Natural cures for your travels

Silver Travel Advisor’s top tips for freely available natural cures, Compiled by pharmacist and Silver Travel Advisor writer Dave Harcombe

According to the over fifties’ travel review and advice website Silver Travel Advisor ordinary foods can be a life-saving medical aid, particularly when travelling and on holiday. Simple, natural and inexpensive ingredients such as tomatoes, ginger, avocadoes or salt can be used to alleviate sunburn, stings and bites, nausea, flatulence, travel sickness, sore throats and mouth ulcers.

[quote]Silver Travel Advisor writer and pharmacist Dave Harcombe, said “It’s well worth knowing some of the healing properties of common foods when travelling. Conventional medicines aren’t always available, pharmacies may be closed when you need them, labels may be written in an unfamiliar language, prescriptive quantities can be ambiguous and quite often nature has a ready, freely available remedy that will bridge the gap until more conventional aid can be found”.[/quote]

Here are Silver Travel Advisor’s top tips for `Medicines on the Move’:-

Coca-Cola – once bitten
Globally available Coca-Cola can be used to take the pain out of a wasp sting, but never use on a bee sting. Cola contains phosphoric acid, which counters an alkaline wasp sting whereas bee stings are acidic and Cola would have no effect.

Tomatoes – the traveller’s cure all
Tomatoes are invaluable travel companions. To stop itching and swelling, slice and apply raw tomato to insect bites. If hair takes on a tinge of green after swimming in a chlorine laden pool, comb tomato sauce through it. Adding two cup fulls of tomato juice to a warm bath helps dispel the odours of excess perspiration, especially in hot climates. Sit in the tomato infused water for 15 – 20 minutes and you’ll be ready to face the heat again.

Vinegar – taken with jelly
The pain of jellyfish stings can be alleviated immediately by dousing the area with vinegar and rinsing with salt water (the sea will do). Remove tentacles by scraping them off with a sea-shell or credit card and apply a cold compress. Never rinse stings with alcohol or fresh water because the pain and stinging will get worse.

Ginger – nature’s fighter
A cold or sore throat is a miserable holiday companion. Infuse a mug of boiled water with ginger to create a fast and simple cure for sore throats, especially if caught in a monsoon or on the promenade on a wet afternoon in Bognor. Ginger can also be taken to suppress nausea and alleviate motion sickness.

Raid the condiment pots in hotels and restaurants, or pick up a salt on the plane, and salt apply directly to mouth ulcers. It’ll sting at first, but the soreness of the ulcer fades like magic. Alternatively if a glass of water and a sink are at hand, regular saltwater mouth washes have the same effect.

Yogurt – the essential travel medicine
Yoghurt is one of the greatest and healthiest food aids. It’s an antibiotic, an immunity booster and helps clear up travellers’ diarrhea, it also soothes ulcers and rids women of yeast infections. Check the label first to make sure it contains a live acidophilus culture.

Cinnamon – spice up your life
Found naturally throughout Asia and the Far East and in supermarkets worldwide, cinnamon has an antimicrobial action and can quickly settle nausea and upset stomachs. Eat it in stews, on toast, in desserts and teas and a daily does will keep the doctor away.

Coffee – aromatic insect repellent
Apply a lighted match to a small container of ground coffee to keep wasps away. Just a couple of teaspoons on a saucer or small dish will smoulder for hours, it’s cheap to top up and even if the wasps persist, it smells nice.

Bananas – the stressed traveller’s best friend
To counteract anxiety caused by airport queues, flight delays and general travel stresses, bite on a banana. This happy fruit’s 105 calories and 14g of sugar provides a mild blood sugar boost which helps the brain produce mellowing serotonin.

Avocados – turn down the heat
For an emergency sunscreen, slice open an avocado. This oil-rich, nutrient rich and delicious fruit offers rapid skin penetration which quickly protects, softens and soothes the skin. Even when the sun is behind the clouds, or a more conventional sunscreen is at hand, apply as a skin moisturizer, cleansing cream, makeup base, bath oil, and hair conditioner.

For travel reviews and advice for the over fifties, visit www.silvertraveladvisor.com