The Pains of Traveling and How to Effectively Get Over Them

I am a kind of traveler who always wants to try new things and to explore the unexplored. I always crave for something new and different. But along with adventures come unexpected ailments and pains which I make sure will not affect me during my travels. How? Aside from my personal hygiene kit, one of the things I don't leave without whenever I travel is a medicine kit. It contains my daily vitamins as well as medicines for common ailments such as diarrhea, cough, colds, fever, stomach and back pains and headaches. Being an active person who wants to try different adventurous activities, I don’t want to be stopped or slowed down by any kind of ailments and pain.

Traveling is not always the “glitz and glamor” that everyone sees on photos. Sometimes, you experience some unexpected illnesses due to the activities you do or because of circumstances you encountered during your travels. These unexpected instances can ruin your trip—so it’s best to be prepared for them!

The most common ailments I experience when I travel are headache, body and back pains.

There are times that I’m deprived of sleep or have been exposed to too much heat that at the end of the day, I get headaches. It always happens whenever I cover festivals.

DID YOU KNOW? "Too much exposure to the sun may predispose you to headaches. When you sit, work, or spend time in the sun, your head nerves and tissues change their mode, affecting the nerve endings causing pain on either sides or the front of the head," according to Sinus Wars website.

After being on the streets for almost the whole day, being exposed to the sun, while chasing street dancers to take nice photos, I always end up having a bad headache after the event.

I also encounter severe body pains whenever I do strenuous activities such as spelunking, hiking and surfing. I could vividly remember the last time I went to Sagada where we hiked for about an hour from our accommodation and did the Lumiang-Sumaguing cave connection. It took us about 5 hours to be able to finish exploring the caves from point A to point B. That includes climbing stone formations, crawling, bending and twisting our body just to get through the cave. When I got back in our accommodation, I experience severe body pains because of my tired muscles.

Carrying a heavy backpack the whole day can also give me back pains. To avoid this pain and still enjoy my trip, I see to it that I only pack the essentials and bring only the things I need on my travels. With this, I won't need to carry a heavy backpack which also makes moving, and exploring around easier and more comfortable, making my trip less stressful and back pain free.

Keep in mind that using the right backpack and efficiently packing it will give you more comfort, convenience and stability during your travels.

Here are some tips:

• Use a backpack with padded straps to reduce strain on your shoulders that may cause unwanted back pains.
• Use a backpack made from light material to reduce the weight of the bag, especially when it's full-packed.
• When packing, place heavier items close to your centre of gravity or in the middle of the back to keep you balanced and make the load feel more natural.
• Always distribute weight evenly between the left and the right side of the backpack.
• Use your backpack's compression straps to bring the load closer to your body and keep everything in place.

There's this one time when I visited Baler where I enjoyed learning how to surf. I really experience so much body pain after that. But I don't want our trip to get ruined just because I have an aching body. So, no matter what the pain is, I always take fast-acting Advil Liqui-gel -- my most-trusted brand in terms of managing different kinds of pain. It’s better than paracetamol in relieving the many types of pain I encounter during my travels. It’s one of my best companions in relieving pains because Advil Liqui-gel is stronger than paracetamol and works almost three times faster than ordinary tablets.

I really like the fast-acting liqui-gel property of Advil. After taking it and resting for a while, I am now ready to explore some more! Certainly, any kind of pain will not hinder me from doing the things I like.

So, next time you travel, be sure to have an Advil Liqui-gel in your medicine kit for fast and effective pain relief.

For more information on Advil, you can visit www.advil.com.ph.