Experts from aUkraine travel agency have kindly offered their helpful advice on how to improve health and wellbeing while traveling in Ukraine. Without further ado, let’s check it out!
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Travel reduces cortisol efficiently.
In modern-day society, many people are highly stressed. Stress increases cortisol which is the stress hormone produced by adrenal glands. Cortisol is a fight-or-flight, life-saving hormone which gets you through acute challenges like danger or infection. It literally changes your physiology in ways that improve short-term survival, e.g. raising blood pressure & increasing heart rate. Cortisol also increases your blood sugar & makes you more alert to give you energy. Short-term activation of cortisol is okay.
However, experts from the Ukraine travel agency also point out that chronic, long-term activation of cortisol is harmful. When your cortisol remains high all the time, it steals protein from your body and reduces your sensitivity to insulin. It can also weaken your immune system.
Regular travel is beneficial for your health and wellbeing because it modulates your stress response while reducing cortisol. It also improves your sensitivity to insulin, thereby preventing many problems from happening. Also, it reduces chronic inflammation effectively.
Now you may wonder why travel is so beneficial. Well, according to best-selling author Lara Briden, rest and joy are the best treatments for anyone’s health and wellbeing. Obviously, when you are travelling, you are choosing an exercise that you actually enjoy. You are combining rest, exercise and joy in this process.
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Travel can treat chronic inflammation.
Scientists have discovered that chronic inflammation is a big factor in all kinds of health issues. A well-known doctor in New Zealand argues that chronic inflammation is about whole-body communication.
Different parts of your body need to talk to one another because they need to communicate. Your hormones play an important role in that communication.
Inflammatory cytokines are chemical messengers which your body uses to fight infection automatically, so they are literally a part of the body’s inflammatory response.
The main job of inflammatory cytokines is protecting you against cancer and infections, which is a very good thing to do.
Sadly, inflammatory cytokines also insert themselves into the conversation between your hormone-sensitive tissues and your hormones (their contribution to the conversation is obstructive most of the time).
Experts from the Ukraine travel agency claim that you can reduce inflammatory cytokines when you are travelling. Because when you’re travelling, you are not stressed; you are not sitting in front of a computer all day every day; you are having a good time. These are all very important to your health and can reduce inflammatory cytokines quickly.
Apart from that, the Ukraine travel agency maintains that avoiding sources of inflammation is helpful as well, e.g. stress, smoking, lack of sleep, lack of exercise, environmental toxins, inflammatory foods and unhealthy gut microbiome.
Smoking is the worst thing you can do because it’s the most inflammatory activity – cigarette smoke contains pesticides, cadmium and other hormone-damaging toxins – it over-activates your immune system.
Also, environmental toxins like mercury, pesticides and plastics should be avoided, too, because they contain immune-activating toxins.
Moreover, your diet might be another source of inflammation as some foods stimulate your immune system in order to make inflammatory cytokines. Having said that, your diet can be anti-inflammatory as well (very exciting)! If you change your diet, you will reduce inflammation dramatically (source: Ukraine travel agency).
But how can you get started? Which foods should be avoided when you are travelling? Basically, there are three categories of foods that you should totally avoid if you can:
- Processed vegetable oils;
- Digestive and immune disruptors: dairy products and wheat;
- Metabolic disruptors: alcohol and sugar.
Yes, alcohol, sugar, wheat, vegetable oil and dairy are the most inflammatory foods.
First of all, alcohol and sugar create metabolic inflammation which is the activation of inflammatory cytokines in the liver and body fat.
Sugar causes tissue damage and insulin resistance. Meanwhile, alcohol shrinks the brain and generates metabolic inflammation fast.
Second, wheat contains gluten which is bad for most people’s health. As to dairy products, A1 casein in dairy products is inflammatory because it stimulates your immune system to generate inflammatory cytokines (just like gluten does).
Thirdly, vegetable oil contains trans fat which is a toxic metabolite (just like deep-fried food).
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Ukraine travel agency recommends anti-inflammatory vegetables to anyone who is visiting Ukraine.
Ukrainian food is best characterized by a wide variety of wholesome vegetables! The good news is vegetables reduce inflammation, which is very beneficial.
In the first place, vegetables offer vitamin C, magnesium and folate – these are key nutrients. Furthermore, vegetables feed your gut bacteria and deliver a good cocktail of anti-inflammatory phytonutrients.
In the second place, vegetables contain phytonutrients naturally and can prevent diseases. Note that phytonutrients directly talk to your DNA & cells and can modify hormone function & metabolism. Vegetables automatically switch off pro-inflammatory genes & switch on anti-inflammatory genes (AKA anti-aging genes). Therefore, phytonutrients are great medicine. If you’d like to harness their power, you should eat as many fresh fruits and vegetables as you can when you are travelling! (source: Ukraine travel agency)
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Travel is good for your digestive health.
When you’re travelling, you are definitely trying different foods that you normally wouldn’t eat, and that’s very good for your digestive health because your gut microbiome needs variety, according to experts from Ukraine travel agency.
When you possess a friendly gut microbiome, this does many wonderful things for your health and wellbeing. For instance, it regulates your thyroid hormone and reduces inflammation.
In contrast, without a friendly gut microbiome, you have a physical condition called dysbiosis, i.e. an unhealthy change to your bacterial ecology. This may disrupt your HPA axis, impair metabolism and interfere with thyroid hormone.
But there are many things we can do to improve our gut health.
First and most importantly, you must get enough sleep (at least 7 hours every night) because sleep deprivation may cause dysbiosis.
Next, you have to reduce stress, for stress leads to dysbiosis.
Further, you’d better eat more fermented foods like sauerkraut and natural yoghurt as they support friendly bacteria. (source: Ukraine travel agency)
“Personally, I would recommend eating as many vegetables as possible when you visit Ukrainebecause vegetables in Ukraine are fresh and very healthy foods,” says an expert from the Ukraine travel agency, “But I wouldn’t recommend eating a lot of fruits because in my opinion, fruits contain too much sugar, although the sugar in fruits is natural.”
Indeed, even well-known entrepreneur Tom Bilyeu wouldn’t eat lots of fruits. He literally said, “Fruit is like candies in the nature. No, thanks. That’s not for me.”
Having said that, it’s perfectly okay to eat some fruits every day because fruits are wholesome and beneficial in many ways. When you visit Ukraine, you can see there are many options in terms of fruits on the market as well!
“Special kudos go to experts from the Ukraine travel agency who have shared their knowledge with us today.”
