Want to Stay Healthy When You Fly?
Whether your vacation plans involve a romantic getaway to a faraway locale or just a summer visit with the grandkids, odds are an airplane will be involved. For the most part, planes are a great way to go, health experts say. “Overall, it’s a very safe mode of transportation,” said Dr. Leigh Speicher, an aerospace medicine specialist who is president of the Civil Aviation Medical Association.
But commercial air travel does come with some health baggage. Issues range from simple stress to “complex physiologic changes occurring in the setting of air travel that can affect the heart, the blood vessels and the brain-heart axis,” said Dr. Laurence Sperling, the Katz Professor in Preventive Cardiology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
Here’s what the doctors say you can do to stay grounded in health before you’re cleared for departure.
Excerpted from American Heart Association
