Helpful Medications You Should Carry While Traveling

Sudden sicknesses are very common to human life. You might be in perfect physical shape with a healthy immune system. But there is no guarantee that you won't get sick all of a sudden because many illnesses don't have any obvious symptoms at first.

So, if you are traveling to a place far from your home, you should keep a few medications for some common conditions, so that you can avoid unwanted discomforts. These include:

Motion Sickness

Motion sickness is one of the common conditions that you may experience while travelling in a car, train, airplane or boat. It is a disturbance of the balance-sensing system (inner ear, eyes and sensory nerves) that is caused by repeated motion.

It usually develops with a feeling of unwell, sweating, headache and/or dizziness, and is quickly followed by nausea or vomiting. Children between 5 and 12 years of age, women, older adults and people with a migraine problem are mostly affected by motion sickness.

To avoid the discomforts of a sudden motion sickness, you should keep an antiemetic drug, such as prochlorperazine maleate (Stemetil) or ondansetron (Zofran), and a general pain killer, such as paracetamol, in your bag.

Food Poisoning

Food poisoning is another common but very distressing problem that you may get while travelling. It is often caused by eating contaminated food, and its symptoms include nausea, vomiting, intestinal discomfort and/or diarrhea.

The symptoms either can start within a few hours after eating the contaminated food or may delay from a few days to several weeks.

To cope with food poisoning while travelling, you should keep zinc tablets and some sachets of oral rehydration solution (ORS), so that you can maintain the fluid and electrolyte balance.

However, if your condition gets more severe, you may need to take antibiotics, such as ciprofloxacin (Cipro), antispasmodics, or anti-emetics to reduce the length of time you are sick.

Allergic Reaction

Allergic reactions are common. If you have moderate to high allergic sensitivity, you may suddenly caught up with sneezing, nasal congestion, runny nose, red eyes and sinus pressures while travelling.

And this can make your journey worse. Therefore, as a precautionary measure, it is better to carry an antihistamine, such as ketotifen (Zaditor) or cetirizine (Zyrtec), in the bag to cope with a mild reaction.

General Acidity

Acidity is a very common problem that can occur at anytime, anywhere. You never know when your stomach will produce excess acid and you'll feel gastric inflammation.

So, as a preventive measure, you should keep either antacids (e.g. aluminum hydroxide and magnesium hydroxide gel/suspension) or a proton pump inhibitor, such as omeprazole (Prilosec), while travelling.

Disclaimer

Being a pharmacist, it is my responsibility to inform you that you must consult with a GP or pharmacist before keeping any of the medicines I have mentioned in the above post. You never know which medication you may be hypersensitive to. Also, I have no idea or knowledge about your medical history, so please consult with your doctor first.

Image Source: Rhoda Baer, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons