Summer means flights, road trips, time zone changes, and a lot more time out of your normal routine. It's also one of the most common times I see patients come in feeling run down, not sick, just off. Tired, tense, not sleeping well, dealing with a stomach that doesn't love airplane food or whatever vacation treat.
The good news: most of this is preventable, and a lot of it ties directly back to the kind of care I practice every day, acupuncture, Tui Na, and Chinese herbal medicine. Here are the 9 things I recommend to patients before a trip, whether you're headed across the state or across the world.
1. Get acupuncture before you leave. Getting acupuncture before a trip is one of the best things you can do for your body before the stress of travel kicks in. It calms your nervous system, reduces physical tension, and helps your body start the journey from a place of balance rather than depletion, so you arrive at your destination feeling like yourself instead of already running on empty.
2. Start hydrating two days before your flight, not just at the gate. Cabin humidity runs around 10–20%, that's drier than most deserts. Most people boarding the plane are already mildly dehydrated. Add electrolytes, not just water, and moderate your alcohol and caffeine the day before, both accelerate dehydration at altitude.
3. Prioritize sleep in the week leading up to travel. Jet lag is easier on a body that wasn't already sleep-deprived going in. If your sleep has been inconsistent, that's worth addressing before you go, not after you land.
4. Support your digestion before you change time zones and diets. Travel-related digestion issues are very common, and they're usually thrust onto a system that was already a little off balance before the trip even started. A pre-travel diet focused on digestive health can make a real difference once you're eating on a new schedule. Eat a diverse selection of whole foods rich in fiber, protein, and healthy fats, and include fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, and kombucha.
5. Don't ignore tension in your neck, shoulders, and hips before a long flight or drive. Hours in a seat will find every tight spot you already have. Addressing that tension beforehand means you're not starting the trip already compensating for it. Here is a practical tip. During the flight, every 90 minutes or so, stand up, do 10 slow neck rolls, and walk to the back of the plane and back. It takes 3 minutes and is the single most effective thing you can do to arrive without feeling like you were poured out of a chair.
6. Jet lag. Use light, not willpower, to reset your body clock. When you land, get outside in natural light as close to your destination's local morning as possible, even 20 minutes makes a real difference. Light is the primary signal your circadian system uses to recalibrate, so staying in a dark hotel room the afternoon you arrive is one of the worst things you can do for jet lag. Meal timing matters too, eat on your destination's local schedule from the moment you land, not whenever your stomach back home tells you it's hungry. And move. A 20-minute walk outside at your destination's local time of day pulls all three levers at once: light, movement, and diet reset.
7. Pack for your body, not just your itinerary. A few specific herbal formulas travel well and can support digestion, sleep, or immune resilience on the go. If you're a current patient, ask me what's worth bringing, it's usually a short list and I can customize it to your specific needs.
8. Plan a landing session for longer or more demanding trips. For bigger trips, international travel, multiple time zones, a lot of physical activity, a session after you're back can help your body recalibrate faster instead of carrying that depletion into your regular routine.
9. Treat your trip as part of your health, not a break from it. The best vacations are the ones you come back from actually feeling good, not the ones you spend the first week home recovering from. A little preparation goes a long way toward that.
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If you've got a trip coming up this summer, a pre-travel session is one of the easiest ways to apply all of this at once. It's also a good checkpoint if it's been a while since your last visit.
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— Jeff
Jeffrey Prol is a Florida-licensed acupuncture physician who has been practicing in Miami Beach for 20 years, specializing in acupuncture, cupping, Tui Na, and Chinese herbal medicine. He has studied under Daniel J. Atchison-Nevel, founder of the NSEV Healing method, since 2003, over two decades of training in an approach most practitioners never get exposure to, and now teaches it himself as an instructor for NSEV Healing Clinical Trainings. When he's not in the clinic, he's a dedicated husband, father, and surfer.
