Hi, Henry. In this week's episode, we are going to be talking about going on holiday
or traveling and talking about how we can keep ourselves as healthy as possible. And
that involves both trying to keep injury free because apparently about 4.4 million people
can sustain injuries whilst going on holiday in just the last three years. So we want to
see if we can tackle that situation and it's something I hear about a lot in clinic but also
obviously going on holiday we want to take tasty food with us as well and some nice snacks so we
can talk about lovely things that we can do to make that as easy as possible and to avoid the
soggy sandwiches so so Henry when you go on holiday or you go away what do you tend to pack
up for yourself in terms of food well if I think back to my last summer holiday so we went camping
in france for um a couple of weeks which was very nice and we drove there um across on the ferry and
then all the way down so it was i think it was almost like an 18 hour drive that we did in shifts
and um and i think for me um what what what it's all about is having a really good snack bag so um
there's a few things one is that you know if you're in a car for a long time um uh it puts you
at the mercy of motorway service stations which tend to not have the best of rare food and also
the prices tend to be on the higher side so you can get totally stung particularly if you're
traveling with kids so you know you can almost you can probably throw away half your holiday budget
just on you know crap from the from the service station so for me it's about doing a bit of
shopping beforehand and getting a really epic snack bag that's going to sustain you through
and uh so things that that we would typically put in there so just you know a cool bag a couple of
freezer packs or you can even you know if you don't want to carry too much you could freeze some
water bottles and then you know towards the end of the journey they'll have defrosted and then you
can drink them so you can be a bit resourceful there but things like uh hummus is always a great
one um and then some carrot sticks and some pepper sticks you know little tupperware tub um and you
want to eat that probably fairly at the beginning of the journey because it's not going to last too
long but you know it's kind of a tasty little snack that's going to keep you going um you want
to avoid things like i don't know just bags of crisps and haribo and you know all the usual kind
of um things that you would you would see as kind of like easy grab bags because they're going to be
full of v numbers they're not going to make you feel great particularly if you're in a car you
know i can just imagine the children fueled on doritos and haribo for 18 hours there's going to
be you know it's going to test everyone's patience and um as their energy levels absolutely skyrocket
and plummet so i think yeah i think it's just about you know trying to you know fill it with
some tasty stuff like eggs and nuts are really good or you know there's like mixed nuts and seeds
you know quite easy particularly if they're not too don't go for the ones that are really
over seasoned because you're just gonna you're gonna eat too many of them if they're a bit too
boorish so actually just go for like a plain roasted one or just a salted one and you know
it's a struggle to eat half a kilo of um of dry nuts but you know if they're if they're coated in
some delicious i don't know piri piri you know whatever full of v numbers you're gonna smash
your way through it and then probably not feel so great so yeah i think yeah a good epic snack bag
actually last year very sadly we left our ferry was at like i think maybe six o'clock in the
morning so we left at like three o'clock in the morning which you know so it's kind of uh you know
early sleep very well the night before we're kind of up and off we go and we we'd done about 15 miles
and we had plenty of time to get to the ferry and then we remembered the snack bag was in the fridge
and so we had this issue we were like do we turn around and I was like there's about 60 pounds worth
of premium snacks that are definitely not going to last the holiday so we um we turned around uh
which then meant we had to drive slightly faster than we'd like um at three in the morning which
actually was quite exciting so I always like to live slightly on the edge but um but we did turn
around for the snacks and it is worth putting that effort in um isn't it before you go it's a shame
that you you did forget them initially but um yeah always worth the effort and something i remember
um always doing that i think my dad taught me this trick was um to peel an orange and put it
into a bag so it's already unpeeled like peeled yeah yeah that's a good one snap where it so you
just kind of have it on the front seat and you don't have to obviously take your eyes off the
road and you've just got grapes and fruit and things they're just ready to go if you need to
because like you say kids if they're going to eat crisps or other things are not such good choices
for them or especially sweets within 20 minutes that's going to hit the bloodstream and you're
going to have a nightmare of a car journey aren't you um totally and things like you know like doing
a few yogurt pots so actually we quite often just buy some you know full fat greek yogurt you know
valley organic totally fine and then just pre-mix it with some yeah like some chopped up fruit bit
of seeds um you could maybe put a bit of maple or honey if the kids want a bit sweeter but you
don't have to and then just a few um you know a couple of spoons and actually you know the kids
are hungry you know kind of seven in the morning they're like oh come here's breakfast you know
rather than stopping off and you know getting a muffin and actually um you know a nice bit of
yogurt great you know i probably wouldn't do like cereal and milk because it's almost certainly going
to spill everywhere but actually thick you know thick good Greek yogurt is a fairly easy thing to
eat whilst driving along yeah and you can kind of prepare those in in advance as well can't you and
Do you ever bake anything before you would set off?
Would you like, because I sometimes like make little scones and things
and chuck loads of grated vegetables into those and then I freeze them
and then I defrost them so that after about an hour they're ready to eat
and you don't really need any butter.
They're quite sort of like tasty on their own.
But do you bake anything special like that, Henry?
It's an interesting one because I obviously help run a bakery.
There's always a kind of plethora of baked goods on tap.
So I haven't done those little light savoury scones.
We've definitely done like kind of homemade granola bars or, you know,
something a bit more, so, you know, with less sugar, you know,
a bit more peanut, maybe dips, you know, a little bit of chocolate,
you know, just if we're feeling a bit naughty.
But those little muffly things, they sound great.
You know, a really good idea.
Well, they freeze really well.
The base of those is basically Greek yoghurt as well.
so it's just like flour, Greek yogurt, a bit of cheese, baking powder,
and you kind of throw it in, and I just kind of do it like that,
mix them up, and I grate courgette and carrot into them.
Yeah, definitely.
It sounds delicious.
It's kind of like a healthy way to plate the veg.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
Well, like I've definitely done little falafels.
They're quite fun because you can kind of, you know,
and then, again, quite good, you know, kind of dipped into a bit hummus,
you know, kind of if a carrot stick can get a bit boring, you know,
nice to have yeah or different vegetable flavor like yeah yeah that's it yeah with your hummus
you could have as long as it's not too hot i guess because if you're in a hot car that like
if you're traveling a time a day like i sometimes chop up like peppers and other even anything
slice that you just think that will dip quite well and it's um not always like you say carrots
can get a bit like cucumber works quite well doesn't it as well so yeah i think i think it's
just knowing that at some point on your journey,
you're going to get hungry.
And even, you know, if you're going on a plane,
actually, I think the restrictions have changed a little bit
that you can take a little bit of food on.
And because often plane food is either,
well, unless you're, you know, flying first class to Dubai or whatever.
And you've got, you know, fillets there.
You don't need to worry.
But, you know, if you're on Ryanair or EasyJet,
the in-flight food that you've got to buy
tends to be pretty bang average, doesn't it?
And definitely ever-priced.
and um yeah and particularly if you're with kids you know it's a handy thing to have a few snacks
going to squirrel away and stuff that that does laugh so like those little little muffiny things
or little uh like little granola bars or something that is going to sustain them through you because
you know sometimes the flight's only a couple of hours so you don't need like a full-on meal but
just something to yeah keep them going yeah absolutely absolutely so before you jet off i'm
quite interested to know because this is something that i bore patients with in clinic but okay um
before you set off you've thought about your snacks you've probably thought about your car
in the sense of you've checked the oil you've checked the water level you've checked your
petrol level everything else do you you've got very high expectations of me
but yeah they got yeah let's assume i've done that yeah yeah but do you ever think about how
your car's set up especially if like do you have like a little do you decide who's going to drive
like whether it's you or your wife do you kind of say oh i'm going to drive this this bit of the
journey and then you take over and we're we we actually we're a very modern couple and my wife
loves driving she's probably a better driver than me so we tend to we would definitely just tag team
it so like last year when we drove down to france we drove through the night because we thought it
was gonna be less disruptive for the kids and also waste less of the holiday so we did kind of three
hours on three hours off where one would sleep and the other would drive and then we just you know
prod the other one like i'm getting sleepy now can we you know swap over i mean you know if you're
in a car for 15 hours you get a bit stiff then you so we did when we kind of pulled over for our
little interchange we'd have like a little 10 minute break and we were definitely doing a few
child poses on the tarmac just to like stretch yourself out because i think you just kind of get
you get a bit stiff don't you um yeah absolutely i i suffer from a like a um a weak lower back so
i definitely get you know if i'm in a kind of like slump position all day i do really feel it
and so i i know now to you know when i do get out to do some stretches and just try and but is that
what can you do like when you're in a car because obviously you can't change your seat that much is
there things that you can do to you know try and improve posture yeah well you can actually um
look at your car setup especially if you're changing from one driver to the other and
some of the modern cars i don't have one of these cars but you can have different settings so you can
press like one for the for the male and two for the female or whoever your partner is and that's
great because it will go back into the right settings that you last had it in i'm not that
lucky to have a car like that so um and it's actually better to just sit in the car and you
you're looking for an angle in your elbow so when you're sitting in the car if you're holding on to
your steering wheel um you're looking to see if you have about a you could call it like a 120 degree
range between the two parts of your arm so you're looking for that angle if you're too bent up or
too extended you're going to affect how your lower back's actually positioned as well
so most of the time people are either too close to their steering wheel or far too far away
and then that causes them to either round their shoulders or poke their head forward
and then you get very tense across the back of the neck and as soon as you start fatiguing across
the back of the neck it will then start moving down to your upper back and to your lower back
and if you're um sitting and your hips are quite low or you're sinking into the bottom like
into the actual the seat itself you'll find that your knees will be much higher than your hips and
that will push you back into the wrong position and you'll feel that across your lower back and
that will feel very achy so you want to try and try and sort of pump your chair up so that your
hips come up a little bit higher um and so it's not such an acute angle from where your hips and
your knees are so whether you can try and get your hip and your knee at the same level or or very
slightly higher or not much lower is when people have their hips right down here and their knees
are up here that it puts the pressure all through the lower back and that's what you want to avoid
so how do i how do i balance that with my um boy racer um persona where i want to be you know
slouching back as uh as far as possible is that is that not an ideal um place to be sitting yeah
that's it like a bus driver henry you need to become like a bus driver yeah yeah yeah
yeah i mean yeah you don't want to be too close and that's where the angle with the elbow works
yeah that's interesting that's good next time i get my car i'm gonna i'm gonna try that yeah
Yeah. Yeah. And then you should adjust everything else around that.
So you can use that as a bit of a measure and then you adjust around so then you find that perfect.
Interesting. That's a good hack. I like that. I like that.
Yeah, it's a good little hack. So you kind of do that. You can pump up your seat as well.
So I always say to patients or whoever I'm looking at their car, I'll say like, just try and get the seat up as high as you possibly can.
Like, apart from if your head's like touching the roof, that's a little bit too high.
But yeah, you want to go with that elbow position and the hip and knee angle first.
And then you should be sort of feeling when you depress through your pedals, like how much of an overstretch is that?
Because if you having to push and your body having to rotate to give you that pressure then you going to get a right sided lower back problem because you pushing too far If you can depress the pedal quite nicely and you not having to do any shift through the rest of the body then that going to be much more comfortable as you drive
and then you should think about all your interior mirror so i say to people if you're going to do a
long journey you should tilt it ever so slightly a little bit higher where you have to sit up
to look into it because that will maintain a really good posture most of the time you start
off your good intentions and we all do yes don't we go down yeah just slouched out you're probably
like this in your car yeah yeah well it's well it's when you're on those long french roads that
just you know straight and no one on it and hardly any traffic and you're just cruising you know
yeah yeah not good for your back no not good for your back because then if you if you do have that
angled um mirror it will allow you to sit up you'll go oh and you can you can judge that based
on how much you're you're slumping as well so if you can't see in that mirror from when you set it
initially before you set off you'll be like oh I really must be slumping if I'm having to really
set up to to have a look and that's a little bit of a reminder that maybe you need a break maybe
you need to stop and people we all use the back of the seat to sit against but occasionally just
sit yourself away from the back of the seat so you engage your tummy muscles because that way
you'll also work on your six-pack there Henry as well perfect yeah yeah well that's always high on
my mind before a summer holiday so so you you mentioned right at the beginning about the amount
of people who get injured on holiday does a lot of that happen on the journey or is it kind of
um because i always i always assume that when you're on holiday you can't get injured that's
that's the rule that i've always taken when you're you know hiring a moped and you know
uh screaming around uh tight roads with uh flip-flops and no protection apart from a
like a 20 year old helmet they've passed over i just kind of assume that i'm safe when i'm on
holiday but possibly that's a um deluded yeah well we see all sorts so it can even start from
packing so people will start packing up they'll overload their cases um they'll overreach for
their suitcases down from you know the dusty suitcase down from the loft yeah yeah yeah
they've gone up the ladders um sometimes they fall off the ladders sometimes they um have
overloaded the suitcase then they pick up the suitcase wrong and the back goes or the car
journey so as we've discussed if you don't set up your car correctly when you actually get to the
journey and a lot of people do this and they go the roads were fine i just wanted to crack on i sat
for three hours i got to destination i got out of the car my back went and i had this shooting pain
down my leg yeah yeah and they're classically describing a sciatic symptom okay and that's
because you know we're putting too much pressure on the body not every time is it sciatica but
people if they're vulnerable to it or they're carrying risk factors that means they're predisposed
to sciatica it could be that the car journey because when we sit in a car we're actually
stretching our sciatic nerve in that position it puts it on a strain so that's the one position
where we know that we're actually really pushing
and putting pressure through the sciatic nerve,
which is why it's even more important that we sit properly
when we are in the car in that position.
Because otherwise...
Where is the sciatic nerve?
So basically, we have all our kind of vertebral body
and then in between we have the discs.
And where the discs and the vertebral body sit,
you've got exiting nerve roots.
and each bony point is actually numbered or called something so it's like thoracic spine or
T1 to T12 and it goes down into the lumbar spine so we have L1 to L5 and S1 and all of these nerve
roots supply different parts of our body and everything in the lumbar spine is going to
referral radiate down into our legs. If you, the discs between the bones, we know that if we sit
and put too much pressure on those, what happens is as we get, we're a bit vulnerable between the
age of 35 and 55 with our discs. And if we don't look after our body, you know, we don't drink
enough, we don't exercise enough, we don't maintain the flexibility, we don't have good strength in
our abdominal muscles and our lower back muscles, and even our legs and our balance and everything
else that can kind of contribute or if we sit wrong and we lift incorrectly frequently and a lot
over time all this plays a part onto our how our discs are then becoming quite vulnerable and as we
age unfortunately the discs will you know they can have little tiny cracks in them and then the middle
part of the the disc will start to seep out through into those cracks and you get like a collection
imagine it like a little bit of like red jam just collecting at the side henry of your disc and that
collection kind of presses on what we call the nerve roots that are also coming out the spine so
it's basically occupying the space and it's that touching of any disc material on the nerve root
which will radiate down so not everybody has the actual accumulation sometimes you can just have a
tight nerve and the nerve should be like a nice gliding sliding structure but sometimes that gets
a bit stuck or sticky or it just kind of doesn't glide as properly as it as it should do there's
all kinds of reasons why you might end up getting some referred pain into your leg it doesn't always
have to be true sciatica and most people will come in and go oh I've got sciatica but to be sciatica
it does actually have to radiate into the leg and down into the foot and that can either be on one
side or both sides and people panic when that happens because you know it's agony you know
people come into a clinic and they're in a lot of pain with this and it sometimes can be triggered
by something like having gone on a car journey and that won't be the only cause something would
have built up to this over time it's just it's the last thing so this this happened this this
happened to me so when I office based and then I did some aggressive wood chopping one weekend with
an axe had a lot of fun but I you know I had a saw bag and then a few days later we drove down
to Cornwall it was like a three-hour drive and I think that's quite a lot of traffic so probably
you know took maybe five hours and um and then uh operating a heavy uh laden um supermarket trolley
um uh with we were shopping for like 16 people so I had like absolutely stacked to the rafters
and um and I just felt my back go and it was awful I ended up coming home on the train because I
and I was like I can't sit down so I caught train home and stood up and and and that's why I got into
Pilates and stuff because and the way the physio described at the time he said it was a bit like
um a bit of jam and a donut has been squeezed and a bit of jams come out the side and it's like
and um he probably mentioned words like saturday but I forgot um but all I remember was it really
bloody hurt yeah and actually that okay the root cause maybe wasn't the journey but it definitely
that journey down to Cornwall and I remember my brother saying saying before oh you should be
you should be careful on holiday don't push yourself too hard because I was catering and
like you knew that I'd be you know going fairly full on it was like your back's bad you should
you know don't don't push yourself and then I pushed it too hard and then it just went and if
it felt like a like a knife was being stabbed into my lower back and just like shooting pain yeah
horrible yeah it does it's horrible if you cough or sneeze it's those intra-abdominal pressures that
cause because anything that's intra-abdominal pressure will cause an extra intense pain through
the disc and onto the sciatic nerve or onto any nerve root. Same with the people, they go to the
loo and even just getting up from the toilet, if they've opened up the bowels for instance, that
will cause enough intra-abdominal pressure and any pressure change will trigger it and people
stand up from getting up from the toilet and they can feel that pain going down the leg.
So when this happened to you, Henry, what did you do?
Because then I can talk you through what you could have perhaps done.
Well, I tried to do some strategies.
So my brother, I've got a lot of brothers, but one of my brothers is a chiropractor.
So that's quite, it was a reassuring thing to have in the house.
But he was arriving later.
So I think he was, we got there at maybe two and he was arriving at 10 o'clock.
And so there was a little bit of kind of like waiting.
And I think I probably just decided to get on the beers in a kind of like, well, that'll just numb the pain.
Numb the pain.
And I wasn't sitting down.
And then my little brother said, oh, we should do some stretches.
And so we were doing some stretches.
And I think maybe I was going too much.
And then I sat down into a sofa and the sofa had very little support.
And my bottom then sunk really low into this like squishy sofa.
And I literally yowled in pain.
It made me cry.
And there's all my family around.
so it's like yeah yeah you know so they were kind of like concerned but also you know they're on
holiday so yeah kind of um you're like oh maybe maybe really isn't pain and so the next day my
dad took me to penzance hospital and um a very nice doctor um uh made uh made me uh i had to
clench on her finger which you probably know what that means and then and then she stuck some
cocodamine at me um which made everything most better yeah but then um so i yeah and i think i
I think my chiropractor brother was saying,
like, the drugs will just make you feel a bit better.
They're not going to solve the problem.
You need to come and do some physio and do some stretches
and Pilates and stuff.
And so, you know, and I think the lesson for me was that actually
up until that point, I thought I was invincible.
So I could just, you know, from no warm-up,
do two hours of chopping with an axe, you know, load of wood.
But actually, and I now, like, even just sitting here now,
Like I can feel, it's not painful, but like, you know,
I know that if I just sit in one position the whole time,
it gets sore and weak.
So I, you know, I do stretches.
I, you know, try and engage my core.
And so I guess it's that thing of when, you know,
if you've got a weakness or you know that you're prone to,
you know, that travel is not good for you,
well, you don't want to start your holiday with a kind of,
oh, then I spent the next two days in pain
because the journey to get on holiday.
Well, if you've only got a week holiday,
then that's pretty naff, isn't it?
So the things like adjusting your seat,
so that you're giving yourself is there anything else that you can do to like you know like try and
get through that journey without you know kind of completely you know ruining a few days yeah
exactly so um like say sitting away from the chair can activate your core muscles to help protect
your back and some people have heated seats so they put the heated seats on because heat can help
relax any muscle tension or spasm because that can be quite compensatory sometimes when if you
have got a weakness in your lower back you want to keep those muscles nice and relaxed yes and if
you don't have heated seats i say to patients if you know you're a back pain sufferer just put in
your bag one of those like a wheated bags or a hot water bottle yes take it with you on holiday
because there's nothing worse if someone has like sat or their back goes on holiday you know that
that's a thing to reach for because that that can also help alongside you know painkillers if you
need them yeah but the other thing you can do is prevention if you don't you know have cute episodes
of back pain and you just ache from time to time and you think and these can be warnings so people
who might be listening who think well I get a little bit of back pain but I don't have what
Henry's just described yeah actually you know they could be working towards that if they don't act
because if they're not working on you know back mobility um working on the strength then they
could leave themselves vulnerable so when you get on holiday I say to patients if you've been sitting
in a flex posture because that's what we do when we sit in the car you try and lay prone
So that's like laying on your tummy, lay over a couple of cushions or pillows and lay flat.
So you're sort of face down, almost like you're doing a bit of a skydive over a couple of pillows and just rest your back muscles as soon as you get to destination and place heat on your back.
So like a hot water bottle. And then maybe just trying to do a little bit of a stretch onto your elbow so that your lower back relaxes and you introduce a little bit of extension through the back.
if you can tolerate that and that's a nice thing to do just to reverse the position that you've been
in and then doing other little exercises if you can on holiday so whether people like to go on an
exercise bike if you've got access to a gym in a hotel or biking and cycling is always a really good
exercise to try and do to try and like loosen up and free up back and one of my patients said to me
once well I don't have a bike I don't you know I'm not going to a gym based hotel and what can I do
I've got tiny um tiny little space where I'm going there's not enough room to do anything
and I said well could you stand on a single leg so stand on one leg lift up the other
and cycle that stable like just just for that kind of motion yeah basically just get the movement and
then swap over um and I said that's actually really good because you're working on balance
as well so you're doing two things at once you kind of and you know she was going quite fast you
could do it um and she loved it so much that she came back from holiday and said I still do that
exercise now at home.
And so you can do yeah the more you can do movement our backs and our bodies like movement and the thing too a lot of people worry when this happens um and all healthcare professionals will
tell you that we we get a little bit concerned about corda equina which is where the the disc
or the disc material has actually pressed so badly on the nerve root it's um causing an issue
into the bladder um and it's causing this kind of corda equina so it's this tail tail kind of um
nerve roots that are going through into the lower back that are affected and that could mean that you
could end up um with kind of incontinence issues if the disc material is not removed
in time so it's a big concern that we we have in in health care but there's things that you can do
to just check is that why is that why the doctor made me clench on her absolutely so they will do
checks around the bottom um i was like is it is this necessary she was like yes yes yes and and
And she did say, and she was like, it's probably fine, but this is a way that we check to see whether you've got control of the muscles.
Absolutely.
Because if you've got control of the muscles, then there's not such a big concern.
If you didn't have the control, they would be thinking, okay, we might need to even operate or do something at that moment.
So they're doing it to try and reduce your chances of ever becoming incontinent for any reason.
And that could be front and bottom end.
I was since told by some of my friends that as you get older, every time you go to the doctors or hospitals, they tend to stick your finger up your bottom and just get used to it.
Okay.
Anyway, it was the first time for me.
They can tell so much from that, you see.
It's a really useful test.
And, you know, you can easily, it's a quick test.
You can easily reassure someone with as well.
So some physicians are trained to do that as well, as well as doctors.
but doctors are superb at knowing exactly what to do with that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you're always looking to see if it's affected your bladder and bowel in any way.
So if you're, you know, losing control, then you know you've really done something wrong,
especially if you've got either bilateral numbness or pins and needles in your legs
or if it's going into one leg and you've got altered bladder and bowel sensation or symptoms,
you know, you're going to the toilet, you just can't feel what you're doing.
That's not right.
But if you're, sometimes people will cough or sneeze and they're back,
all jar and that's all the muscle spasm or they might say um they've done a cough and for every
reason um they might find that their bladder is a little just a bit more sensitive so they might say
oh i just need to go more often and that's because the nerves irritated doesn't always mean um that
that's so much of a problem that needs to go to a and e so there are things that you can do to just
kind of reassure yourself but there's a quarter of quina checklist that you can look up on online
if you're ever concerned and then patients can go through and think do I have that one if you're
ever in doubt you should go and get it checked so back pain is a classic injury that we see on
holiday yeah another one is actually plantar fasciitis because people change their footwear
have you ever had that Henry I don't know what that is what did you say plantar it sounded Latin
to me well like is that something I can add to food yeah yeah yeah that's where the bottom of
your foot gets really tight.
Okay.
So a classic example is if someone's like lived in trainers and then they go into
flip-flops or change footwear, or they, they go and run on concrete or on sand or
something where the bottom of the foot's going to tighten up or they do a lot of
walking and perhaps they never did any walking and they think, why, why is my foot hurting?
Um, or ladies, if they wear a lot of, um, high heels and they get very tight through
their back of their calf muscles, um, and that can leave them a little bit prone to it as well.
Yeah, you can have plant fasciitis and things like that, that people come back with shoulder problems because they've lifted or carried bags and done a sport that they thought, why not give that a go while we're on holiday?
We can see multiple musculoskeletal injuries when they do go away.
So it's almost, because I guess when you go on holiday, you're not thinking about getting injured.
Well, I certainly don't think about getting injured.
but uh but i guess you can kind of is the idea you know if you know you're going to go from
trainers to flip-flops do you need to kind of like train yourself a few weeks before and just
start wearing the flip front of the house for a bit just to kind of acclimatize or is there like
or is that too basic i don't know you could no absolutely it doesn't need to be complicated at
all henry that's exactly exactly it like you could wear your flip-flops like let's say half
an hour a day um and build it up and just get used to it if you're going to do long walks um
you know you're always better with a trainer or a shoe that you can tie up quite nicely rather than
the flip box between on obviously the weather and the temperature but yeah just kind of
climatizing yourself to to a new footwear it's when people jump footwear that we sometimes see
a big difference um and yeah and if they've taken a sport up or something like that skiing for
example they might go off and go skiing and obviously those those kind of sports are a little
unpredictable as to whether someone's going to have an injury but sometimes that treats isn't
yeah it's just trying to be mindful of what you what you could do and having that little hot water
bottle packed is a good one but the plane as well so if people are going on the airplane
you're trying to see don't you the air hostesses going through with their kind of sheet of
safety instructions and occasionally on there it will tell you to do you know your heel raises
where you kind of pump ankles and was that because i remember my parents talking about when i used to
go on holiday with them i think someone that they knew died of deep vein thrombosis and whether it
was someone it was just in the news but i think it was like afterwards it happened in the hotel
or something a few hours later so i remember my parents kind of bought these socks that like were
very tight and then they'd be there kind of like pumping their legs what are you doing and but but
now as a kind of adult when i go on a plane i'm like oh maybe i should be pumping those legs don't
want to don't want to die when i uh get to get the destination yeah i guess for me i just try and
like you know if you're on a long flight you know to get up and walk around a bit and just you know
even if it's go to the loo even if you don't need the loo just i don't know is that is that kind of
sensible i mean i do it probably more just because i get a bit bored and you know i need to kind of
stretch out a little bit but um yeah no you should the more you can so doing the ankle pumps is fine
in your chair and you can do things like lift up one leg and pop it down lift up the other leg
and pop it down squeeze your bottom it's going to act as a pump as well but if you can stand up
you're going to get even more benefit and people feel silly don't they they go i don't want to do
that everyone's going to look at me and i'm like great you could be an example of how to do exercise
on the plane yeah yeah and i often stand up and i don't really care and i sort of stand in the
middle and i'm sort of stretching out because absolutely you don't want to get dehydrated on
an aeroplane because that's going to thicken your blood and that's going to make you more at risk if
you're a bit vulnerable for these things to happen. But also the movement and working through the calf
muscle is a good way because it's our pump system to help blood flow back to the heart. So you want
to keep those calf muscles nice and healthy. And we know actually that the stronger and the more
calf muscle we have is actually a good representation of our health. And even by doing your calf pumping
or even just a normal calf stretch.
And then you could do a second one.
So where you do a classic calf stretch
where you pop one leg in front of the other
and you hold the stretch at the back of your ankle.
If you bend the knee as well,
if you bend that back knee,
you can get an extra stretch,
which is your soleus muscle.
And you can stretch that too.
And that's another easy one that you can do.
People don't really know you're doing it
because you're standing like a mile.
You could be pretending to lean on someone's chair,
just having a chat
and actually you stretch in the back of your leg if you and why why is this why is that particularly
important on a plane is it is it because of your blood thickening yeah so we just want to is it the
sitting still or is it it's the sitting still it's the pressure and you want to kind of yeah so you're
you're using your calf muscle as well as your heart to help pump things around the body so you
want to kind of use it i've never thought about it yet yeah and if you drink a lot like if you're
drinking alcohol or you're dehydrating yourself you're going to have thicker blood and that's
that's not so good if um you know obviously people go on holiday oh they're on the plane
i'll have a drink but if you if you have to have alcohol have water with it or if you can try and
delay when you're having your alcohol until you're off the plane down those dirty martinis
i think i once went to asia with my brother and i had eight and i was quite sick anyway that was
wasn't wasn't my finest spot anyway i didn't have the kids with me anyway i got a bit a little bit
um overexcited we we see this um it's interesting it's reminding me of a case i'll never forget um
somebody went on holiday to go and run like an ultra marathon or a marathon and um and they said
oh you know i was just so excited to be on holiday and they'd obviously drunk um a little bit of
alcohol or maybe a lot uh just before and you can really dehydrate your your body in multiple ways
but people don't think about the effect on their tendons.
So if you're running, that's not great.
So if you're drinking a lot, then you want to compete.
Guys classically can sometimes do this as well as ladies,
but normally I have seen it more in my male patients.
And they think, oh, it's okay because it was the day before or the two days before.
But actually our tendon cells are turning over
and they can be a bit sluggish as we get older.
So if you're affecting the kind of quality of how your tendon cells
are regenerating
and replacing themselves
you can leave yourself
prone to injuries
and tendinopathies
and things like that
so if you're thinking
of going on holiday
and running
like you need to
watch like actually
maybe I shouldn't
drink so much
because I could
you're more at risk
of rupturing
something as well
if that's the case
so you have to
yeah you have to
kind of weigh up
what you're doing
if you can
and just trying to make
sort of sensible decisions
with that
or at least do the marathon
then have you drink afterwards
yeah
go on the return flight
yeah
That's it. Once you've had all your nutrition and backed everything up in your recovery, maybe do it then.
But just before is going to leave you a bit risk of picking up those injuries as well.
So, yeah, there's quite a bit.
Lots of holiday stories that people do come back with and they say.
The other thing is because you're moving or going to somebody else's house, maybe you're not going abroad.
Or if you are abroad, you know, the bed, somebody else's bed is another classic.
It's never the same, is it?
Never the same.
it's always too hard too firm too hot too cold yeah that that's the bit i my my wife and i always
say normally about a day before i can't wait to sleep in my own bed again yeah and it's kind of
like you're like oh man i'm so boringly middle-aged i'm excited about getting home to sleep in my own
bed but maybe just because you get used to it and the the one thing i always worry is quite often
particularly if you're going on a hot holiday often the the village or the the house whatever
they quite often have stone floors but like shiny tiles and and i'm always like you know you've had
a few drinks you you may be wet from the pool or like you're wearing flip-flops that are slight
and i always kind of think like you know if ever i fall over or like bang myself you know it's
normally kind of like traversing through a house or an apartment that's maybe either wet or i'm wet
and then the floor is not carpet you know it's kind of because you know you're in a hotter country
and um yeah i definitely see the kids you know stacking it a load more so i so i can imagine
yeah like getting injured in other houses is probably quite common yeah so you like bambi
on ice going yeah yeah totally dance first and then you go a cropper don't you um and i'll i'll
never forget um a dear patient of mine um you know she fell really badly on on exactly that
this is either in spain or italy or somewhere with these beautiful marble floors in the in the hotel
room um and she slipped and she misplaced because they had a step down into the bathroom I believe
um and she stepped down and completely went a cropper and really hurt her hip and you know
people can they can really fall and hurt themselves on these types of floors and you can pick up
fractures and people worry um I get a lot of my friends um call me up or people that know me
and they'll go Hayley I'm really worried I've broken something um and that's a common concern
And when you have really badly hurt yourself.
But there are like little things you can just double check.
Because if you can, if you're sort of in a lot of pain initially and you've got swelling and bruising and you might have a little bit of bleeding where some ligaments have torn maybe a little bit or muscles have torn.
And you'll get that bleeding come to the surface of the skin and it looks horrendous.
And people go, oh, it's gone this funny colour and I'm not quite sure what I've done.
but generally a general rule if it's lower limb if you can take a couple of steps like two or three
steps and you're fine and that's not agony then you can pretty much be fairly confident that you
haven't broken it yeah yeah yeah um especially a foot or metatarsal or something like that but um
but if you if you're struggling to weight bear that is a concern for us as as physios but if you
if you slowly getting better it not maybe not a speedy speedy recovery but yeah you getting slowly better each time Whereas if you just you know it been like it for a week
and you've been on holiday,
you just cannot stand and wait there.
That's a little bit of a concern for us.
Yes, yes.
Yeah.
I hope you don't break my hip.
I'll try not to.
I'll try not.
Yeah.
Don't break your hip.
That's probably future decades down the line.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But saying that, no one really knows.
We're going to talk about bone density in another podcast at another time.
But, you know, that's a silent thing that's happening without us even knowing.
So, yeah, you don't always have to be necessarily classified as old before these things happen.
Back pain is prevalent, as you said, Henry, kind of in that kind of 35 to 55-year-old age group,
because that's when we're more likely to see disc pathology.
but as you get older the discs tend to dry out a little bit more so that's good news from about
but then maybe bone density starts to yeah yeah yeah i think the bone density one is
super interesting i'd love to dive into that maybe maybe another time um uh because it's yeah it's uh
i think diet can definitely there's this there's things that you can you can do to you know maybe
help improve that or give yourself a fighting chance yeah exactly so when you're on holiday
Henry do you find does your does your family say to you Sophie's like self-catering do you
rustle up anything tasty for breakfast what would you make from that always well I think
I think the thing for me so we pretty much if we're staying somewhere we'll almost always go
self-catering just because I like cooking and yeah you know that for me that's it's a joy like I
don't need an all-inclusive I'm quite happy quite happy cooking and I think that you know what I try
and do is to you know if if you're going to a country you know say you've gone to France or
gone to Greece try and cook French food or Greek food you know one is that it's going to be more
you know it's nice to kind of embed yourself into the local culture you know it's going to make the
holiday feel more rewarding you know like you don't you know eating pizza in France it's fine
but it's like you know do that when you're in Italy but also when it comes to actually shopping
you're going to you know often the supermarkets are very different to you know the UK ones and
they might not have the range but actually you know if you're cooking the local cuisine you're
often they'll be cheaper and, you know, hopefully of a better quality
because they're maybe not importing it, you know.
So if you're on a Greek island, I'm just thinking, you know,
trying to cook a Thai stir fry is probably going to be quite tricky,
but actually cooking a nice, you know, making a nice Greek salad
or some terramasolata or something, you know, a nice Greek stew
is going to be simpler because they're going to be using those ingredients.
But often, you know, the kitchen can quite often be quite limited,
particularly you know whether you're in an airbnb you might just have a basic pan or like a simple
oven you know you're not going to have a you know a full kitchen at your disposal so i think you you
know it's kind of um for me i would always try and think about well what can i do as like a kind of
one pan wonder kind of thing as much as i want to spend you know cook some nice food i actually you
know the kids will want to be playing in the pool i'll be wanting to you know read that book that
i've been putting off all year you know there's other things i want to do and relax it i don't
want to spend two hours cooking so yeah so like a kind of a one pan dish is quite a good one so
i don't know say you're in in um in in france for it for example you could you know make a kind of
a simple cassoulet or something so you know buy some nice beans you know they they have really
good uh jarred beans uh get some duck or some chicken you know um and and then do it as a kind
of a tray bake you know get some nice spices in there and um and uh and make something that you
can just pop in the oven and then just forget about it i'm also when i'm on holiday i like
also like being outside so i'll always check out to see if there's a barbecue you know because
quite often you know if you're in a in a villa or or somewhere with a bit of an outdoor space
quite often there's a an outdoor barbecue and um and that's just you know for me it's a nice way to
um to cook your dinner is you know nice fresh salads you know get some nice bread you know
lots of nice olive oils and stuff but then buy some meat or some fish or some local sausages
that you can then grill up and um you know you get some really nice tasty stuff and also you know
if you're taking snaps and it's you know it feels kind of communal i think it's a nice thing so you
don't need to go crazy but just yeah uh try and cook like a local that's it and you meant you
mentioned like a one pan where you you add um beans and chicken and things you said so yeah
when you do beans do you like rinse them and things henry or do you pre-cook them or soak
them or do you just whack them in probably if i was on holiday i just buy i i would i would look
for a good quality either whether it's like a jarred one or uh so in i'm thinking even in
france i'm gonna make like a cassoulet kind of thing yeah i'd buy some uh decent beans you know
um the flagellet ones are really good they're like the the other haricot ones yeah you know
butter beans or something now i'd always just taste them like and if the outside sauce tastes
quite nice because quite often it's seasoned then great if it just tastes like briny water then maybe
i'd give it a rinse kind of vibe as you go because you might be buying a brand that you've got yeah
taste it first like it's not going to kill you you know it's like you know and actually like
sometimes it's delicious you're like yeah great that's that's almost like a stock you know and
then you know if if you've got a tray um uh um that's not too flimsy you can you know start by
you know whether it's uh heating up your lardons you know getting a bit of fat out and then and
the onions and your garlic get them cooking down a bit then you can add your chicken and your beans
and you know your sausage or your duck or whatever whatever you've got you know any other little
veggies you want to add into it um and then yeah if there's some foil you can put some on or just a
a cup of water and then just you know stick it in the oven and that can just tick over for um
you know an hour to two hours and just you know slowly bubble all the flavors kind of melt together
and i'd probably like if you're doing something i'd probably make enough if there's a fridge make
it off for two days you know because then it might be the next day you you you're doing a trip or
something and you know you're going to be out and you don't want to be rushing back of like oh it's
you know it's going to be six o'clock the kids are going to be starving and now now i've got to
cook dinner and you know yeah and actually i really just want to have two or three glasses of
rosé and um not worry about it so you can kind of be a bit you know um and also it'll taste nicer
the next day yeah and do your kids eat the beans do they are they good at eating all the healthy
beans do they go i think so they go they go in phases they go in phases they definitely yeah
they're little bits of it they're pretty good they're pretty good but we you know we have good
days and bad days i mean they would love it if we just did burgers and pizza every day that would
be absolutely fine with that but but also but then like try and get them involved with it as well you
know kind of they can i mean they're not probably going to cook all of it but you know they can
i don't know i think you're right i think they have to do the shopping just yeah yeah totally
and i think for me it's about normalizing it so like food shouldn't be this kind of i don't know
like it should just it should just be like part of life and um and uh i'm really so we're going
on late and there's someone we're going to to greece which i haven't been to for 10 years i'm
very excited probably going to be a bit bored of greek salad by the end of it but actually you know
i'm just really looking forward to like you know you know beautiful tomatoes lovely you know like
we'll definitely buy a whole watermelon and my daughter will probably like you like you don't
see the watermelons in the supermarket and they're like rubbish these ones are like you know they're
like 10 kilos or so um and they'll probably be i don't know under 10 euros so it's a um you know
good value bit of fruit and she'll probably eat that for breakfast and lunch and then possibly
dinner if she can and um and it's just delicious you know super hydrating you know really really
flavorful best eaten at the beach then you can just like wash yourself off in the sea afterwards
because they're quite juicy and messy yeah but yeah i mean that's yeah whereas like my grandparents
used to go on holiday and they used to take food with them because they didn't trust the local
cuisine you know so so they used to pack like um like a battenberg and some you know some fruit
cake and take their own tea bags just in case the local food wasn't wasn't quite right and uh
maybe that was a bygone generational thing you know um whereas for for us or for me particular
you know going going to a new country obviously you've got to get through the journey and not end
up with a really bad back you know um don't fall over and break your hip but if you've got through
that then actually it's about you know buying the local cuisine and you know and um and most places
you've got the internet so you could just google like local recipe you know what what what do they
eat in croatia i don't know like find out and they'd be like great well let's let's have a go
at making that you know don't um i think yeah i never thought to google the recipe for the
planet like for the country that you're actually in yeah yeah yeah yeah whereas you kind of yeah
you might go i fancy that or fancy a salad and um yeah so have you got any good dips to create for
especially the greek salads because they're lovely aren't they with the feta cheese and
and they're really good i mean they're so healthy the mediterranean diet is fantastic for your
health so i do you make i mean i mean satsiki is the easiest because obviously it's just you know
cucumbers yogurt that you can have for breakfast and then also you can make it into a nice dip
obviously plenty of garlic bit of bit of olive oil and some mint that's a really easy one
probably something like terramasalata which is the famous one which is smoked cods row
is uh maybe a bit ambitious for an airbnb but you know if if you find yourself in a you know
a very fancy uh fancy kitchen that's got a blender and and you can find some smoked cods row then
terramasalata is one of the best dips but probably you could you you probably be able to buy it
pre-made but um but then often the pre-made ones you know if you then check the ingredients you
You know, they're often not made with olive oil.
They'll be made with, you know, vegetable oil.
They, you know, they'll have loads of preservatives in to, you know, stop them going off.
And so, yeah, that is the kicker, isn't it?
Yeah.
So how do you make that second dip that you mentioned?
Teramyslata.
So it's smoked cod's row.
So it's kind of like this dried, it's the eggs essentially.
And then they're cured and dried and smoked.
And then you peel off this kind of membrane.
And inside it's like, it's almost like tiny caviar.
and it's got this kind of slightly orangey pinky look to it and then you you put it into a blender
with like a firm bread like say sourdough or like a country bread that's stale and then soaked in
water like a salty water and then you rinse it out squeeze out and you put that in the blender
and then you put like garlic salt lots of lemon juice and then you blend it and you emulsify it
with olive oil and um so you're basically making like a mayonnaise that's that's thickened with
well it's thickened with the olive oil but it's kind of the emulsifier rather than egg yolks it's
the taramish it's the smoked cod's row and the breadcrumbs and then you people put you can put
raw onion in and you can flex on it and add whatever you like but that in itself is is the
kind of the basic recipe but it's very hard to make a very small quantity so you know if you
made it you'd probably make like a kilo and then you're like oh that's a lot of dip so um it's i
probably won't make it on this greek holiday i'm going on because i don't think i don't think i'll
be a blender at the airbnb uh satsuki is definitely achievable so we'll make some of that
well like tap tapenade is another great one you know local olives i'm surprised you haven't got
your own little travel kit yeah yeah yeah if i actually a travel hack if i'm in the uk so we
went we went to wales a few weeks ago and we were in a airbnb that was very nice but i would i took
my knives and a few kitchen implements because for me you know if you've got like a blood knife and
it's just it's it's too frustrating whereas i know i've got some nice chef knives at home that
i can take with me it's you know it's probably the way that you you probably travel with your
i don't know your yoga mat and i don't know like what i've rollerball things you know it's like
it's tools of the trade you know i am yeah yeah but obviously it's a little different putting
chef knives on a ryanair flight i was i was gonna say i was a bit concerned about you yeah yeah so i
yeah so i won't i won't take them to greece i'll just have to suffer but it's fine
just use the very blunt one in there the hotel rewarrant yeah airbnb yes frustrating but you just
yeah yeah you just have to embrace it i think in lower you know lower your expectations of what
you can do but just you know i think yeah again it's just that try and buy local ingredients that
look great that the locals are eating because they're going to be in season they're going to
be they're going to be cheaper you know and also you know it's it's good to embrace other people's
culture when they come yeah oh fantastic i think that's inspired everybody to to give it a go it's
definitely inspired me to look up those recipes now just like like actually thinking of just
associating it with the country yeah so um well hopefully everyone might give that a go um and
they might think about setting up their car before they travel definitely i'm gonna do that i love
that little elbow trick that is a that is a great little hack i'm definitely gonna try that yeah
absolutely so um yeah well i'll see you next time on the next podcast then henry brilliant thank you