So just how healthy are we going to be this Thanksgiving?  Well, we did go to the special grocery store down the road this morning to pick up a roasted turkey roll that came from a free-range, non-hormoned, not pumped up with solutions bird.  Does that count for healthy?  Oh, and does buying an already cooked roast help classify us as being green as well?

Not really but we’d like to think so.  We are also going to do the pumpkin cheesecake, the candied yams, the sausage-cornbread stuffing with oysters and turkey gravy and that’s all going to have to be heated up somehow.  This may not be a good example of healthy living. But it has to be healthy–we are leaving out the mashed potatoes and all that butter!!!

Well if you aren’t going to have the healthiest of feasts this Thanksgiving, then opt for a great and healthy travel day.

For all of you out there who are traveling this holiday to see family and friends, one of the best travel trips we can suggest is to take some healthy nibble food along because today is one of the worst (longest travel day, mostly late flights and crowded roadways) travel days of the year.  The only day worse might be the Sunday after Thanksgiving because it’s also the start of Hunting Season in many states as well as a major travel day.  Don’t be on the Pennsylvania Turnpike after 12:00pm noon that day if you want to get where you are going.

Now what do we mean by healthy nibble food?  Something we like to do besides take organic fruit is put really raw almonds (not the pasteurized ones), organic raisins and coconut chips, unsalted/raw sunflower seeds – all thrown together to give yourself a great trail mix.  This mix is a good way to curb hunger while flying and driving. 

There are also some great raw cacao bars being made these days (we plan to do a product review soon) that give you so many health benefits (read up on anything by David Wolfe) plus they taste great, impart that wonderful theobromine feeling of being in love and help maintain a high energy level.  Who would have thought there were healthy chocolate bars?  And I just heard about a new product–raw cacao brittle.  Have some of this on order – will let you know how it tastes after Dec. 15th.

And to get you through a long travel day, say your money and remain hydrated.  Checkout our earlier blog on how to have inexpensive and healthy water while in the airport (Click here).  Grab your filtering water bottle, your lemon or grapefruit essential oil and your liquid minerals and off you go.

So healthy flying or healthy driving and enjoy that maybe not so healthy Thanksgiving feast,

Mel

Featured in BizWeb eGazette  

Hello Everyone – Just got word from Jim at JDD Publishing www.bizweb2000.com that this website was being featured in his newsletter about his coaching clients who are completely new to doing business online.  Yes we are newbies when it comes to this website and blogging but we have been receiving great coaching support from him. 

As Jim mentioned in his eGazette, this site was built over the course of about a month using the WordPress Blog Template “Patagonia” and then it was rebuilt in about 5 days for a niche change (we decided to broaden our scope to both Healthy Living and Travel Tips).  Thank goodness for WP because I don’t think we could have pulled off the 2nd rebuild without this template and the techies at Hostgator.  

Has anyone out there gone through this, especially in your first few weeks online?

We have an Opt-in form that is still under construction – Aweber went live yesterday with their new Web Form Generator, so some of that re-build we did this past week, had to be completely re-done again.  So bear with us if things don’t appear quite like you would expect them to be. 

In fact, please leave us a comment below so we can fix anything that looks amiss.  And if you like what you see, tell us that too, so we can include more posts on those subjects.  Our posts here are somewhat long we know but that’s because there’s so much to talk about when it comes to healthy living and you already know that I am a Road Warrior traveling full-time both domestically and internationally.

So with all the stress of this site’s construction, we are taking the weekend off.  We need to return to a Healthy Body and a Healthy Mind(set).  I have been challenged to write about the Top 10 Tips for Road Warriors so we will be doing some thinking while we relax.

Drop us a comment or two on how you are de-stressing this weekend and what’s your best travel tip.

Thanks,

Mel

What do you think? 

For me I just experienced another incident where travel ended up being more difficult because I did not make an attempt to bring along healthy snacks prior to departing.  I thought I was saving myself some effort and going for easy travel.  But the result of that decision was being faced with bad and even worse choices for food and drinks. 

Why did I decide to make the trip easy or what I thought was going to be easy?  Well, quite simply, it’s a hassle to have to bring along another bag which is what I would have needed to do to bring food.  Even with my spinner luggage, another bag means something else has to be carted or slung over the shoulder.  I already had a small carryon, my spinner and my laptop case.  I really didn’t want a 4th bag which meant checking in at least two so on this trip, no healthy food came along. 

But this decision actually made the whole trip more difficult.  Upon arrival in Dallas, I used a shuttle service to take me from the airport to my hotel downtown so I was not the master of my ability to stop at a grocery store and buy food.  The hotel had a restaurant but it was expensive, so I ended up buying snacks and drinks from the hotel gift shop part of the time that were so far from healthy you would laugh.  (Can you spell PRINGLES?)   Not a single orange or apple in sight. 

And my options last night trying to get home from Dallas were  not much better.  It can be particularly difficult to find healthy food once you go through security but each airport is different.  What I found last night after security at DFW was candy, salted nuts and chips, dried fruits with sulfites and sugar, sugared soft drinks and diet soft drinks with artificial sweetners and bottled water. 

I could find no fresh fruit or yogurt other than frozen yogurt because I was running late and didn’t have time to investigate beyond my gate.   There actually is healthier food at DFW, just not where I was.  So that easy travel was not and my energy throughout the trip suffered for it.  Maybe I will bring another bag  next time . . .

The noise on airplane flights these days can be deafening from the engine whine to the baby crying.  A way to maintain Healthy Hearing while traveling on airlines, trains or buses is to use noise canceling headphones.   They can range from $21.00 to over $350.00 based on noise canceling quality, styles and materials used.  Here are some of the on ear models and price ranges that are featured in depth at product reviews – noise canceling headphones that you might want to consider.

You can spend a fortune ($250.00 – $350.00) on superior models that cancel out even greater than 95% of noise like:

• Monster Beats by Dr. Dre
• Sony MDR-NC500D
• Bose QuietComfort 3

But there are several units on the market that can eliminate 85%-95% of the noise for around $75-$150.00 including the:

• JVC HA-NC250
• Sony MDR-NC60
• Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7 QuietPoint

And finally there are those lesser priced headphones that can cancel about 60%-85% of ambient noise ranging from $21.00 – $35.00 like:

• JVC HA-NC100
• Philips HN110 Headphone
• Creative HN-605

For the serious or full-time traveler spending $300 for headphones could be seen as a requirement and not a luxury.  A full-time traveler can justify the pricing for the higher end models, but for my money even though I travel full-time, the mid-price range is an excellent compromise because I have already lost one expensive pair and don’t want to do that again.  The JVC HA-NC250 model is my preference because the noise canceling quality is rated superior just below the Bose QuietComfort 3 but the pricing is mid-range.  Check this model out on the Internet as you might be able to find them for somewhere between $78.00 and $100.00.

Please leave a comment letting us know what kinds of headphones you have used in your travels to keep your ears healthy while traveling.

Healthy Luggage in my mind is any kind you can push versus pull and any kind of bag that can move fully upright, not slung over the shoulders.  Healthy luggage we believe can save the wear and tear on both your back and shoulders.

If you are like me and the many other road-warriors out there traveling full-time, you have probably used several different types and sizes of suitcases.  This may not be the norm, but in my 14 years on the road, I am now on my 12th bag.  This is for many reasons–some cases I just didn’t like, they weren’t functional and so were abandoned.  Some were damaged beyond repair by the airlines and for my last two bags, I traded up for the healthier “Spinner” type bags.

You may have seen one of these suitcases being wheeled around in airports recently–they operate on 4 multi-directional spinner wheels which means they can be fully upright and pushed versus being pulled.  And because you can put that shoulder bag on top of a spinner case and push them both rather than pull from behind, well it’s almost heaven compared to pulling and slinging luggage.

I didn’t actually seek out healthier luggage though.  I over-packed a carryon bag 5 years ago and the zipper broke while I was trying to get to a gate in the Minneapolis airport.  That’s an airport you can walk a great distance in, so while struggling to keep that broken bag together, I took a look at new cases in the airport luggage shop.  Not the cheapest place to buy you know, so I decided to only window shop unless there was a great deal.

That’s when I saw my first spinner and was I skeptical.  I was having a hard time grasping the concept but the salesclerk demonstrated the push versus pull method, assuring me that once I switched to a spinner, I would never go back.  Well . . . against my better judgment (the bag was a red cloth Samsonite 21″ spinner on sale for $100 off but still very expensive) I purchased on the spot.  A red bag is just not typical business travel attire but that’s all they had. I really didn’t want to fuss with my broken suitecase, so I left the store that broken one and rolled out of there repacked into a new red spinner.

Wow, was that salesclerk ever right!  Before I could even reach my gate, people had started stopping me wanting to know where I got that bag.  They got the concept much quicker than I did in the store.  You see they saw me pushing that case upright with ease, my shoulder bag resting on top of it.  I was no longer hunched over and off-balance.  That first spinner case made such a difference in my travel experience, that there was no way I would consider choosing a 2-wheeled bag again.

So when that first spinner was damaged beyond repair by an airline 2 years ago, I was so sad.  Thank goodness there were more spinners to choose from so my need to have another one was easily filled.   Not only were there single spinner bags (like I first purchased 3 years before), but every major supplier had expanded their luggage sets to include spinners.

With so many options to choose from, I purchased the smallest spinner I could find–the 17″ Brookstone carryon.  This time it was silver polycarbonate because that red cloth bag became very dirty over time.

Brookstone carries a 21″ spinner, but by opting for the smaller spinner I not only saved some money plus there is less room to over pack.  Less is more (and healthier) when full-time traveling.  To see a comparison of small spinner carryons, check out our product review page on spinner luggage

One more thing if you are not convinced by the health aspects to try a spinner the next time you need to purchase luggage.  Spinners move down the aisles of the buses, trains and airplanes more easily because you can turn these bags sideways and push them ahead of you.  No more bumping into the seats or worse yet into people already in aisle seats.  No more getting your luggage straps caught on the arms of seats either.  So let us know if you have had the pleasure of traveling with spinner luggage.

P.S.  That last spinner was damaged recently by another airline but since it is silver in color and polycarbonate, a couple of strips of duct tape has allowed me to still use that case.  Does this mean that duct tape is also healthy?

Healthy Drinks for the Road:

• Purified Waters or water purifying bottles for fountain water
• Unsweetened teas, take along herbal tea bags to add to your water bottles (like making sun tea only without the sun)
• Essential oils of lemon, peppermint, orange, grapefruit and stevia for flavorings and sweetness (there are flavored stevias as well)
• May be able to find V8 Juice but unless it’s the low sodium version, there will be excess salt contributing to additional thirst
• Avoid:
  • Sodas, juices or drinks sweetened with empty calories
  • Energy drinks loaded with sugars and caffeine

Healthy Snacks for the Road:

• Fresh fruit (organic if you can find it) and dried fruit that’s not been sugared or sulfured
• Unsalted raw nuts
• Carrot and celery sticks
• Raw almond butter or tahini for a dip, may be able to find raw walnut, pecan or cashew butter
• Veggie and fruit trays from the grocery if traveling by car or RV
• Salsas for blue corn chips and whole wheat crackers
• If allowing dairy: 
  • low-fat string cheese packs
  • plain yogurt sweetened with Stevia and/or no sugar-added jellies, jams or granola
  • veggie pizza
  • high cocoa content chocolate
• Avoid:
  • jerkies and leathers with excess sodium or sugar
  • Salted, toasted nuts
  • Chips and white flour crackers
  • Sugars, high fructose corn syrup and sweeteners

Fast Food, Convenience Stores and Restaurants on the Road:

• Fresh fruit or unsweetened fruit cups/fruit salads
• Green Salads, raw veggies
• Broiled or grilled veggies and meats
• Avoid:
  • candy bars
  • items to avoid listed above
  • high fat, cheesy breakfast sandwiches and potato cakes
  • burgers and fries
  • breaded nuggets
  • high fructose corn syrup sauces
  • milkshakes, ice cream
  • high salty, fatty meat pizzas

General Rules to Live by on the Road:

• Hold to your normal daily routine and eating schedule
• Set the example for your family, they will generally follow
• Plan ahead for take along drinks, snacks and supplies
• Take a cooler if traveling by car or RV
• Stop at a grocery rather than a convenience store for breaks (these offer more in the way of healthy food choices plus the bathrooms are usually much better) 
• Carry extra plastic bags and plastic ware
• Pickup or bring napkins and wet wipes either in a large container, small packets or individually wrapped for hygiene
• Avoid:
  • skipping meals
  • late night eating

Did you know that while we have 24 hours in a day, our biological clock (i.e. circadian rhythm) actually runs on a 25 hour cycle?  I found this out while researching how to handle Jet Lag from crossing 3 time zones twice a week.  You see I was doing cross-country air travel East to West on Mondays and West to East on Fridays every week a few years back.  If you have ever done this kind of travel for an extended period of time (in my case it was for over 2 years), then you know what jet lag can do to your health.

Our circadian rhythm is in tune with the time of day, environmental factors and magnetism of the area and time zone where we reside.  This monitor tells us when we should eat, sleep and be active.  So when we change time zones, that internal clock can become out of sync or disturbed.  For me it was insomnia.

Other symptoms of jet lag can include nausea, fatigue, appetite loss, stress or anxiety and irritability but these are only temporary once you stop traveling.  It can take as many days to recover from jet lag as the number of time zones you cross but you can help to maintain your health and lessen the effects of jet lag by doing some of these simple steps:

• Sleep – If traveling West you can and will probably want to stay up longer, but train yourself to go to sleep earlier on your first night in a new time zone.  It goes back to the 25 hour body clock – we can naturally stay up easier than getting up earlier.  If traveling East, however, you need to go to sleep 1 hour earlier and wake up 1 hour later adding an hour to sleep/wake each progressive day equal to the number of time zones to be crossed.  If traveling across many time zones, I also try to arrive a day early to have time to adjust.
• Meals – Some people adjust when they have their meals to correspond to the new time zone prior to leaving.  A simple diet of fresh fruits (I usually carry-on an orange or an apple to munch on in the cabin) and vegetables chosen over heavy carbs, sugars and fats really helps and eliminate as much table salt as possible.
• Water – Keep yourself well hydrated with healthy water (see Oct 7th post on how to have inexpensive, good quality water at the airport) while in the airport and on the plane.  I also eliminate the alcohol, carbonated and tomato-based beverages which are loaded with sodium to avoid dehydration in the dry cabin air.
• Exercise – While exercise is very beneficial especially on the road, overexertion can add to our jet lag, so easy does it the first day or two in a new time zone.
• Other Remedies – If you are still suffering from physical distress, there are some supplements that can ease your distress (see my next post for a review of several homeopathic and alternative remedies for jet lag)

So by taking some preventative measures before the long trip, we can have healthy travel and minimize the physical distress from jet lag.  Please comment with some of the things you have done to minimize jet lag.

Do you hate having to pay up to $4 for a bottle for water in airports?  One solution is to simply take a large EMPTY bottle with you through security.  You can then fill up at a water fountain.  But a word of caution because the quality of that fountain water may not be the best so can you make airport water healthier? 

Here’s what I do:  to ensure I have the healthiest water possible, I also carry a small 15 ml bottle of lemon oil and a 1 oz. bottle of liquid minerals with me.  These items easily fit in the 1 qt. plastic bag allowed for liquids that are screened as you go through airport Security.  Young Living has a great Lemon Essential Oil for about $12 that consists of 68 percent dlimonene, a powerful antioxidant and Nano 2+ from Nano Health Solutions, Inc. contains 85 trace minerals, fulvic acid, 18 Amino Acids and 28 Enzymes for around $30. 

A couple of drops of lemon oil purifies the entire bottle plus adds a pleasant taste.  I also add about 10 drops of the liquid minerals to augment that fountain water.  Both the lemon oil and minerals will last for several months making the cost per water bottle just pennies.  The lemon oil and minerals will also help alkalize the fountain water which helps offset the acidic stress of travel.  For more information about alkaline water, please check out Dr. Robert O Young’s research.

Now if you are also concerned about how clean that fountain water is and the amount of particulates in that water, an additional solution is to filter it but this step will add more costs to your solution.  Instead of taking a large EMPTY bottle through security, try bringing an empty 22 ounce personal water filter bottle such as the Sport Berkey for about $30.  This unit lasts for ~640 refills of municipally treated water before the element needs to be replaced so the cost per refill is under 5 cents. 

There are several other water filter bottles on the market but that will be the subject of another post.  Super water bottles such as the Sport Berkey can filter out unpleasant tastes and odors, toxic chemicals, micro-biological pathogens, heavy metals and radiologicals that might be in the fountain water.

So now you have healthier, almost free, purified, alkalized and filtered water that you can drink in the airport as well as take onboard with you.  And this also saves having to wait for the attendant to make it up and down the aisle with everyone else’s drinks.

Please let me and other readers know what you have done to have healthier, inexpensive water in your airport travels.