My friend recently took a long haul international flight. He has not been on an international flight for a while because of horrible experiences in the past. It is a combination of multiple factors:
- Cramped seating
- Stomach Bloat which never seems to go away no matter what
- A litany of stomach ailments which make things even more complicated than when combined with the general airplane experience.
To combat this, he had visited MGH several months before his trip to try and mitigate the stomach problems he had even at home. I have covered the details of that in this article:
What I did not mention in that article is that there is a treatment #2 which is a medicine which can be taken at night to further reduce the symptoms during the day.
Armed with all this information, my friend prepped for the day of the flight with confidence. Strategy #1 was to have very basic food on the day of the flight. Secondly, because he had not mentioned the gas issue on flights he has always had consistently, he called the pharmacy who recommended Gas X after food just before the flight (if he had dinner in the airport). It was also mentioned that Gas X could help during the flight if gas continued to be an issue.
My friend packed food from home (bread + potatoes) for the flight and had half of that before the flight + Gas X as recommended.
The 6.5 hour flight #1 went better than he had ever experienced before because his stomach would fill with gas, but he was able to belch and also expel gas the natural way during the flight.
So, there was no issues during flight #1. No rush to the toilet every hour or so — no nothing.
Then, there was the layover #1 for 4 hours. He had three things there:
- Normal medicine recommended by the doctor because it was time.
- Remaining half of the food.
- Another Gas X.
It was pure hell after that.
