Staying healthy while traveling

Most travelers, frequent or occasional, have seen them: those medications designed to protect your health while traveling. Recently, I was given the opportunity to try out two of them.

STS Health, the manufacturer of Air-VitaTM and FluNada®, sent me samples of each to try so I could share my experience with you.

Unless you’re someone who gets sick virtually every time you travel, the problem with a medication like Air-VitaTM is that its efficacy is difficult to prove. For most of us, if we take the medication and don’t get sick, fine. But how do we know for certain that the medicine is what kept us from getting sick, or would we have been fine without it?

For many of us, the answer is a definitive “I don’t know.” Maybe we wouldn’t have become ill in the first place. Or maybe we would have.

If you’re someone who always comes back from a trip sick, then you’d probably make a better test subject than me, but I’m not one who gets sick often in any case, nor do I regularly get sick after taking airplane flights. In fact, most often, I’m fine. So I didn’t have a strong motivation to try the preventative Air-VitaTM.

However, a day or so after coming back from a cross-country trip to cover a conference, I started feeling a bit under the weather, so I decided to try the sample of FluNada®.

Again, the efficacy is hard to prove because colds vary. Some hang on forever, it seems, while others run their course quickly. That said, I started using the FluNada® at the first sign of a scratchy throat, and followed the directions to the letter.

True to form, my cold blossomed into full flower fairly quickly, complete with sore throat, a nose that was alternately stuffy and runny, and a bit of a fever.

The FluNada® was easy enough to use: spray three times to my throat, swallow, then spray once up each nostril. Use up to four times a day for up to five days.

I used FluNada® for three days, three or four times a day depending on how bad I felt, and it seemed to make a difference. My sore throat was not as sore as other colds I’ve had and seemed to go away more quickly, and the nasal application seemed to help my congestion. In three days, I was back among the living.

Not that I was completely over it; my cough lingers a bit, even a week later, but the worst of the symptoms seemed to beat a hasty retreat.

Once again, it’s not exactly science. Colds vary in intensity, and this may simply have been a mild cold in any case. Or perhaps not. But it seemed to help me feel better more quickly, which is what it’s intended to do.

I didn’t use it all up on this one cold, so I may have the opportunity to give it another try somewhere down the road. In the meantime, the results I experienced may just have convinced me to use the Air-VitaTM before my airplane next trip. After all, it couldn’t hurt!

Visit my main page at TheTravelPro.us for more news, reviews, and personal observations on the world of upmarket travel.



Images courtesy STS Health

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