Always Carry Your Stomach Medicine With You When You Travel
We still don’t know how we got sick in Tokyo. But when the four Lifehacker employees went there together this month, the three of us found different bugs at different points. For me this meant an upset stomach and diarrhea, which made me go to bed every night at 6 o’clock and made good nutrition impossible. I am very lucky with the abundance of public toilets in Tokyo. Much worse luck was when I tried to buy stomach medicine.
I’ll tell you this story, but first take some stomach medicine – pepto-bismol, antacid, whatever covers up your most common travel ailment. Or any other medication you often need when traveling, if it is more difficult than Tylenol. Put a dose in your suitcase for a few days. They will hold out for a while. And if you are traveling somewhere with unfamiliar language and / or medicines, you will need them. If you’re unsure, read on.
Even with the help of Google Translate and a few English speaking clerks at the pharmacy, I had a hard time finding the right stomach medicine in Tokyo. The first drug I bought was … a hangover cure, I guess? He has a belly on the box, that’s all I knew. I was in one of the many convenience stores in downtown Tokyo, where there is usually only one medication stall. (Pharmacies and supermarkets have many more options, but they are less common.)
I was too embarrassed to explain to the clerk exactly what I needed to get my body to stop doing. I share such personal details in public blog posts. But she explained that I want to wash it down with water. She didn’t mention that it was powder. I poured the dose into a water bottle and took a sip. It might work, but I wanted something more robust.
I googled “Japanese Stomach Cure” and got the article ” 7 Drugs to Buy in Japanese Pharmacies .” Number 2, Seirogan, is a “quick cold cure.” Seirogan is a medicine for offensive stomach and diarrhea that became popular during the Russo-Japanese War, and its name originally means “Tablet of the Conquest of Russia.” (The brand later changed its meaning to mean “effective dewdrops.”) All television commercials use the same war bugle call.
It was a fun little cultural experience, but almost did more harm as I misunderstood the dosage directions due to the Google Translate camera fog. I took the smelly pill three times a day before realizing that the dose could only be taken every four hours.
So I googled again and found Stoppa, a more familiar, albeit less history-rich solution. This time I read the instructions in English : like Seirogan, they go to Stoppa every few hours. Stoppa took me home after a 12-hour flight, but only with a toilet break about once an hour. The guy in the aisle seat was very patient with me.
I would love to have the classic Pepto-Bismol chewable tablets, or at least a fake Walgreens. Whether it’s because they are less long lasting, or because the FDA doesn’t care, you can take these pills every hour. I know what to do with them; my body knows what to do. Wish I had a handful to grab a bite to eat.
The reason I say you should pack them now is so that you won’t forget to pack them for your next trip. You will think through the things that you expect to do on your trip, like walking in the snow or swimming, or dressing up for business meetings. You won’t think through all the little things. “Ah, everything I can buy at the corner store,” you say. And that’s true of sunscreen, toothpaste, and wide-brimmed hats. But medicine is more complicated, and in medicine it is important when you are wrong. If I remembered that I always have an upset stomach when traveling – if I had collected the necessary medications ahead of time – I could have a lot more fun in Tokyo.