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Butcher's
Dog! Regular outdoor fitness tips from the
canine on creatine. Cold wet nose and glossy coat
guaranteed.
How Not To GetBad Guts When Travelling...
There's not a lot worse than being on your own in a
strange place with the contents of your digestive system
launching an escape bid from both ends - being trapped in a
tent with someone in that condition runs it close though.
Don't ask...
With a little care and thought though, you can minimise
the risks, here's a few ground rules to keep your food where
it belongs in your stomach.
It's All Crap It might not make for pleasant
reading, but most stomach bugs, amoebas and intestinal
parasites are transmitted through faecal contamination in
one form or another. Understanding that and being concious
of the implications is at the base of avoiding them. Yep,
even contaminated water...
Cooking When you're cooking for yourself, you
have control. Wash your hands before cooking - there are
antisceptic hand gels that work well if there's no water
around - bringing water to the boil will kill anything in
it. Don't believe the myths about rolling boils for five
minutes, just boil, even at altititude. The food you cook
should be fine.
Don't wash your pots in river or spring water and then
use them. Instead use either purified, boiled or iodinised
water to wash them out and ensure that any residual water
droplets are safe.
With fruit or vegetables if you're not going to boil or
wash in some sort of purifying solution, peel them. You
don't know who's has touched them or what they've been
fertilised with. In developing countries, they often sell
iodine-based food-washing solutions.
Street food is generally suspect - the ground rule
is that if it comes straight off a sizzling grill or out of
a pot of boiling water, it should be safe. That's not
necessarily true of the plate it comes on though. Some
experience and paranoid travellers carry their own plates
and cutlery to minimise the risk. Be aware that the vendor
might not have washed his hands all day. Avoid cold food and
classically, water melons - there are countless stories of
them being injected with river water to make them more
succulent. Leave them alone. Bananas are a better bet coming
in nature's own easy-access packaging.
Restaurants Okay, we all eat out, but bear in mind
that you might as well be sucking the chef's fingers and
standards of hygiene aren't what they might be in some
developing countries. Having said that, in some popular
trekking areas in Nepal for example, education of local
caterers means standards are now relatively high.
Salads Don't eat 'em. Not only is human waste
often used to fertilise salad crops, you don't know what
they've been washed in (if at all) or what's in the
dressing. The same is true of home-made sauces, squash
etc.
Water The fastest access to nasties is via the
water supply. Giardia cysts, amoebas etc, you name it. Don't
drink the tap water in developing countries - and don't have
ice in your drinks either, it may be
made with tap water...
Stick to bottled mineral water or soft drinks or beer in
town - make sure the seal isn't broken - or boil, filter or
chemically treat all the water you use on trek. Purifying
water is an article on its own, but boiling will kill
anything. Alternatively a combination of filtering and some
sort of chemical - usually iodine - treatment also works
well. Iodine on its own has to be used carefully as low
temperatures compromises its effectiveness. So do some
research before you go.
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Fluid - fast track
access to gastric disaster....
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Drugs The good news is that in developing countries,
it's relatively easy to buy prescription drugs over the
counter. One tip, if you're off on a long trek, is to carry
an emergency supply of Flagyl or similar, the anti-giardia
drug. Giardia has been memorably described as 'like farting
from both ends' and is nasty, the first sign is bad egg
burps and it gets less pleasant from then. It can take two
weeks to sneak up on you, but the good news is that a couple
of day's worth of Flagyl will kill it dead. Being stuck out
there, with giardia or amoebic dysentry without the cure is
nasty.
You should also carry a 'stopper' - am immodium-type
drug, which will block you up and stop symtoms without
fighting the cause and some rehydration salts like Dioralyte
to comabt the effects of dehydration.
Acclimatisation You can do all this and still be
upset purely by the local, effectively harmless bacteria.
Classic holiday runny tummy, which should go away once your
body has got used to those funny foreign bugs. If the
problem doesn't go away, get tested and, in any case, have a
post-trip check-over once you get home. There's no pleasant
way of saying this, but get your shit tested. It's possible
to be infected without obvious symptoms, but your digestive
system can stil be damaged...
Relax It's easy to get paranoid, and being sick is
miserable and, if you spend long enough in Asia or South
America, the chances are that you will pick something up
eventually. Don' t let it put you off though, take sensible
precautions and you should be okay most of the time and
above all, thank the Lord that you ain't a dog...
Woof!
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