Staying Healthy 30,000 Feet Up

photo by kuster & wildhaber photography via flickr creative commons

I took a 14-hour flight earlier this week and am staring down the return early next.  I love flying…I love meeting random people on planes and working/reading without interruption and knowing that I’m either going somewhere or going home and realizing how amazing it is that humankind has evolved to a place where we go to sleep in San Francisco and wake up in Sydney.  But, I really don’t like sitting for hours on end, breathing stale air ,and worrying whether the water the flight attendants are serving is going to kill me.  Don’t get me wrong, the benefits of getting on planes far outweigh these little nits of mine.  But, why not optimize our flights to be the very healthiest they can be?

I started writing this post and quickly came across an infographic that was WAY more comprehensive than anything I’m going to put together in my jet-lagged stupor.  The full post is below, but here are a few of the tips I liked best:

• Bring a powdered drink like Emergen-C (I like raspberry best) along to stay hydrated and avoid soda/alcohol
• Skip airline food (pack your meal instead)
• Drink from your own filtered water bottle (the EPA discovered that 1 out of 7 planes had tap water that did not meet federal standards and contained the bacteria coliform and E.coli…eeeeeeeeeeew)
• BYOH (bring your own headphones)
• Move around (pace those aisles)

Happy trails!

source: greatist.com (infographic by voltier creative)