Often motion sickness medication can cause drowsiness. It must be taken prior to travel, usually at least 30 minutes before. In most cases the medication is not effective. Motion sickness bands or otherwise known as a motion sickness bracelet can be effective. You can use these time and time again and they work with acupressure. There are also some herbal remedies available, such as ginger. This can be taken in the raw form or in tea or even ginger biscuits (with a quite high ginger strength in them).

The sickness can make travelling extremely hard and not an enjoyable experience at all. There are some things that will make the risk factor higher than others, these include,

being prone to nausea

anxious

travelling in a boat, airplane, car, train

going on fair rides

bad ventilation

not seeing out of the window when travelling

Approximately 30% of the population suffer with motion sickness. 5% will suffer to an extreme level including vomiting. Once children are able to put together the pieces visually, meaning they are aware that they are moving and able to see where they are going, then they become susceptible to the condition. Prior to this they will not suffer. This is why it is said that children over 2 are prone to suffer. Children of the age 2 up to 12 are the highest at risk.

Below are just a few tips for helping to reduce the sickness:

Drink lots of water

aviod greasy, fatty or spicy meals

dont eat too much

avoid alcohol the day before travelling

try to get some fresh air whilst travelling

There is no doubt about it. Medicine is important. That is why the training and the education that come with it are extremely hard. People who want to be in the field should think twice before embarking on this journey as a medical practitioner. However, as much as medicine and all those who practice it is important. Medical recording keeping is also important. Without a reliable system behind every doctor or any healthcare professional, you won’t have anything. It is a dangerous world out there that is why accurate information and medical records are important for all of these doctors to do their job right.

Someday soon all the medical records of all the patients can be accessed globally. Meaning, your doctor can be on vacation and he can access your records when he needs to or you can be the one that is on vacation and the doctor needs to coordinate with your doctor to be able to give you appropriate health advice.. Although I am sure that there are going to be a lot of people who will be against this. They are afraid of the unknown and they have all these security and privacy issues. It is definitely strange for a doctor not to be at your side but he continuously checks what is happening. Actually the importance of medicine and all medical matters are beyond compare. Due to efficiency of some people who do the record keeping of hospital records of patients, hospital procedures and others, breakthroughs and efficient service have improved considerably. That is why medicine and information technology work hand in hand to deliver excellent and prompt service.

I am a pharmacist. When I lived in Miami, I had a regular patient (aka Janet) that would come in and talk with me about her dogs (my favorite subject!) She had been in New York for a few weeks for work. Before she had left for her trip, she had picked up a prescription for Diflucan (fluconazole)-a treatment for a yeast infection.

Janet came into the pharmacy and barely mentioned her new puppy (Charlie). She seemed upset and irritated. She was picking up another Diflucan prescription. So, I asked her what was up.

She was at wits end- she had been treating a yeast infection for about 2 months. At first, she self treated with OTC medications then with her physician. Janet’s physician gave her some prescription creams and then Diflucan.

We talked about all of her concerns…

What the symptoms are…

Symptoms range from none to swollen, red, itchy, irritated vaginal/vulvar tissues, discharge and odor -or any combination.

Even once the infection is cleared up (about 3-5 days) the symptoms can remain for up to 14 days -this is a problem because many women think that they still have an active infection.

We talked about how you get a yeast infection…

All women naturally have a small amount of yeast (candida albicans) in the vagina. The infection occurs when there is too much of the yeast. This can happen anytime -it is usually caused by medications (like antibiotics), injury, stress or other sickness.

Studies show that for some women who get recurring yeast infections, their risk is increased by using panty-hose, panty liners, sexual lubricants and drinking cranberry juice.

How is it treated?…

OTC vaginal creams and suppositories (such as Monistat) -they usually come in 1-day, 3-day and 7-day treatments. I usually recommend a 3-day treatment for most women.

Prescription vaginal creams and suppositories (like Gynazole) -these are not usually any better than the OTC creams.

Helpful Hint: Be careful -the creams can breakdown condoms.

Diflucan (fluconazole) is a prescription oral medication. Usually 1 tablet is taken once (sometimes it is repeated in 3 days). The tricky thing about the pill is that although it often only one tablet, the symptoms still take about 3 days to go away (you can use an OTC cream to help).

Boric acid vaginal suppositories -this is what Janet and I talked about mostly because she had already been through all the other options. She wanted to know why it had to come down to some random treatment she had never even heard of. There are three main reasons

1) There are different kinds of yeast that can cause infections. Most kinds of infections are treated by the normal treatments but there are some yeast infections that can ONLY be treated with boric acid.

2) Sometimes the infection is not caused by yeast but by a bacteria…none of the anti-fungal will help but boric acid can treat yeast and bacteria.

3) Sometimes, when a woman with a yeast infection uses a bunch of different treatments, the vagina just gets “unbalanced” -boric acid corrects the pH and kinda gives the vagina a “re-boot” back to baseline.

The regular dose is 600mg boric acid (in type 0 capsules) inserted vaginally at bedtime for 14 days. They need to be compounded so -you need a prescription and a compounding pharmacy.

Back to Janet- I printed out some info about boric acid that she could show her physician. She had to go back up to New York for another month but she called a couple of times to update me on her progress -she said her doctor looked at her like she was crazy at first but after reading about it gave her the prescription, she went to a compounding pharmacy and all has been good for her.

So that is great…here is the funny part- a few weeks later, I had a woman come to the pharmacy and asked if we have boric acid. I started talking to her about how it needs to be compounded with a specific capsule because yadda yadda yadda…

Her face was frozen in confusion and a bit of fear…I stopped talking and she said, “I…uhhh….just wanted some boric acid powder,” pause while we both looked at each other puzzled. She then continued, “You know…for cleaning.”

Boric acid for cleaning….who knew?!