Jetlag, Nausea, and Diarrhea are Largely Optional

Other things that are optional:

• sunburn
• bug bites
• lactose intolerance
• running out of phone or laptop battery
• ads
• paywalls

I am concerned that by removing pills from their original packaging (blister or pill box), you are losing track of the expiry date of the medications, putting you at risk of sub-optimal drug effects. Perhaps, also label the date by which you replace the meds?
Other random pointers (I am a medical doctor): 
- I highly recommend Ondansetron. It should be easy to request any doctor you see to write you a prescription for one. It works like a charm for any nausea, hangover, migraine, seasickness, stomach bug, heartburn, or anxiety, etc.
- Acetaminophen(Tylenol) or Paracetamol, based on where you are located, is a must for fevers.
- If you are prone to allergies, carrying an antihistamine, such as cetirizine or levocetirizine, helps a lot.
- Saline eye drops for dryness (long hours at the computer), or random foreign bodies (specks)
- Add something for heartburn/acidity. This can be ranitidine or omeprazole(Id avoid this but for extreme cases) . This works when you eat something spicy or too much of something leading to discomfort. Look at this as a one-step above your regular tums. 
- Personal fav pill organizer

Should I write a detailed post or link a detailed google doc about OTCs? 



 

The idea here seems to be something like:

1. Everyone knows you can handle jetlag, nausea, and diarrhea with pills.

2. People don't actually do this because keeping the pills around is inconvenient.

3. Maintaining a pill organizer makes it convenient.

My guess is that #1 is actually not the case, and the main reasons people do not treat these as optional is that they don't know these can be handled with pills, they don't know how to handle these with pills, or handling these with pills doesn't actually work well for them.

Personally, I found a weekly pill organizer very helpful because I could tell whether I had already taken my meds or not.

Just wanted to say I've purchased a pill organizer based on your recommendation, and plan on checking out your anti-diarrhea and anti-nausea picks! I'll also probably slot in Tums for acid reflux.

Here's a Share-a-cart link to grab all of the 6 basic pills + pill organizer on Amazon for ~$57. (Click on the link, click "Send all to cart", and then "Add to cart" at the bottom).

I did very minimal research for this and mostly just clicked on the first fine-seeming product per item on the list, and did not check whether things were vegan, the best possible product in each category, etc. Commenting mostly to encourage people to use services like Share-a-cart when publishing shopping lists to make it super easy for people to buy things you recommend.

If there's something wrong that's causing recurring issues (e.g. diarrhea), then taking medication to prevent diarrhea is fixing the symptom and obscuring the cause. It obscures any signal that might lead to identification of the cause while exposing you to the medication's side-effects.

For example, someone with lactose intolerance (but who doesn't know it yet) goes from "I notice that when I eat x, I get diarrhea for the next week" without medication, to "I eat what I want and experience no symptoms, but I do notice I have been feeling more tired and low in energy over the past few months" with medication.

I'm concerned about taking pills for jet lag, since sleep aids that are perfectly legal might not be at your destination. Even fairly tame ones like melatonin are illegal in some areas.

There are extra costs here that aren’t being included. There’s a cost to maintaining the pill box - perhaps you consider that small but it’s extra admin and we’re already drowning in admin. There’s a cost to my self identity of being a person who carries around pills like this (don’t mean to disparage it, just not for me). There’s also potentially hidden costs of not getting ill occasionally, both mentally and physically.

This is amazing, thank you!

I once had a multiple day hospitalization following use of modafinil (to prevent jetlag) during a flight -- checkups found no clear cause. This is obviously N=1, but still makes me wonder if there's some adverse interaction between modafinil and pressure changes. Would be interested if anyone has had similar experiences and/or knows of a relevant mechanism.