Traveling with Ease: 8 Essential Tips to Keep Your Gut Happy"
Summer is travel season! Whether it’s for a long weekend or a trip across the country, we are leaving our “safe zone” and going elsewhere.
Traveling can be stressful, even if we love doing it. Just having a different routine, toilet, bed, diet, ignoring the urge, or not having your stool can disrupt your gut. One complaint I hear from patients about traveling is they become constipated or at least have a harder time pooping. And when that happens other pelvic floor symptoms may be get aggravated.
Here are three reasons why you want to stay regular while traveling:
Over filled bowels take up the space your bladder requires to fill and may lead to urgency, frequency or incontinence.
Straining to push the poop out can increase pelvic pressure, prolapse
sensations/symptoms or hemorrhoids
If you’re pregnant and already prone to constipation
So to keep your gut from slowing down on you and your pelvic floor from tensing up from stress here are 5 ways to help you stay regular while traveling.
1. Drink water
If I had a nickle for every time I had a patient tell me they avoided drinking when traveling so they didn’t need to pee. Well, that usually backfires, because your bladder symptoms can actually become worse if you can’t poop due to the proximity of the bowels and bladder.
Water is essential for proper functioning of your intestines. Not having enough will lead to harder more compact stool making it more difficult to poop.
Here’s the recommended amount of non-bladder irritating fluid to drink:
fluid per day = 1/2 your body weight in ounces
2. Eat fiber
Fiber helps your intestines bulk up the stool and move it along. There are two types of fiber, soluble and insoluble.
Soluble fiber absorbs water and forms a gel-like substance, helping with the consistency and allowing it to smoothly pass through the bowels. Soluble fiber can also help improve good gut bacteria, which is crucial for optimal gut health.
Insoluble fiber bulks up the stool and helps collect everything as it moves through the bowels.
The combination of these two types of fiber, which are found in most fiber-based foods, is what helps you poop a sausage formed log every day.
It is recommended women get 25 grams of fiber per day, like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, oats, nuts, seeds, beans, lentils, and peas.
You can use a fiber calculator (many of the web or Apps) in conjunction with a food journal to help you know how much fiber you are eating (as long as it doesn’t stress you out more).
3. Eat fermented foods or take probiotic supplements*
Probiotics help promote good gut bacteria and have been shown to improve gut health including frequency of pooping, straining, bloating, etc. They are are naturally occurring in fermented foods, like sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir and kombucha, as well as can be taken in supplement form.
If you don’t already consume fermented foods or a supplement consider beginning before & continuing through traveling to avoid any side effects while traveling.
4. Move your body
Your gut responds to activity! Not only does it increase blood flow to the gut, but it can improve muscle tone in your abdomen and pelvic floor helping with intestinal activity. Think of it this way, your intestines like to be gently hugged to help with what’s called peristaltic action, or the involuntary movement that moves the stool along. Too tight of a hug they get jammed, too loose of a hug they slow down.
Two ways to move your body that helps with constipation include:
Taking a 10 minute walk after meals
A daily yoga routine focusing on trunk twists
5. O, ILU massage
The ‘O, I Love U” massage is a great way to support peristaltic action (the involuntary movement of the intestines to “push” the poop along). The gut does not like change and travel (even planned for, wanted travel) may be too much. So giving your gut a gentle message can give it the love it needs to feel safe again.
This massage is not a needing the belly massage. It’s a gentle stroking massage following the flow of the small and large intestines. Here are the two parts of the massage:
O - stroke around the belly button in a clockwise (right to left body) direction
ILU - stroke from your right hip up to the rights, across the upper belly, and down to the left hip
Use light-comfortable pressure. Strokes can be in a linear or circular motion. You can use lotion or no lotion. Repeat ‘O’ 10-20 times before moving on the ‘ILU.‘ Repeat ‘ILU’ 10-20 times either by doing the full round or each section or until you feel or hear gut gurgling.
This is great to do while laying in bed before you fall asleep to promote digestion while sleeping and a good poop in the morning!
6. Put your feet up
Pooping is much easier in a squat position! It literally puts your bowels into better alignment to let it slide out. Most of us don’t do a full squat to poop, but putting your feet up on a stool does the job too. You may not have the your home setup on the road, but you can improvise.
Here are some options to use:
Foldable stool (here’s one from Squatty Potty - not affiliated)
Yoga blocks
Suitcase
Turned upside down emptry trash can
Stack of books
Stand on the seat and squat
7. Meditate
I use the term meditate loosing here, as a form of mental imagery. This is what you can do while sitting on the toilet to help you visual the process and relax the pelvic floor.
Your pelvic floor is the muscle group that the poop needs to pass through to exit the bowels. If the pelvic floor is tense from stress or pain from straining it can make it very difficult to poop. Think of draining water through a clogged drain, it doesn’t happen, until the clog is removed.
Use this routine while sitting on the toilet:
Inhale down into the pelvis and visual the stool moving through the bowels, sliding down the inside of your left pelvic bone
Exhale out your mouth like blowing out a candle and visual your pelvic floor opening by letting go of your “butt hole” or anus, allowing the poop to slide out
Repeat this breathing and visualization until you’ve pooped!
8. Try to go at the same time every day
Even though you may not be on a specific schedule every day while traveling, having some semblance of a routine will help. Meaning, eating around the same time every day and trying to poop around the same time every day, which can encourage the natural urge to go.
The best time to poop is in the morning, after your body has digested the food from the day before and when the bowels are naturally more active. It may be helpful to:
drink a warm beverage in the morning like heated lemon water or tea
eat breakfast or a small snack (breakfast within 30 minutes of waking) that you have to chew to get the gut to wake up
There you have it, I hope that helps you stay regular even when you are traveling, cheers!
*Not medical advice, discuss the use of supplements with your medical provider prior to starting or changing supplements