CONSULT YOUR DOCTOR BEFORE TAKING ADVICE FROM THE INTERNETS!
With any travel brings the risk/likelihood of some kind of food poisoning and/or traveler's diarrhea. This includes adventurous travel involving street food and travel to resorts, etc (resorts have been the worst for us). We have both experienced food poisoning; it can take you down hard for a couple of days and possibly much worse. After our rather violent experience with food poisoning we adopted a system for prevention, management and treatment.
Typically we start with probiotics "industrial strength" like these ones from Dr. Ohhira:
http://drohhiraprobiotics.com/ or the more common Florastor.
We start taking the probiotics a few days to a week before we leave and and continue throughout our travels.
This builds up the healthy bacteria in your system which naturally supports your immunity and digestion and can inhibit pathogens. For those that need to know more details you can find more detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probiotic
Since beginning this regime we have traveled extensively (Asia, South America, Europe) and have eaten just about everything you can imagine including cow guts and who knows what at the "lunch lady" in Vietnam and we have not had any issues for years now.
Cow guts (smaller piece of "meat" on the plate to the left):
Lunch Lady soup (Vietnam, beside what looked like the worlds largest open air sewer):
If you do get diarrhea and/or food poisoning use Imodium to stop the flow (management) and take penicillin to "kill the bug" so to speak (treatment). Get some penisillin to travel with from your doctor. We typically get prescribed Cipro a broad spectrum penicillin by our doctor before leaving. If you are vomiting out of both ends you really don't want to run around trying to find a doctor in the middle of the night in a completely foreign language to get you some! Only use it if you are seriously ill, you don't want to waste it on just regular travelers diarrhea and we don't want to create any penicillin resistant "super-bugs". See a doctor as soon as you reasonably can, this could buy you some time though.
Because we are going for such a long time this time we thought we would try "Dukarol" a vaccine taken in two doses that should work for up to 3 months. Ironically one of the main side effects of Dukarol is diarrhea and it hit me pretty hard but I guess it's better to go through it here with unlimited toilet paper than say, a public washroom in Ho Chi Minh city. Christine hasn't experienced any side effects from the Dukarol.
And of course drink lots of water!
Post your tips, thoughts or experiences below.
-Jason
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