How to Plan a Painless Long-Haul Flight
The summer holidays are here! If you’re an expat living in Beijing with your family, you may be heading back to your home country for a while. You may even be going somewhere completely different for a change of pace this summer. If you’ll be flying for four hours or more as part of your summer adventure, be sure to take note of these tips for staying healthy in the air.
Keep calm and carry on
If you’re traveling with young children, it’s best for your sanity – and that of your fellow passengers – to make sure that they stay calm and stress-free during the flight. “Parents usually know their own kids, so whatever keeps their kids calm – or pisses them off – is going to do the same on a plane,” says Dr. Evelyn Fang, Director of the Center for Primary Care, Practice, and Education at Beijing United Family Hospital (BJU).
If your child can sleep anywhere, then that’s great – it’s possible they’ll sleep soundly on a plane, too. The only way to find out is by trying it. Schedule an all-night flight and, if they can sleep through it, you may have found the ideal way to travel with your kids. If your kids are difficult sleepers and/or don't take to sleeping onboard, then the search will have to continue.
“We don’t recommend giving kids sedatives,” says Dr. Fang. “Many people give their kids Benadryl or something like that to sedate them because they think it’s safe, but it’s not. You can try giving them melatonin,” she suggests, explaining that there’s good evidence that melatonin can help children relax and fall asleep, and that it’s safe for even infants. However, she cautions that it’s not been studied specifically as a means to get kids to fall asleep on planes.
Stay level-headed
If you know that you are or your child is prone to motion sickness, then it’s advisable to get motion sickness medication before your trip. It’s available over the counter for adults at the BJU pharmacy. Another thing that you can do in advance to prevent yourself from feeling sick on the plane is to train your vestibular (inner-ear) system to react better to motion.
“An easy one to do is sit in a twirling chair and twirl in it until you feel like you’re going to vomit, and then stop and look at something – a set point far away,” says Dr. Fang. Doing this over and over may be uncomfortable at first, but it will help your body learn how to deal with the feeling of being in motion, and, with practice, you can teach yourself to snap out of a dizzy spell.
Drink up
It’s dry up there at 37,000 feet – and you’ve probably noticed that your eyes and throat get drier when you fly. “For people of most ages, you can just pay attention to your thirst cues, but for older people, I would say older than 60, their thirst cues go down, so they should drink all the time,” advises Dr. Fang.
If you can buy a bottle or two of water after you pass security and before you get on your flight, then you can sip to your heart's delight as you fly. This is especially advisable for people over the age of 60. Dr. Fang also advises against drinking dehydrating things on the plane, like alcohol or caffeinated drinks.
Drinking lots of water on a long flight is great for keeping hydrated – but it also has another benefit. Filling up your bladder and needing to get up to empty it is a good way to make sure you walk around while you’re flying, which can help prevent deep-vein thrombosis.
As another method to prevent the dangerous clots from forming, Dr. Fang advises women, and especially pregnant women, to wear compression socks while flying. She also suggests “taking an aspirin because it thins out the blood. We don’t know for sure if it helps, but it probably doesn’t hurt.”
Air gets recycled in the cabin, which allows viruses to spread more easily. If you’re worried about catching someone else's cooties while on the plane, you can try wearing a surgical mask while onboard. The mask acts as a physical barrier between your face and your hands, and so prevents you from touching your mouth and nose after touching an infected surface.
Dr. Evelyn Fang is an American board-certified Family and Internal Medicine physician at Beijing United Family Hospital. To make an appointment with her, call our service center at 4008-919191.
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