while I leaned forward, trying anything to relieve the pain. I focused on that beacon, descending at 1000 feet per minute and traveling at an excruciatingly slow 95 miles an hour.

I wondered how the landing would be. I crossed over the airport at 1000 feet, looking for the windsock below. I was relieved to see the giant letters written down the runway.

C-O-L-U-M-B-I-A

Whew.

I made an exceptionally abbreviated pattern. I can’t remember how the landing was, but I do remember turning off the runway, and heading straight for the parking area. I spun the tail around, shut the engine off and plopped out onto the grass beside the fueling pit.

I laid flat
on the ground, holding my stomach. This must be food poisoning I thought. Fortunately I was early enough to arrive – the first airplane, in fact – that there were no witnesses to the mess I made beside the fuselage.

I got up and placed a call on the nearby pay phone to my relatives who were my backup search and rescue team if I failed to check in. And then I set up my tent and collapsed inside for the night.

I felt fine the next morning, and as I cleaned off the side of the airplane, I vowed to keep this little incident to myself.

110 Luscombes showed up that year and I made a lot of friends, learned so much about my airplane and joined in some large formations of planes on missions to find the best pancakes in the area or to pass above the clearest lakes in the country.

I swapped planes with the guy parked next to me, a J-3 cub, and we chased each other around for the day while exploring the area. His compass worked fine, interestingly.

For four days, my secret was safe.

Then the Continental Luscombe Association would close up the event with an awards ceremony. I certainly wasn’t expecting to win anything, unless they had the “rattiest Luscombe” trophy perhaps.

But they handed out awards for the oldest pilot and even the youngest pilot at the event. Since I was 19, I accepted that plaque with a big smile.

Finally, they announced something called the “hard luck trophy.” An award given to the pilot who had the most difficulty getting to the fly-in.

Oh, boy. I knew I had to keep my mouth shut.

A pilot stood up and told about his experience flying through a bit of snow on the way there. Then he sat down.

“Anyone else?”

There was silence.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to confess.

I hadn’t realized how amusing the experience was until I was describing the vomit-hiding characteristics of a wide green strip down my airplane.

The only thing I had to worry about for the flight home was how I would get the three foot tall “hard-luck” trophy into my already stuffed airplane.

Then it dawned on me. I could make a little more room by leaving the box of breakfast bars behind.

Photos by Russell Croman

Epilogue: read about the fate of that little Luscombe and where it is now.

Check out Kent’s other flying stories in Gadling’s Cockpit Chronicles feature.

China releases Olympic visitor “do and don’t” list

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Visitors planning a trip to the Beijing Olympics have had a lot of information to absorb in recent weeks. Between the tragedy of the Sichuan earthquake, the ongoing controversy surrounding the Olympic torch and somewhat inevitable construction blunders, there’s been no shortage of China-related news. And if you weren’t already on China Olympics information overload, the Beijing Organizing Committee saw fit on Monday to release a list of 57 “Do’s and Don’ts” for foreign Olympic visitors.

The rules run the range from the fairly obvious (best take your Opium smuggling elsewhere) to the practical (how to file a complaint to the health department if you get food poisoning) to the more draconian (no materials detrimental to China’s politics, economy, culture and moral standards). While I can understand the need for visitors to be conscious of local cultural customs, this list oversteps its bounds. Aside from the fact it reminds everyone of all the ongoing controversy, it does nothing but serve to frighten your potential visitors. What kind of host would do that?

Headed to Beijing for the games? Don’t let travel bogeymen like “Do’s and Don’ts” lists or potential controversy scare you away. Like any unknown travel situation, the rumors often overshadow the true story on the ground. By the time that opening ceremony kicks off you’ll remember why you showed up in the first place.

GADLING TAKE 5: Week of May 10-16

by Jamie Rhein on

If you’re interested in finding out about good or bad health habit travel, turning into Gadling this week would have been a good place to start.

No Wrong Turns: Protect yourself from food poisoning

by Kelsey Mulyk on

You know that feeling: the one where the contents in your stomach churn and before you can say “I think I ate something bad,” you are already running for the bathroom. Fun, right?

Every time you get on the plane, bus or (in our case) in the car and travel to another country you expose yourself to the likelihood of coming down with some sort of stomach illness. Call it what you like (and we all know there are some pretty descriptive names out there) but the experience is the same and it flat out stinks.

Last week I was unlucky enough to eat something disagreeable (I believe a locally made tamale was the culprit) and spent a rather uncomfortable and feverish 24 hours trying to recover. I have been pretty lucky in the past to avoid food poisoning but I knew I was in for a rough time as I was with Tom when he succumbed to food poisoning in India a few years ago. And it really did live up to it’s horrible nature.

Generally my rules to avoid food poisoning/unhappy stomach are as follows:

Does the stand or restaurant appear clean?
If it doesn’t I’ll choose to go elsewhere.

Does the eatery smell bad?
I think this question really explains itself.

How many black flies are there buzzing around?
Black flies can carry and transmit numerous diseases like cholera and typhoid. Do you want them sitting on your food? I didn’t think so. Click here to read more about how gross these flies really are.

Are the locals eating here?
This is a good indication of the caliber of the food as well as the cleanliness of the eatery. A full restaurant usually indicates good food and less chance of illness!

These rules tend to keep me feeling pretty healthy while traveling though Tom has broken a few rules (for instance eating in a place in India that smelled like a sewer exploded beside it). Getting sick is almost inevitable and a part of the adventure…or at least that is what they say to make you feel better when you get hammered with food poisoning, a parasite or some other infection.

So what do you do when you come down with a case of food poisoning?

Arm yourself with these basics

  • Find a comfortable, quiet room where you can rest even if it means forking over more money than you’d normally pay. Believe me, you are going to want a decent place to stay with your own bathroom. This way you can recover in peace without worrying about your dorm roommates waking up every time you have to excuse yourself (or run like hell) to the loo.
  • Tylenol is good to have on hand for fevers as well as the aches that are common with food poisoning.
  • Electrolyte drinks (or oral rehydration salts), are available at most markets here in Mexico. These are worth having on hand as they help to restore your glucose and salt levels caused by dehydration. If you don’t have the solution you can easily prepare one: add 6 tablespoons of sugar (or honey) and a half-teaspoon of salt to 1 liter of boiling water. You can try adding lemon or ginger to this mixture to make it easier to drink. Tom made some of this little concoction for me and I will tell you now that it tastes absolutely awful but I choked about half a cup down and felt fifty times better.
  • Eat plain starchy foods like crackers, bananas, boiled potatoes. If you don’t feel like eating don’t force yourself to, your body will let you know when it’s ready for food.


When to see a doctor

If you experience any of the following symptons

  • You can’t keep anything down due to vomiting for more than 24 hours
  • Your temperature is higher than 38 degrees Celsius
  • Your stomach issues keep up for more than 4 or 5 days

Of course there are many other abnormal symptoms that may occur so if you feel like you aren’t just dealing with food poisoning or travelers’ diarrhea try and see a doctor or get to a medical facility. Cabo San Lucas and La Paz both have decent medical care centers. If you need assistance in the Baja and are unsure of where to go contact Ameri-med for more assistance and western-style health-care.

“No Wrong Turns” chronicles Kelsey and her husband’s road trip — in real time — from Canada to the southern tip of South America in their trusty red VW Golf named Marlin.