Top travel tips for emergency food aid

According to over fifties travel review and advice website Silver Travel Advisor food isn’t just for eating, it can also be invaluable as a freely available medical aid and even a life saver, particularly when travelling.

Here are Silver Travel Advisor’s top tips for `Medicines on the Menu’ while on holiday:-

Freely available in bars and shops worldwide Coca-Cola can be used to take the pain out of a wasp sting, but never use on a bee sting. Cola contains phosphoric acid, which counters the akaline wasp sting whereas bee stings are acidic and Cola would have no effect.

The pain of jellyfish stings can be alleviated immediately by dousing the area with vinegar and rinsing with salt water (the sea will do). Remove the tentacles by scraping them off with a sea-shell or credit card and apply a cold compress. Never rinse stings with alcohol or fresh water or the pain and stinging will get worse.

Tomatoes are invaluable travel companions. To stop itching and swelling, apply raw tomato to insect bites. Simply apply a slice to the bite. If hair takes on a tinge of green after swimming in a chlorine laden pool, simply comb tomato sauce through it. And two cupfuls of tomato juice added to a warm bath helps dispel the odours of excess perspiration, especially in hot climates. Sit in the tomato infused water for 15 – 20 minutes and you’ll be ready to face the heat again.

A cold or sore throat is a miserable holiday companion. Infuse a mug of boiled water with ginger to create a fast and simple cure for sore throats, especially if caught in a monsoon or on the promenade on a wet afternoon in Bognor. Ginger can also be taken to suppress nausea and alleviate motion sickness.

Raid the condiment pots in the hotel or restaurant for salt and apply directly to mouth ulcers. It’ll sting like crazy at first, but the soreness of the ulcer fades like magic. Alternatively if a glass of water and a sink are at hand, regular saltwater mouth washes have the same effect.

Yoghurt is one of the greatest and healthiest food aids. It’s an antibiotic, an immunity booster and helps clear up travellers’ diarrhea, it also soothes ulcers and rids women of yeast infections. Check the label first to make sure it contains a live acidophilus culture.

Found naturally throughout Asia and the Far East and in supermarkets worldwide, cinnamon has an antimicrobial action and can quickly settle nausia and upset stomachs. Eat it in stews, on toast, in desserts and teas and a daily does will keep the doctor away.

The Greeks apply a lighted match to a small container of ground coffee to keep wasps away. Just a couple of teaspoons on a saucer or small dish will smoulder for hours, it’s cheap to top up and even if the wasps persist, it smells nice.

To counteract the anxiety caused by airport queues, flight delays and general travel stresses, bite on a banana. This happy fruit’s 105 calories and 14g of sugar provides a mild blood sugar boost which helps the brain produce mellowing serotonin.

For an emergency sunscreen, slice open an avodaco. This oil-rich, nutrient rich and delicious fruit offers rapid skin penetration which quickly protects, softens and soothes the skin. When the sun is behind the clouds, or proprietary sunscreen is at hand, apply to the skin, avocados can be used as a skin moisturizer, cleansing cream, makeup base, bath oil, and hair conditioner.

Silver Travel Advisor’s MD, Debbie Marshall, said “It’s well worth knowing some of the healing properties of common foods when travelling. Conventional medicines aren’t always readily available, pharmaceutical labels may be written in an unfamiliar language, prescriptive quantities can be ambiguous when quite often nature has a ready, freely available remedy that will bridge the gap until more conventional aid can be found”.