Healthy Travel Tips Part 1—Mood and Energy

Too often, while people leave excited for their trip, they come home needing a vacation to recover. You don’t have to feel that way. I want you to have an amazing time on your trip and come back feeling excited and energized, not drained and exhausted.

I travel a lot for work and fun. One year, I spent 94 days on the road, making 16 trips to 35 cities and 5 countries. Over the years, I’ve returned haggard, exhausted, bloated, and feeling worse than when we left. But I’ve since figured out a sure-fire system that keeps me feeling fantastic during and after my trips. And I want you to feel that way too.

I created a three-part series on healthy travel tips to help you get the most out of your summer travels. It provides practical tips to give you more energy, make jetlag easier to overcome, and let you come home feeling better than when you left. 

In this blog, I talk about how crucial it is to keep your veins and circulation healthy when traveling. Whether you’re taking a long road trip or sitting for hours on an airplane, healthy blood flow is important for traveling safely and keeping your energy up. Blood delivers oxygen and nutrients throughout your body and to your brain. These nutrients help you maintain your mood and energy. Therefore, supporting healthy blood flow should be part of anyone’s travel prep.

1. Stay hydrated

Drinking lots of water during the flight is crucial for keeping your circulation healthy. Airplane cabins can be quite dry, so stay well-hydrated. In addition to drinking water, don’t drink any alcohol. It’s a diuretic and will dry you.

2. Don’t cross your legs

Don’t cross your legs. Since you’ll be sitting down, your blood flow will already be reduced to your legs and pelvis. When you cross your legs, the blood flow decreases even more. So fly with your legs uncrossed.

3. Get up and walk around

Stand up, walk around, and stretch your legs every 30 minutes or at least every 60 minutes. If you’re driving, take a break and walk around.

But you don’t have to stand to improve your circulation. When you’re even sitting, flex your ankles back and forth. This will contract and relax your calf muscles. When muscles flex, they act like pumps for your veins to circulate your blood.

Walking around will also increase circulation to the rest of your body, helping you feel more awake, improve your concentration, and lift your mood.

4. Avoid salt

Unfortunately, a lot of the food they serve on airplanes is loaded with salt. Salt increases water retention. When we’re at cruising altitude in a plane, the cabin pressure is less than it is on the ground. Because of that, you may have noticed your feet and hands swell, which can reduce circulation. Don’t make it worse by eating salt, which can make people retain even more water.

5. Take NattoPine

The last thing I recommend is taking NattoPine. It promotes healthy circulation, especially on long flights. NattoPine contains the highest dose combination of nattokinase and a pine bark extract to support heart, blood pressure, and blood vessel health by promoting healthy blood flow, circulation, and healthy blood clotting. It provides 3650 fibrinolytic units (182.5 mg) of nattokinase and 300 mg of pine bark extract per serving.

Nattokinase supports healthy blood clotting, blood viscosity, and blood pressure by breaking down fibrinogen. High fibrinogen is associated with increased blood clotting, and lowering elevated fibrinogen is associated with healthy blood clotting.  Nattokinase increases the production of plasmin and urokinase, two clot-dissolving enzymes. It also increases tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), a protein involved in healthy blood clotting and circulation. 

Pine bark extract (Pinus massoniana) is rich in proanthocyanidins, which are strong reactive oxygen species (ROS) quenchers. Unhealthy levels of ROS are known to damage blood vessels and create unhealthy levels of inflammation. Pine bark extract helps protect from damaging free radicals and promotes healthy inflammation balance to support heart and blood vessel health.

I take NattoPine year-round to promote healthy circulation. Still, I’m especially diligent about taking while traveling. 

The research on NattoPine’s ingredients is so compelling that it comes with the NBI “Healthy Blood” Guarantee. If your fibrinogen doesn’t improve on blood tests after taking NattoPine for three months or is not maintained in the normal range shown on the lab test, we’ll refund your money.

If you follow all of these tips when you start your travels—on your flight or road trip—you’ll arrive at your destination feeling more alert and energized. And that’s a great way to kick off a vacation.

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