We pack suncream, plug adaptors and painkillers for a holiday abroad. Yet the one thing we never prepare for our trip is the one thing most likely to ruin it – our gut.
Nothing derails a relaxing break faster than a stomach upset.
Your risk of picking up travellers’ tummy – normally transmitted via food and drink contaminated with bugs – varies according to where you go: around 40 per cent of visitors to Asia, Africa or Latin America, develop diarrhoea.
Even those going to less exotic locations may experience it.
But taking action, ideally a week or two before you go, can help prevent you being one of those statistics. The key is to boost the variety of microbes living in your gut (the gut microbiome). The more varied that community is, the better it is at keeping invading bugs out.
