What kind of advice can you give on long airplane rides and older people with health conditions?

Like diabetes and cholesterol problems and the person may not want to get up and walk around a bit. Also this person is older and not accustomed to airplane rides.


Even if I asked him to go by car instead I don't think he'd be able to (time constraint for something important).What kind of advice can you give on long airplane rides and older people with health conditions?
Well cholesterol problems are not something in and of themselves to put people into acute problems. Its a transport mechanism of the heart the LDL particles can deposit in the linings of the endothelium of the arteries causing blockages. these can sometimes cause heart attacks. And just by chance, they happen all the time regardless, but they can happen on a plane. So the usual advice for recognizing a heart attack applies. Which, they are virtually unpredictable. By the way. LDL bad while the HDL the good cholesterol is a transport mechanism to take it back to the liver to be taken care of.


So, as stated. Cholesterol is a long term risk factor as it takes in most cases decades to cause problems. But if the person ignored it for decades well then..





As far as sitting too long and getting a deep vein thrombosis, getting up and walking to the bathroom will stimulate the calve muscle pump to push blood and move any stagnant blood that may pool into a clot.


The clots do happen and do kill people. I have seen them kill people right in front of me. But usually they have a clotting factor issue like Leiden Factor V or other. Or they just recently had surgery and the body is trying to heal after the surgery and the blood is easily coagulable.





The diabetes should not be affected by the flight, nor really any of these issues. He should follow his usual precautionary measures. Have a good time, relax and walk every couple of hours to the bathroom and stretch to prevent rare problems. The flight crew has an emergency kit for any medical emergency and what happens is if someone has a problem, they move them to the crew area and page any travelling medical personel on board.%26gt; I know, I've gotten a couple of free flights volunteering to help out. And when they land, they are the first ones off and are greeted by emergency workers with more advanced equipment.


My overall advice is that you relax. You cant undo years and years of bad cholesterol and for 80% of the population, bad cholesterol really doesnt mean anything. Just about 20% causes vascular disease. He is safer actually on the plane with a crash kit and travelling medical professionals who always respond when called. (hell, it breaks up the monotany of the flight). So really that is much safer than driving and breaking down in a cornfield. I mean you are basically being lifeflighted when you have something go wrong in an airplane.


Smile, relax, its safer to have him fly.





Hope that helps


James PWhat kind of advice can you give on long airplane rides and older people with health conditions?
Let him know that it's very important to stretch/move his legs a few times during the plane ride. It's important because when the person is immobile for a long time, blood gets pooled in the legs and could result in DVP (deep vein thrombosis). If that thrombus (a blood clot) breaks off and travels through the body, it could get loged in the lungs (most common place) and lead to a pulmonary embouls (it would block the passage of blood to whatever area of the lung it gets lodged in and it could be dangerous). So it's very important to stretch the legs especially at his age, if it's hard for him to move around, he can still stretch his legs in his seat. They should have pamphlets for that on the net or in the airplane.


I'm going to assume if he is diabetic he knows how to manage it, and knows that it's important for him to keep his insulin close by, and his blood sugar monitor too. Get him to periodically check his blood sugar, if it's too low, he should eat/drink something sweet, and if it's too high, he should use his insulin.


As far as cholesterol is concerned, that's more of a long term management, and there really isn't anything you can do to manage it at the moment, like you can withlow or high blood sugar.


Hope this helps :)... keep him moving. (also you can look into buying a set of special compression stockings that help circulate blood while the person is immobile for a long time!)