When summer comes around, for many the highlight is all the summer travel to look forward to. While a summer trip is an excellent source of wonderful memories and experiences, it is a curiously familiar development that many return from “vacation” absolutely exhausted. It is easy enough to identify possible causes for this. Once you do, you need to take appropriate action so that your summer trip does not end with you becoming sick or even injured.
Get your Sleep Schedule Back on Track
The human body by default, practically requires spending a third of its time asleep. On a trip, this sleep schedule can become significantly disrupted. The excitement of a trip can make resting difficult, sleeping during a long ride in any vehicle is arduous in general, and sometimes even well-appointed lodgings can be unfamiliar enough to cause discomfort or preventing relaxation. And if you are traveling great distances that’s not even factoring in potential jetlag which can occur when crossing through multiple time zones. While for many it is a simple enough matter to power through these circumstances, over even a short time this disruption can tax your body, leaving you open to sickness and possible injury. You will want to get your body re-accustomed to sleeping like normal as soon as possible.
Resume Exercise
Regular exercise for many is a fundamental pillar of good health. While on vacation, there can be an understandable tendency to drop the workouts for the duration. A packed vacation schedule may make it challenging to fit exercise in. If you are reliant on specialized gym equipment, it can be a hassle to visit a local gym and even though many lodgings now have a fitness facility built-in, this is by no means a guarantee. And then for some, they may just want to relax completely and not have to worry about working out while on vacation. While all valid reasoning, you have to be careful that the momentum of not exercising does not carry over once the holiday is over. If you were regularly exercising before the trip, get back into the habit as soon as possible, taking care to ease into things so you do not injure yourself through sudden activity.
Nutrition and Hydration
It is another natural tendency to overindulge while on a trip or vacation. It can be rare to find an outfitted kitchen, let alone have the time to hunt down ingredients and prepare nutritious meals while you’re on the road. Eating out is fun and tasty, but the meals can get greasy and heavy really fast. Part of recovering from your trip will involve making sure you get back into a routine of healthy, moderate meals and ample nutrition. Making sure you have plenty of vegetables and fruits on hand upon your return will help you quickly counteract any possible excesses from your trip.
Another thing that is often overlooked is basic hydration. Even when not on vacation, a lot of people do not drink quite enough water as recommended. This tendency can become easily exacerbated while on vacation when you have a lot of other things on your mind. Since your body might be in a compromised, fatigued state right after a trip, making sure you are drinking enough water will help make sure you do not teeter into sickness.
Trip Evaluation
If you travel for the sake of traveling, that may well be enough for you. But if creating and keeping a record of your journey is of any importance, the best time to do so is right after the trip while the feelings and details are fresh. Modern phones have made it easier than ever to take great pictures that can commemorate all sorts of events on your trip. But as time goes on beyond the holiday, it can become very easy for these pictures to fade into the obscurity of your phone or memory card’s backlog. It may be something as simple as moving all relevant images to their own folder and giving it an easy to understand label and date. If you are the type of person to blog or provide some context or narrative with the trip you may also consider getting in front of a keyboard before too much time passes in order to put down your thoughts as quickly as possible. If a particular photo or souvenir from the trip had a significant impact on you, it may be worth considering a printing service and frame for the picture or designating a special place for a souvenir or memento. Life gets busy, and if things get relegated to a drawer or box of holding, their memory and importance can fade. Appropriately memorializing a good trip can bring to mind fond memories and get you excited for the trips to come.
Medical Mindedness
Depending on how exotic your travels were, you may want to consider consulting a medical professional to ensure you’re in satisfactory physical condition. If you were headed to an area where maladies like malaria or dangii fever were a potential risk, you might want to make sure your vaccines held up acceptably. If you simply feel fatigued and a little under the weather by the rigors of your travels, a doctor can give you advice on how to recover in the quickest time. Another option you may want to consider is consulting a chiropractor once your trip is done. Vacation and travel can be physically demanding activities and may have taken a toll on your back. Consulting a chiropractor may not only get you further counsel on how best to recover from your trip, but an adjustment might be what it takes to get you right again.
Summer travel is one of the best parts of the season. Alas, it is the nature of most trips that they must eventually end. When it comes time to return home and get things back to normal, make sure you take some precautions to ensure your trip ends well, and you land on your feet.