Effective Ways to Pop Your Ears When Pressure Builds

Good article with ideas to help you release the pressure in your ears from flying, high altitude or diving…


  • Pain and discomfort in your ear experienced during flying or scuba diving results from changes in external pressure, which must be equalized by changing pressure in your middle ear
  • Your Eustachian tube opens during yawning and swallowing, allowing a small air bubble to reach your middle ear where it equalizes pressure with the outside; consider hard candy, gum or sipping on water to activate muscles that open your Eustachian tubes
  • Flying while congested may increase your risk of ear pain and discomfort, which may be relieved by using essential oils to reduce congestion or a warm compress against your ear
  • Reduce your risk of rupturing an eardrum by avoiding the Valsalva maneuver and never putting anything smaller than your finger into your ear

…to read full article, click the button below

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What Can I Eat While Traveling?

Another popular question I get about my book Travel Balance is around eating on the road.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 7 on What Can I Eat While Traveling…enjoy! 


This is the chapter that most people think about when they hear about a book on tips for traveling healthy. If you are a healthy eater at home, then your challenges with eating healthy while traveling are probably more of an awareness issue than anything else. If you are not a healthy eater at home, then it’s doubtful that a trip will change everything for you, but you never know. As with most things in this book, I will describe a spectrum of possibilities from domestic travel (where you have less issues with foods foreign to you), to international travel (where each meal can be an adventure). The other spectrum, of course, is from the fried chicken and ice cream traveler to the raw-food-vegan. I will do my best to provide a few tips for each type of traveler.

We know that the immune system predominantly resides in the digestive tract, so it stands to reason that eating healthy foods will go a long way in helping us get and keep a healthy immune system. This is a universal statement, not just for when you are traveling. Your immune system is the foundation for health, as it keeps things in balance in your body (keeps the good guys in and the bad guys out – and everyone in balance).

There has been much research recently on the balanced microbiome in the gut. I like to think of this as the rainforest in your tummy. It’s the balance of the diversity that is the key. Research has shown that bacteria outnumber our “human” cells by a factor of at least ten to one. You may have to ponder on that a bit to realize that the balance of bacteria (and other critters) in our body is much different than previously thought. Many people believe that we want to get rid of all the bacteria, viruses and fungi in our body, but the reality is that they all serve a purpose – when they are in balance.

The key to this is to maintain an ecosystem that supports the proper balance of good guys and bad guys. For example, when you take a prescription antibiotic, it can remove most of the “bad” bacteria that the doctor is shooting for, but it also removes the good guys as well, which is why you should always take a good probiotic (meaning “for life”) with any antibiotic (meaning “against life”) to attempt to keep things in balance. There is a time and a place for prescription pharmaceuticals, but I would only use them as a last resort. In some cases, prescription drugs can definitely save lives, but you have to do your homework, as there can be many side effects. The point of all of this is that the majority of your ability to stay happy and healthy when traveling resides in your immune system . . . which is foundationally dependent on the health and balance of your digestive system. As mentioned earlier in the book, we know that stress (sometimes increased when traveling) can impact our immune system in a negative way, so we need to do some extra things to help keep it functioning effectively.

We really need the energy of the sun, and if we could just eat solar energy, that would be great. There are people who get their energy from the sun only by staring at it . . . really! They are called “breatharians” and you might want to look them up on the Internet, if you’re interested. This practice is obviously not for everyone, but just shows that the body can function with very little food when required. We can only live for a few minutes without air, a few days without water, but several weeks without food. Back to the sun. It supports all life on our planet, including us. Since we can’t eat the sun, we use our friends, the plants, to help us. As you might remember from elementary school, plants capture the energy of the sun, using photosynthesis, and store it in their plant bodies. When we eat these non-toxic fruits and vegetables, we are getting this energy along with the myriad phytonutrients (plant nutrients) stored in each specific plant. This is the foundation of natural healing – using energy from plants, herbs, and other natural substances to aid the body in its healing.

So what does all of this have to do with eating on my trip? Well, all of the above is background to say that your body will be the most happy and healthy if you will eat a diet that is primarily based on fruits and vegetables. Quite simply – eat things that grow.

Now, I do have to include a balanced perspective here and say that I think it’s important to indulge in the local delicacy at your destination. You don’t want to travel halfway around the world and not try the trdnelnik, for example, in the Czech Republic. Or the dim sum in China. But, try to limit your local cuisine indulgences to a reasonable amount, if it’s in the “not so good for you” category. It’s all about balance.

One of the main things that I’ve learned in my Aikido practice is the importance of balance. It is very difficult to respond to others who are attacking you, if you are physically and/or mentally off balance. Aikido teaches us to use movement and techniques to keep ourselves in balance relative to our opponents, both on and off the mat. I have used the principles of Aikido in my everyday work world as well, as I might have to deal with less than pleasant personalities. We learn to deflect and move and allow balance to settle between us. If you have never seen Aikido in action, you might be interested in watching a few videos on the Internet.

When it comes to the spectrum, I am more of a balanced traveler – you may catch me eating some “hey that’s not good for you” things like desserts (who can pass up a French éclair or New York cheesecake?), but I balance desserts with extra veggies and lots of clean water throughout the trip. It’s kind of like doing extra exercise before and after your trip. I enjoy my travels to the degree that I can, but keep it in balance. I know that this approach to eating might surprise some health purists, and I’m not saying that I eat whatever I want . . . but rather that I don’t want to miss out on local cuisine because it doesn’t fit a restricted diet.

Creative Ways to Exercise When Traveling!

One of the more popular questions I get about my book Travel Balance is around how to exercise while traveling.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 8 on “I Don’t Have Time to Exercise”…enjoy!


In a previous chapter, I mentioned one idea to step up your exercise during the trip, and that is to walk around the airport as much as you can before your flight. Walking is one of the best exercises around and can be your primary exercise when traveling (along with climbing stairs). As most airports are beginning to look more and more like malls, it can be tempting to stroll slowly and visit all the shops. That’s okay, but I’m really suggesting that it might be more worthwhile to walk from one end of the terminal to the other at a fairly brisk pace. You can walk by all of the stores on your quick stroll, then come back and visit shops after you’ve walked for 15-20 minutes. If you are pulling your wheeled luggage behind you, be sure to switch hands every now and then to keep your back and arms balanced. You don’t want to focus too much on only one side of your back or shoulder, as it might cause tightness and/or pain before you get on the plane. I usually have on a backpack, and will take that off and start doing mini-curls with it. I just hold it by the top handle with one hand and curl up as I’m walking. To keep things balanced, I alternate sets, switching hands.

Once you arrive at your destination airport and are walking toward the exit (or baggage claim), you may see moving sidewalks and escalators. I recommend that you avoid those in lieu of stairs and more walking to get that little extra exercise, especially after sitting on a plane for a long flight.

Another one of my favorite forms of exercise on the road is the stairs. When possible, I only use the elevator to get to my room on check-in and check-out (when I have my bags with me). After that, I like to take the stairs to my room. I say ‘when possible,’ because sometimes you are in a high-rise hotel, and I’m not going to trek up and down 45 flights of stairs every morning and night on my way to and from work. I have, however, been known to put on my workout clothes and run up and down the stairs just for exercise. In this case, I can usually go from my floor to the top or bottom and back. It’s a great workout, but you have to be careful not to go too fast so you don’t trip. Also, most hotel stairwells are not the prettiest looking or smelling places, so I’ll leave this potential adventure up to you. You can also use the stairs at your workplace instead of the elevator or escalator during your trip.

Obviously, you might want to plan your day so that you can use the hotel’s exercise facilities. Some people like to get up extra early to work out or use the facility at night after dinner. I’ve worked with many people who like to use the elliptical machine, treadmill, weights, swimming, or attend classes. It’s fine if you can work it in but, in my opinion, I’d rather spend this time seeing sights in the city or having a nice meal with people I don’t normally get to see if that is an option. If you can work it all in, that’s great, but most trips involve so many activities that it’s hard to do it all. It’s also entirely possible to do some exercise in your hotel room using internet videos for things like yoga and other types of exercise classes. Some hotels are now offering more and more services and classes to cater to healthy travelers.

Keep in mind that there are other things that you can do to support your body while on the road. While it’s not exercise, activities like massage can provide huge benefits to travelers, which is one reason that you are seeing more and more of this in airports. I remember taking a long overnight flight from Rome to Beijing. Since I have a hard time sleeping on planes, I rested most of the way (suspended animation) and was a bit tired once we arrived. After getting to our hotel in Beijing, we found a foot massage spa not very far away, so we got to walk (always great after a long flight), and got a fabulous foot massage (which are usually fairly inexpensive in Asia). This was one of the best ideas we ever had, as we felt completely refreshed and ready to go afterwards. After that, this became a travel habit whenever possible after long flights. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a “massage” category on your company’s expense reimbursement forms?

I approach each destination as a place I’ll never get to visit again, so I would rather see a few more unique sights than log an extra 45 minutes on the treadmill or elliptical rider, as I can do that at home. It’s all about priorities. And while exercise is important, please consider that you may be missing out on some unique opportunities.

Along the same lines, and this can be a controversial topic, I know quite a few frequent travelers who spend the majority of their time in their hotel room doing email and/or other “work.” If possible, schedule this work while you are waiting at the airport, or on the plane. I know that life/work balance can be challenging (especially these days), but it’s so sad to hear stories from these folks who have been to amazing places all over the world, but “never had a chance to see anything” as they didn’t leave the hotel.

This is all about priorities, but as we know today, the work world can absolutely consume us. There are some situations where you just don’t have an option, but others with more soft deadlines give you a choice. I was so fortunate on many of my trips, because I was traveling with some really fun people and we would do our best to keep those on our team from spending their nights working in their hotel room (we had to be quite persuasive at times). On one particular trip in Singapore, four of us had to work pretty hard to get one of our class instructors to join us for a visit to the night zoo, a unique place to be sure. We worked on her all day, and finally got her to commit to join us. It’s a longer story than I’ll go into here, but let’s just say that I know five people whose stomachs never hurt so much from laughing. It was truly a memorable experience, and I know she’ll never regret joining us as opposed to a solo evening of responding to email. People who are on their deathbed mostly regret the things that they didn’t do, and that was rarely more work.

Sick on the Road?

One of the most challenging things about travel has to be dealing with illness.

Having lived through this several times in my earlier days of traveling internationally. I have put some of my best ideas in this book about things you can do to stay healthy on the road.

Enjoy this book excerpt from the Chapter called “I Don’t Feel So Good . . . Now What?”…


Even though we do our best to prevent illness, sometimes things just happen and we have to do our best to deal with them. This is why we spent so much time packing the “just in case” supplements before our trip. The suggestions I am giving you here are the ones that I would use if this were to happen to me.

As a natural health practitioner, my focus and training are on giving people the tools that they can use to take responsibility for their lives and utilize preventive health practices using lifestyle choices, nutrition, energy healing techniques, and supplements (among other things). I have found that this type of health care is excellent at prevention and helping chronic illnesses. But, when it comes to acute care – like a car accident or some other health crisis – we are so fortunate to have the vast knowledge and experience from our medical doctors. I am simply amazed by the ability of surgeons to work their magic on people who have suffered some type of major accident. As I often tell my clients, if you break your leg, go to the emergency room and get acute care right away (and be thankful that it’s there) – then call me and we can use some techniques to help your body heal more rapidly now that the crisis is over. All that to say, if you think you are really sick while traveling, then you should consult a local medical doctor immediately. The ideas and suggestions in this chapter are more related to the common, but very annoying, illnesses like viruses, sore throat, sinus infections, digestive issues, etc.

The more you work with this type of lifestyle, the more sensitive and attuned you become to your body, and your ability to feel the slightest imbalance becomes readily noticeable. For many people, the first sign of imbalance is a scratchy throat. For others, it could be sinus congestion, or just feeling “yucky.” Once an illness (especially viruses) sets in, it’s difficult for any holistic remedy to help you get rid of it quickly (i.e. in a day or two), so you really want to act as quickly as you can . . . I can’t stress this enough!

Sugar, dairy, and wheat tend to depress the immune system pretty quickly, and my purpose, once I start feeling symptoms, is to give my body extra nutritional and herbal support and remove things that might detract from the immune system’s ability to heal my body. With that in mind, I focus heavily on eating extremely cleanly, and/or very lightly. What I mean by eating cleanly is that I try to eat only fruits and vegetables (which many health enthusiasts say is the way we should eat all of the time . . . can’t argue with that, but it’s all part of the balance).

I also drink only purified water, and as much of it as I can. Water helps to flush the lymphatic system, and will aid your immune system. I take my Colloidal Silver in addition to the items above to help my body remove the pathogens that may be causing the issues. It’s best to drink warm or hot water, preferably with the juice of some lemon in it (or a few drops of YL Lemon essential oil) and maybe a little honey. You might also drink some hot herbal tea. If you are traveling internationally, you might ask the locals what they recommend. Sometimes, they have a great local remedy. If not, then any form of green tea is probably a good idea. 

I have to share a good story about green tea. On one of my trips to South America, I was leading a sales class (my IBM job) and asked the people at the hotel if I could have some green tea. Now, we had to go through some translation ( verde), but it appeared that they understood (I’m still working on my Spanish). They came back a few minutes later with a green box of tea . . . black tea. But, it was in a green box. So, I tried again and they nodded and off they went. A few minutes later they came back with another box of tea. This time the box wasn’t green. I tried to read the ingredients (all in Spanish, of course) and saw that the main ingredient was senna (which is green). Having studied herbology in my doctorate courses, I knew that senna was a laxative (yikes!). I thought about the folks that may not have known that and the wonderful surprise they would get while presenting in front of the class after drinking a few cups. So, we tried again and I finally got my verde.

We have a certain amount of energy in our “tank” each day, and the more of that energy that we can conserve for our immune system, the better. If I can divert the energy that my body would use to digest a large meal to the immune system, then that will help speed the healing process.

The other area where you can divert energy to your immune system is in the exercise category. I talked earlier about how you can get exercise while on the road, but now is the time for giving your body rest. Take the elevator or escalator when possible. Take a taxi to the office instead of walking. Try to squeeze in a nap in the middle of the day if at all possible. And, in general, do your best to rest and conserve energy wherever possible, so that your body can use all of that extra energy to help you heal quickly. You may even have to pass on that wonderful dinner with friends, but hopefully only for one night. When I do the above items, I find that the next day I am usually back to normal.

 

[button link=”https://www.amazon.com/Travel-Balance-Healthy-Business-Profitability/dp/1547093110/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1521321001&sr=1-1″ newwindow=”yes”] Buy the book now[/button]

See The Sights

Business travel can definitely be stressful, but there can be some upsides…

I know too many travelers that have been to some of the most amazing places on the planet, but if you ask them about their trip they’ll typically sigh and say something like…. “Well, I really wanted to see Rome, but unfortunately, I only got to see the airport and the hotel…”

I understand how stressful work can be when you are traveling, but I do hope that you’ll make an effort to add on extra time (day before or after) to explore wherever you’re going. Your inbox will always be full, but you may never get a chance to see that place again…

Safe travels!

 

Hotel Check In

Several key things to look for when you first get to your hotel room…

The first thing you want to do when you get into your room is check for bed bugs. Now I know you don’t REALLY want to do this, but it’s super important, and you’d rather do it before you unpack anything. These are definitely some unwanted guests that you’d rather not bring home with you (among other things).

Once your room passes the bed bug test and you decide to stay, you’ll want to move as many of the electronics as possible away from where your head will be when sleeping. EMFs (Electro Magnetic Frequencies) can have an incredibly big impact on our health (and not in a good way), especially on our sleep!

Before you go to sleep, please put your phone in airplane mode AND keep it at least 3 feet (1 meter) away from your head. You’ll actually want to do this whether you are traveling or not, as this can impact your sleep.

Safe travels and happy sleeping…

For those that want even more on bed bugs: https://lnkd.in/dRwbZ7Q

Importance of Water When Traveling

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Water is one of the most important substances in your body, and we lose quite a bit just through breathing and other metabolic processes…and traveling increases our water loss significantly.

One of the first things you will want to do after getting through security at any airport is to purchase a water bottle, so that you’ll have it whenever you need it. Then, the challenge becomes keeping that bottle filled throughout the trip with clean, filtered water. By having the bottle on the plane, you can drink throughout the flight, not just when the flight attendants come down the aisle. And, when they do come, you can ask them to fill up your bottle (or ask for 2 cups of water with no ice and fill it yourself). Yes, you may have to visit the bathroom more often, but that is really helpful for your health for exercise and circulation reasons.

It’s a good idea to target drinking about 1 cup (8 oz or so) of water per hour of flight. You might want to consider some nutritional powder drinks that you can add to your water bottle that will add some helpful antioxidants to boost your health.

At the Hotel – Once you arrive at the hotel, it’s a great idea to get some water for your room that will last throughout your stay!

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Reducing Jet Lag

The key to minimizing the impact of jet lag, along with so many other things in the world of natural health, is not really ONE thing, but rather doing a variety of small things… the more things you do, the better your chance of helping your body synch to a new time zone.

Hydration is primary. You MUST drink filtered water (a lot) before, during and after your flight. Yes, I know you may have to visit the bathroom on the plane a few times, but that’s actually a good thing (can help with DVT – deep vein thrombosis – a real health risk).

The second big thing is to set your brain to your destination time zone as soon as you board the plane. For example, when I board the plane from Dallas to London at 7:00 PM (19:00), and the time in London is 1:00 AM, I immediately reset my brain and body to 1:00 AM as soon as I step on the plane (and never look back at what time it is in Dallas).

The third recommendation is that you must do whatever it takes to stay awake until 9:00 PM (21:00) at your destination for the first two nights. Some good ideas include visiting with friends, drinking coffee, working out or just walking around. It’s best to not even be in your room until at least 8:00 PM, as the temptation will be too high to just rest.

The fourth key is in the video below, and it shows that something called EARTHING can really help to reset your body clock. Getting bare feet on the earth (wet if possible) can help your body to balance the effects of the airplane (moving excess electrons) and help you to synch to your destination time zone more quickly.

Safe travels!