Whether you’re traveling to an unknown location or somewhere you've been before, keeping a travel kit is essential to avoid any discomfort, inconvenience, and emergency. Studies show that up to 87% of people get sick while traveling or after they reach their destination.

You’re more likely to catch a cold or flu on your trip with a dip in temperature. Therefore to ensure your vacation isn’t interrupted and spoiled by an unwanted health issue, it’s advisable to prepare well for it beforehand.

Always consider the destination before setting up your medical kit. If you’re crossing the country's borders, make sure you keep in mind the time duration you’re traveling for and the extent of health care facilities available in that country.

You can surf the US State Department Web site (http://travel.state.gov/) for hands-on information about the medical services at the destination you’re traveling to. It contains all the details about various travel locations to support US travelers.

Even if you’re traveling within the country, you might find a 24-hour pharmacy wherever you go. Therefore, to take care of minor health issues, injuries, and allergies, here are a few things that you must add to your travel medication kit.

First Aid Kit

1.Thermometer

The first thing to add to your kit is a thermometer. Even a slight fever can drain your energy, making you feel tired and cause your body to ache. Hence, it's best to be prepared and pack a thermometer to monitor your body temperature.

With sudden changes in your sleeping schedule and excessive traveling, you might feel low and lack energy. In that case, the best approach is to grab a thermometer and check your body temperature.

If your body temperature is more than 99F/38C, take precautions like getting soup or hot beverage. If it's way off, you can also have an OTC medication to get rid of it before it becomes a nuisance for you on the trip.

Therefore, during traveling, it's advised to keep a thermometer handy. If you feel slight uneasiness or lack energy, you can take immediate action before your condition worsens.

2.Band-Aids, Wraps, and Tapes

When traveling, it’s significant to stock up on band-aids, wraps, and tapes to provide instant first aid for most minor injuries.

Multiple situations don't require a trip to the emergency room or a hospital but need some sort of nursing. Burns, bee stings, minor falls, allergic reactions, or any other unplanned incident might require some kind of self-nursing.

Therefore, keeping band-aids and wraps handy can help you treat the problem on the spot.

3.Antibacterial or Antifungal Ointments

The winter season allows multiple bacteria and fungus to thrive on your skin. A slight cut, insect bite, or rash can lead to fungal or bacterial infection in no time if not treated timely.

While traveling, it might not be possible to find a pharmacy everywhere. Therefore it's always advised to carry an antifungal or antibacterial ointment with you when you travel to prevent minor infections from turning into serious skin issues that can ruin your holiday mood and excitement.

Supplies to Prevent Illness or Injury

4.Hand Sanitizer (Containing At Least 60% Alcohol) or Antibacterial Hand Wipes

Hand sanitizers have become a necessity amid the COVID-19 pandemic whether you’re traveling or not. To ensure you stay healthy on your entire trip, paying attention to basic hygiene is necessary. Keeping your hands and surroundings clean is the first step in maintaining basic hygiene.

Therefore, whether you’ve checked in a new hotel or are at a place for dinner, sanitizers and hand wipes will ensure your hands and the surface in contact is clean and squeaky.

5.Water Purification Tablets

Alt text: a person dropping a water purification tablet in a glass of water

It’s not always possible to have access to safe and clean drinking water while you’re traveling. But at the same time, you can’t compromise on your health, especially when traveling.

One way to deal with this dilemma of staying healthy even when you don’t have clean water available is using water purification tablets. These simple-to-use tablets are like mini water purifiers.

They kill microorganisms in the water to prevent water-borne diseases without burning or bleaching. This’ll help guarantee you get safe drinking water each time without compromising your health.

6.Insect Repellent

Insects and ticks are the leading transmitters of diseases. They account for more than 17%of all infectious diseases, causing more than 700 000 fatalities every year.

It's important to keep an insect repellant with you to hold back any insects and other parasites that can cause various diseases. It’ll help prevent any vector-borne infections, which is crucial to staying well when you travel.

Medical Supplies

7.Glasses and Contacts

Imagine losing your specs on the first day of your trip and exploring the tourist spots with blurred vision throughout your expedition. Sounds like a nightmare, right?

To make sure this nightmare doesn’t become a reality, it's important to pack smart and keep an extra pair of spectacles and contacts with you always wherever you travel.

You might not find an optician everywhere. Even if you do, they might charge you big bucks, which you hadn’t planned for in your travel expense. Therefore, it's sensible to keep your extra specs and contacts in your travel kit to avoid any unwanted circumstances.

8.Diabetes Testing Supplies

Every 1 in 10 Americans has diabetes, making it a highly prevalent disease. With such soaring numbers, it's possible either you or anyone in your family might be suffering from it.

Therefore, it's important to have a diabetes testing kit with you at all times. Traveling means lots of eating and during that you don’t pay much heed to how much you can actually have.

Keeping a testing kit allows you to keep a close check on your sugar levels and warns you just in time before the situation gets out of control.

9.Insulin

If you’re diabetic, insulin is another must-have for you. It helps keep your blood sugar levels in control by signaling the muscle, fat, and liver cells to take in extra glucose from your blood to produce energy or store it for later.

Whether your body is unable to produce sufficient insulin as in type 1 diabetes or doesn’t respond effectively to insulin in your body as in type 2 diabetes, in both cases, you’ll have to take it externally. You can inject exogenous insulin to keep blood sugar levels in control.

However, to make sure that your sugar is under control despite all the unhealthy eating you do while you’re enjoying your holiday, keeping stock of your insulin injections is a must.

10.Inhalers and Nebulizers

Colds and flu are very common in winter. A blocked nose is very uncomfortable, especially when you are traveling. Keeping inhalers and nebulizers in your travel kit will have you prevent the situation from getting worse in case you catch a cold.

Nebulizers help provide your lungs with quick reliefwith medication. They work with your natural breathing, so they are for people who have difficulty using inhalers, such as babies.

Over-The-Counter Medicines

11.Diarrhea Medicine

Upset stomach is very common with all the overeating you do during your holiday trip. To ease the pressure on your stomach and prevent loose and watery stools from ruining your vacation, OTC diarrhea medication is a must addition to your travel kit.

12.Antihistamine

Antihistamines effectively help prevent and relieve symptoms of fever, flu, colds, allergies, and other common winter ailments such as bronchitis and sinusitis.

They help treat your runny nose, watery eyes, itchy eyes, and continuous sneezing. Therefore, these OTC medications are a vital component of your travel kit.

13.Motion Sickness Medicine

Too much traveling can also make you sick and make you feel nauseated and uneasy. Keeping motion sickness medication is a smart move to prevent nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and unwanted headache attacks while traveling.

14.Cough Drops, Cough Suppressant, or Expectorant

No matter how cold it is, a scoop of ice cream at night is always on your list. Dropping temperatures and your unlimited ice creams plans might invite persistent coughing.

Therefore, to ensure your ice cream plans are not ruined and you enjoy your trip to the maximum, cough drops and suppressants are essential.

Even if it's not the ice cream, other common winter ailments and allergies also give rise to chest congestion and coughing. So, to make sure you're not spending your days in bed rather than enjoying yourself exploring the new place, these cough suppressants are necessary.

15.Pain Killers

A twisted ankle or a sprain while hiking might leave you in bed for five out of eight trip days. Or a sudden migraine attack might force you to cut your trip short.

Imagine the holiday you’ve been planning for so long going down the drain because your continuous headaches due to travel anxiety wouldn't let you enjoy.

If you want to make the most out of your trip, make sure to keep a few pain relief medications in your bag so that your trip is trouble-free and full of fun and enjoyment. You’ll find multiple over-the-counter medications to provide you with instant relief from pain.

16.Fever Medicine

Whether it’s a symptom of your allergy triggering, you catching a cold, or suffering from an ear, lung, or throat infection, a fever is the first and the most common symptom that furthers worsens into other serious issues.

Therefore, it's best to put a halt to the developing health issues while you’re traveling by treating them in the first stage by taking a fever medication.

17.Mild Laxative

Sudden changes in your routine, such as changing your sleeping schedule due to traveling or travel anxiety, can also lead to constipation.

At this very moment, you realize how important bowel movements are when you can’t make the most of your holiday due to stomach cramps and headaches that occur due to constipation.

Mild laxative tablets can help you pass stool easily and prevent any undesirable cramping and feelings of filled bowel anywhere you go.

18.Mild Sedative Or Sleep Aids

Overly tired bodies due to excessive traveling or staying away from your home, your bed, your pillow for long can lead to sleepless nights.

This might cause you to stay lazy and sleepy throughout the day when you should actually be enjoying your time exploring the place.

Therefore OTC sleeping aids will induce drowsiness, helping you sleep better and deeper during the night so that you can stay fresh the next day.

If you’re looking for premium over-the-counter medications, reach out to HealthA2Z for a wide range of OTC (over-the-counter) pharmaceutical products.

From constipation relief medicine, cold & cough relief medicine, medicine for headache relief and stool softener to motion sickness tablets, we have it all for you at affordable rates. We also have the best dietary supplement productsto help you overcome your dietary deficiencies.

Contact us to know more about our OTC products and dietary supplements.