Ep 613: Travel Health: Prevent Altitude Sickness, Fatigue & Travel Stress

In this episode, Dr. Jannine Krause dives into the powerful connection between travel, cardiovascular wellness, stress reduction, hydration, blood sugar balance, and nervous system regulation. She also shares practical tips to help you prepare your body for high-altitude destinations, long travel days, increased physical activity, and the hidden stressors that can impact your health while traveling.  Travel can be restorative for the body and mind and preparation matters. Dr. Jannine Krause shares simple ways to support your heart, nervous system, circulation, and energy so you can fully enjoy your travels without feeling depleted.

Whether you’re planning a relaxing getaway, an active adventure, or a bucket-list trip, this episode will help you travel smarter and feel better before, during, and after your vacation.

Resources From The Show:

• Dr. Jannine Krause’s Website
• The Cardiovascular Health Report – includes tips on how not to get sick while traveling!

Our Partners

Podcast Transcript

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Travel and Heart Health
02:53 The Benefits of Travel for Cardiovascular Health
05:50 High Altitude Considerations for Heart Health
08:45 Travel Preparedness and Heart Health
12:08 Managing Blood Sugar and Hydration During Travel
15:01 The Role of Magnesium and Nutrition in Travel
18:14 Acclimatization and Travel Strategies
21:03 Hormonal Considerations and Travel Recovery
23:57 Final Tips for Healthy Travel

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Jannine Krause (00:08.814)
health junkies on this episode of the health fix podcast. I’m going solo again. It’s me.

Dr. Janine Krauss, and I’m gonna be talking about travel and how it affects the heart in a good way and things to consider when you’re looking at travel and your cardiovascular system. So where does this podcast come from? What am I, why am I talking about travel? Well, it’s been something on my mind I really wanted to do after years and years of loving travel and seeing the effects that travel has on folks, good and bad.

So I created a little bit of a side business called Travel and Transform. And I wanted to introduce it on the podcast, but also wanted to talk about travel and why it’s good for our heart and why it’s good for thinking about how you can transform your health using travel as kind of a catalyst for these kinds of things. Now, travel medicine is a big deal.

And most people think of travel medicine as you see the travel doc to make sure you’ve got all of your vaccines or whatever it is that you need to have in order to go see a certain country and making sure you are covered for all of the different things that you may come into contact there with. But what you don’t think about necessarily is little intricacies. Like we think about the big meds, like maybe needing malaria meds if you go to Africa.

But what we don’t think about is what happens if you get traveler’s diarrhea or what happens if you have a cardiovascular event, which is something that I saw happening a lot while I lived in Breckenridge, Colorado.

Jannine Krause (01:55.736)
You know, it’s no secret Breckenridge is high altitude. It’s in the Rocky Mountains. It is 9600 feet above sea level, at least the town is, but the surrounding areas, you could be going up much higher from there. And if you want to go hike or you want to get into the mountains deeper, you’re gonna go up to higher elevations. We have to think about what does that do to the body and how can we prepare for this? Because I had the, let’s call it experience.

of being a ski instructor in Breckenridge, because I wanted to get a free pass for the season. And I was like, hey, let me teach some kiddos. Well, I got a whole nother education in high altitude teaching kids to ski. So let’s dive into this podcast where I’m kind of melding medicine and travel. So.

As I started the podcast out, I was talking about how travel is so good for your heart. And when I say for your heart, what I mean is joy, enjoyment, new experiences bring about new thoughts. It can actually help with your cardiovascular system in the long run. There are some really cool data points on how even just a week of vacation

can help lower your heart rate variability. It can help with your overall outlook on life and many other things. Even the period studied before you go on vacation shows that you are most happiest in that moment in those couple weeks leading up to your vacation because you know that you are going to catch a break. And I can’t help but laugh about that because I know I’ve been there and if you’re listening going, yep, me too, me too, no, you are not alone.

Now, one of the big things that Chinese medicine talks about when we talk about the heart is we talk about joy. That is one of the emotions of the heart. Anxiety could be the opposite of the heart. And if we have excessive joy or excessive anxiety, we can cause heart issues. Now, I’m not too sure what excessive joy would really be like, to be honest, and how that might…

Jannine Krause (04:20.78)
be a negative thing, except for the case of when someone’s heart is not conditioned to be able to handle the extremes and emotions. And of course, that would be where this is coming from. But my previous podcast, if you haven’t listened to it, I talked about the cardiovascular system. And the cardiovascular system is something that, unfortunately, it can be compromised and it is the number one killer, cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of adults worldwide. And so this is something we really need to be thinking about.

emotions, extreme emotions, the heart. And what happens with the heart as we look for joy, as we’re trying to get out of anxiety? What can we do? And a lot of times folks will think about their bucket list or what things they want to do when they can travel. And sadly, one of the biggest factors that I saw with heart health while living in Breckenridge was the impact of high altitude.

body. Now granted Breckenridge is a lot higher than even going to Denver or even going to the high desert environment of Bend, Oregon, which is like 3,400 feet above sea level on average and and where Denver is 5280 one mile above sea level and then Breckenridge is a whole nother level. We want to be thinking about these things because even travel to Europe to some places we will get into a high

environment, especially if you want to look at the Alps or say you want to go to Japan and you want to go to the mountains. So we want to be thinking about what these things can do good and bad for your heart. Now I want to tell you about something really fun. An Austrian study pointed out the benefits of exposure to moderate altitude for a three-week period in patients with metabolic syndrome and they found that there was improvements in blood sugar, improvements in

the low density lipoprotein and high density, the good beneficial cholesterol. And that high altitude environment also has a great impact on folks forced expiratory volume out of the lungs. And in fact, there is a place called Estes Park in Colorado that has a hotel called the Stanley Hotel that has a little bit of a story behind it using that higher altitude environment.

Jannine Krause (06:47.202)
just outside of Denver to help with folks with lung conditions. And asthma in particular was studied in this Austrian study, but also other types of lung conditions. I find this fascinating. And I find that going to different areas of the world, how they can help with your heart. Another one of thinking about the cardiovascular system is the nervous system tie-in. And in Japan, there’s lots of studies about forest bathing.

going out into the forest now you’re not going out in your bikini for a walk in the forest because that’s what it sounds like to me and I was like what but it’s actually going out into the forest and and walking around and Hanging out camping spending time in nature and that is something that I do see a lot of folks doing in the mountainous areas of Washington State in the mountainous areas of Colorado and Montana you name it Idaho all of them and it’s something to really think about in terms of how

that environment is actually doing some really cool things for even your cholesterol, for your lungs. Like who would have thought? I don’t know about you guys, but not that many people talk about this that I’m aware of. Maybe I’m following the wrong people, but in my mind I’m going, this is really neat. Now the other phenomenon here is that when we do go to do these joyous things and fun things and we plan for these vacations, sometimes

leading up to it, we might be thinking about making sure we have our medications with us, making sure we have our herbs with us and our supplements with us, but we don’t necessarily think about planning for a trip. And this is something I’ve long thought would be an area that I would love to help folks with. Because in Breckenridge, a lot of times I would hear the fire department and the emergency medical system get called out.

on heart attack calls. I used to work for a nonprofit that was like the, we were underneath the fire department and we would hear the calls and we would hear when the guys come back, came back and sometimes they’d come down and chat with us about, man, that was a crazy call or whatnot. And one of the calls in particular happened right in front of our office one day where a older gentleman was riding his bike with his family.

Jannine Krause (09:15.22)
on the bike trail that goes from Breckenridge to Frisco and he collapsed in front of the fire department and our office subsequently. And luckily they were able to get to him. They were able to get him to the hospital and get some emergency care for his heart. What had happened is that this fella had younger kids, wanted to take him out for the-

for a bike ride to enjoy the mountains. They were coming up from Texas, I believe. And he was living the standard American life, quite sedentary, working in a corporate job, wasn’t working out, but was fit earlier in his life. So we thought it wouldn’t be a big deal to come to Breckenridge and just start mountain biking, getting out on the trail and hoofing it a little bit with his kiddos. Well, didn’t work out so well for him.

So these are kind of things we want to be thinking about. want to prepare for these trips. We want to make sure we are ready to go. And the same lines go for some of the things that I have seen with kids, even in high altitude environment, like I alluded to in the intro of the podcast, I ended up, because I was a doctor, being in charge of the sick and sad kids versus actually teaching much ski lessons. And there were a bunch of kids that…

Parents gave them big huge breakfasts in a high altitude environment where it’s really easy to feel nauseous and not so great your first couple days as your body’s acclimating to the altitude. You can feel like you have the flu and that you actually are getting sick. And these poor kids, they were given a full like egg and bacon and biscuit and gosh knows whatever else breakfast. And then they were invited to drink hot cocoa in the ski lodge.

Now you can imagine how that went. So gross. I literally cannot walk into a spot called 10 mile station in Breckenridge without thinking about projectile things. Nevertheless, travel preparedness. This is a thing. Now, can you prepare yourself for high altitude environments? I mean, if you want to get extreme about it, but we can also be prepared in knowing what to do in certain places.

Jannine Krause (11:38.602)
Now with high altitude environments, the idea is thinking about how can you work on your cardiovascular system, maybe do some training, maybe going up and down stairs at your work. Cause I know a lot of people, myself included, sometimes it’s it’s a huff and puff by the time you get up to the top of those stairs, maybe starting to work on things that challenge your heart. Same thing goes with hiking, walking, any of these things. Here’s the deal. When you go on vacation,

You walk an average of 20 to 30,000 steps a day. I saw this in a research article and was like, dang, that is like three times sometimes what someone would normally do in a given day. And that’s a lot of wear and tear on the joints. It’s a lot of wear and tear on the body, depending on weight factors, depending on how your lymphatic system’s doing, depending on how your circulation is as a whole.

I often hear from patients when they come back from Italy or other European trips that they ended up with blisters, their feet ended up with rashes. Sometimes I get messages from patients while they’re on vacation saying, Doc, what do I do about this? I’m getting rashes on my feet. I’m having heat rashes. I’m having trouble keeping up with my family, sticking with them on walks. And it’s like, should have worked on this beforehand. So.

Being that is that this podcast is being released before summer and the summer travel season, I wanted to sneak this in here because I really think it’s important to start thinking about the heart circulation, lymphatic system, and how these things affect your travel. Now, if you’ve listened to my solo podcast, two of them before this one, I mentioned how travel really was starting to wear on my heart rate variability, and I was seeing my readiness scores.

go down. This is an indication that I need buffer between when I get somewhere and when I start jumping into travel. Because one of the biggest mistakes that I see with folks when they go on a vacation is that they try to pack in every little inch space of time with something. If that’s you, you’re not alone. That’s okay. I’ve done it too. Literally every, you want to see everything you possibly can. And that means little room.

Jannine Krause (14:02.296)
for downtime. Then you come back from the vacation and you are more tired than when you left. And this is one of the cases that I have to admit that I have fallen victim to as well. So this is another area to consider. So how do we train ourselves for that? We really can’t. It’s more that you have to give yourself buffer time. It’s much like training yourself for your vacation. You’re walking beforehand.

You’re getting more steps in. You’re breaking in your shoes. Do not buy new shoes while on vacation and expect that to go well. I’ve done that. I’ve done that before. If any of you’ve ever been to Vegas and tried to wear shoes, you’re gonna get blisters. Like you have to prepare for even Vegas, which sounds crazy, but there’s a lot of walking. Same thing goes for being on the plane. If you know that you swell, and I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older, my ankles do swell a little bit more on the plane than they ever did before. And let’s face it,

I will try, like, I don’t wanna, I love the window seat. I don’t wanna get up and climb over everybody, right? And so I will sometimes not drink as much water because I don’t wanna have to get up during the middle of the flight. But overseas flights, mean, your bladder’s gonna explode if you don’t do something, right? So we have to think about how we can get up and move. And maybe it is choosing an aisle seat and foregoing the window seat, even though you absolutely love to look out the window.

Or I guess you could fly first class or get one of the seats where it’s just two on the side if the plane allows for that. The idea here is we’ve got to think about how we can pump the lymphatics a little bit. Get up and move a little, do a little jig, maybe even do a little rocking, kind of like I’m doing right now, bouncing up and down on my feet. Something to pump the ankles, calf raises, heel drops. I mean, you can stand up in your seat. Who cares if people look at you funny? I mean, you’re the one that’s not going to have cankles.

Just saying, because here’s the thing, for some people it takes a couple days for that swelling from the flight to wear off. So we need to think about this. This is a big, big deal. The other biggie is drinking alcohol on the plane and drinking alcohol at the airport beforehand, the night beforehand. This can really impact your dehydration and not feeling so great on the plane. This can also lead to palpitations and heart stuff on the plane, which…

Jannine Krause (16:26.294)
One of my really good friends, being a flight attendant, likes to tell me about all the horror stories of things that happen on planes with cardiovascular events. So we wanna really be thinking about, let’s get the hydration, let’s do the electrolytes, let’s take our magnesium. Also incredibly important too, because magnesium is fabulous for helping with smooth muscle relaxation, calming the nervous system, and keeping the ticker going in a good way. Now how much magnesium?

Everyone’s individual, but at least 150 milligrams of magnesium glycinate can go a long way. Now granted, if you know that even magnesium glycinate bothers your bowels, just watch. Magnesium citrate on the other hand, that one moves the bowel. So if you’re not struggling with constipation or you get diarrhea because you’re nervous about airplane flights, not the time to take your magnesium citrate. Magnesium glycate is more chill, glycinate sorry, is more chill.

Sometimes that can move the bowels too. So you gotta test this stuff out. Don’t do it the day of travel. Test it before to see what your best form of magnesium is. Some people need a blend. Some people need magnesium malate or threonate and they’re good. You gotta test it. There is no one perfect way. You are individual. Now with the hydration and with the concept of alcohol, alcohol can also thicken your blood.

which is something we don’t want because clots are a problem, right? Nobody wants that. And especially the longer we’re sitting on a flight, the more chance there is for a clot. So how do we prevent this? We work on our blood viscosity. This is not the time to forget your fish oil. This isn’t the time to forget ginkgo if you want to consider ginkgo or garlic or even something called donkwai. Nodoginseng is another good one. These are all herbs that help with circulation.

thinning of the blood. Let’s face it, it is common for folks to end up with blood clots and have some cardiovascular events and sometimes people do die on airplanes. Nobody wants that, especially for a trip. So we want to keep on top of that. mean, on the plane, the air is recirculated. is dehydrated. I it’s incredibly dehydrating. You want to stay.

Jannine Krause (18:37.888)
on top of it. And then if you’re going to pair on top of the fact that you’re going to somewhere that’s high altitude, you want to start already on the electrolytes. There’s also something called acclimate. It is a specific powder tailored to helping you to acclimate to high altitude environments. I would consider getting something like that. There’s also Diamox. That is something you can also grab if you’re looking at high altitude exposure and you want to be on top of it. Now there are some parameters in terms of how you want to take that.

And I highly recommend speaking with your doctor to make sure that it fits for you, but usually you’re gonna start taking it before you expose yourself to a high altitude environment, and then you’re going to taper off of it about 72 hours into the experience of being in a high altitude environment. Another strategy is say you’re going to Colorado. Let’s go to Colorado for an example. A lot of times what I recommend people do is stay in Denver for a night or two.

and then gradually move up. Maybe you move from Denver and you go stay up, let’s say, somewhere near Georgetown. And you stay there for a night. And then you get up into Breckenridge, Frisco, Silverthorn, that area. What I’m talking about is the I-70 corridor. There’s lots of different places. If you wanna go to Steamboat, you can break off from there. Lots of options. If you wanna go over to Telluride, you could also do this kind of pattern and then drive up and over and back down into that area.

Or you could fly into Grand Junction and stay there for a couple of days. There are lots of different ways of looking at this. Just look at the altitude incrementally and plan. It’s kind of like thinking about if you’re going to climb Mount Everest. They stop at a base camp and acclimate. Same thing goes for these other altitude environments. Now, the other biggie is watching the exertion once you get there, right? We want to be careful about overexertion. And this goes for

anywhere like I was mentioning with travel because like I’ve seen with myself, I need a buffer day. And so it may not even be high altitude. It may be that you just flew from Milwaukee to Tacoma, Washington or Seattle for that matter, since the airport’s there. You want to buffer a day in between because you want to make sure that you acclimate, you adjust, the time zones are different. That’s another biggie that I think a lot of folks don’t think about.

Jannine Krause (21:03.456)
So those might be to you, duh, but they may be to some other folks like, I didn’t really think about that. And really, I’m talking about it as like a wake up call. And it’s more speaking to those of you who are starting to get over 35, pushing towards 40, maybe moving into the 50s. Our bodies need a little bit of TLC. We can’t just jump into things like we used to. Temperature in places.

Environment in places also makes a huge difference and it’s something to really consider when you’re going into these environments. Now another big one that I think folks don’t think about unless they’re actively watching what they eat is blood sugar stability. It is very common for folks to feel little woozy and dizzy sometimes coming off of a long flight, especially if you didn’t pack quality food with you.

And maybe if you decided that you needed to have that gin and tonic on the plane, or maybe you decided to eat the cookies and then have the gin and tonic, but you didn’t eat lunch, you skipped it. So we wanna be thinking about meal time. We wanna be thinking about sleep because if our sleep is disrupted, that can also mess with our blood sugar. Being sedentary can also keep us from burning off some of those calories and causing the blood sugar to spike. Now, one of my favorite tips is

When I get to the airport, I don’t sit right down. I walk all the different areas and then like treat it much like a little hike and exploration. I want to look at all the different concourses that I can. want to look at all the different shops. I want to walk around. That way I am moving. I’m moving my blood. I’m not just going there sitting at my gate, staying sedentary and then getting on a plane and sedentary again. Now, probably a lot of you who are already active do this, but it’s something to think about if you are not.

doing this. This is really important when you’re traveling. Now the other biggie is of course all of us know the food traveling is not the best option. So one of the other tidbits I can advise is I actually fast on travel days. I will tend to eat maybe in the morning a very good high protein meal and then I don’t eat again until either the next day if I if I get somewhere late or if I get to the next location then I will eat something that I know is of

Jannine Krause (23:28.718)
quality food versus trying to snack and grab things at the airport. can be incredibly, just one, expensive, but two, lots of salt. Lots of things that aren’t so great. And if you’re one of those folks who’s a big snacker and you like to have, get different snacks at the airport, this is something to think about in terms of the quality of the snacks and how that can affect your circulation, your blood pressure, things of that nature with travel. So.

I am a huge fan of fasting while traveling because now you’re going to remove a lot of variables and making sure that if you are flying out in a time that you can get a breakfast and it’s a higher protein breakfast that maybe you fixed yourself or brought along yourself. And then you go the rest of day. Or if you’re flying out early, like say it’s a four or five a.m. flight, I will often not eat until we get to the destination to just let things stabilize. All right, so.

The other biggies there, lymphatic flow, I’ve talked about, sleep and nervous system, I’ve talked about. And one of the biggies is hormone and menopause considerations. I talked about how I’m noticing that my ankles are swelling a little bit more. I talked about a little bit of the palpitations, but also how we can have shifts really easy in blood sugar, as well as shifts in blood pressure. And this is where magnesium comes in. This is where the walking before the flight comes in.

So you might be thinking, I don’t know if I’m gonna do it. This is why, especially if you’re going through perimenopause and menopause. So making sure you don’t forget your hormones if you are taking them, big, big deal. And then doing anything you can to optimize sleep. Melatonin does help well for sleep, like jet lag, so something to consider. Now, the other biggie is heart rate variability and recovery from travel. And one of the coolest things that a lot of airports have are yoga and stretching rooms. You could literally do some yoga.

the airport or going to a meditation room and just really work to breathe your heart rate down if you’re having some trouble with that. So some fun things. Also having the messages on messages. I’m so old sometimes. Having the downloads onto your iPhone or phone where you can listen to a meditation or guided meditation can be incredibly helpful. Now,

Jannine Krause (25:50.68)
That’s kind some of my travel tips. The best things I have coming next are what to do to prevent getting sick. Stay tuned.