Health Conditions Related to Air Travel and Destination Country

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Health disorders occurred mostly during long trips of 1-4 hours, and the main health problems during plane travel were earaches, headaches, and flatulence. Fear of flying occurred in nearly in a third of the subjects on both short- and long-distance flights. It manifested in episodes of tachycardia and pre-travel insomnia. To cope with these situations, female passengers preferred to listen to music, and male passengers preferred to consume alcohol. In total, 59 different countries were visited, and the most frequent destinations were southern countries: Turkey, Spain, and Italy. Diarrhea, sunburn, severe headaches, fevers and flu-like symptoms were the main health problems in the destination countries. These problems were mostly caused by bad hygiene, consumption of local food, not applying sunblock creams and the change of the environment. The major share of information about the potential dangers of a trip was received from the Internet or from friends.