Holistic health experts remind holiday makers that the holiday season is a time of stress, lack of sleep, reduced physical activity and numerous indulgent holiday foods.

Personal Health Survival Strategies

The following are the top personal health survival strategies for the 2011 holiday season:

1. To avoid big weight gain, focus on maintaining a healthy weight not excessive weight loss. Starting a new diet on January 1st is one option, but it’s not the best option. Focus on maintaining a normal, healthy weight all year long so you don’t have to go through drastic measures in the new year.
2. Enjoy the foods you like – in moderation. No single meal and no single type of food will make you instantly overweight – it’s the accumulation of to many calories too often that does it. Denying yourself your favorite foods is not way to effect a health eating pattern. So, enjoy the foods you like in smaller portions. Savor them slowly and you’ll not only get more out of the enjoyment, you’ll enjoy consuming less.
3. Keep moving through the holidays. With the colder weather, traveling to visit friends and family, and the huge number of commitments, it can be hard to keep your exercise schedule on track. Find ways to sneak in exercise. Craving a long talk with your mother or son? Lace up your shoes, bundle up, and take it outside. You’ll find that the movement will help you focus and enjoy the time with your favorite person and you’ll get a calorie burn besides!
4. Implement smart drinking strategies in addition to smart eating strategies. The human body can’t store alcohol until it has metabolized it. That means your before dinner drink gets metabolized first, then the food you eat. If the body has all the calories it needs right now, the food gets stored as fat. Enjoying a light cocktail with dinner helps the body get the nutrients it needs from the food first. Alternating each drink with two glasses of water helps your liver de-toxify too.

Travel Survival Strategies

Crowded airplanes, lack of service, weather delays, and tired, angry people all contribute to needing a holiday travel survival strategy. The following are the top holiday travel tips for 2011:

1. Make copies of your travel documents and credit cards. If you are robbed or lose your wallet, passport, and other travel documents, you can rely on the copies to help you replace them. Keep one copy in your checked or carry-on luggage and leave one copy with friends or family back home (you can call them if your copy is also stolen).
2. Get there early – really early. Airports can be dull and most people avoid them until they really have to be there, but arriving early gives you the lead time you may just need when the security line gets blocked by someone who hasn’t kept up on the current TSA holiday travel tips.
3. Be nice – even when it’s hard. Your niceness in a sticky, tense situation can have a calming effect on those who are standing by and potentially diffuse the situation.
4. Carry your bag on board – or even better, ship it ahead! FedEx and UPS have decent tracking systems that can help you track the progress of your bag. They’ll even insure it (the airlines won’t). So send everything you can ahead and pack light. You’ll save on airline baggage fees, hassle, and worry.
5. Load up your electronics with plenty of entertainment. This will help tide you over when there are travel delays.
6. Remember where you parked the car. This is especially true during the holidays when you may be sleepy or distracted when you park, then have trouble finding it when you return some days or weeks later. See our tips for finding your parked car.

Of course, having the right travel insurance can help you travel safely without incurring a big financial loss too. See what travel insurance covers and what it doesn’t; then, read our tips for saving money on your travel insurance plan.

All those generic articles out on the Internet describing the ‘essential coverage necessary in every travel insurance plan’ are just plain junk. We cannot stress this enough: every traveler has different needs, every trip has different risks, and there are times when travel insurance is overkill and unnecessary.

At Travel Insurance Review, we’re here to explain travel insurance to consumers. It’s not our intent to push travel insurance, but to help consumers determine their risks and get the coverage they need. No traveler wants to spend more than they have to on stuff like travel insurance and we don’t want you to have coverage that’s unnecessary.

That being said, there is no such thing as ‘essential coverage for every travel insurance plan’. It’s simply not true. In fact, we’ve written a whole page listing when travel insurance is just not necessary.

A few examples:

• If you’re traveling inside the U.S., have adequate medical coverage, and a little money in the bank for out-of-network medical care, then you may not need travel medical coverage.
• If you have plenty of time on your trip and no hard schedule in mind, you can better accommodate travel delays. You may not be happy about it, but if you’ve got friends in town, you won’t be out a great deal of money and you could even have some unexpected fun with the delay.
• If you plan to carry your bag, stow it on the plane yourself, and not leave it alone, you probably don’t need baggage coverage – especially if you can afford to purchase what you need when you arrive.

Travel insurance is relatively cheap insurance against truly awful travel scenarios that can cost you a great deal of money like these:

• Your child, wife, brother, or father is hospitalized and you want to cancel your trip to be there for them.
• A ruthless hurricane destroys the resort where you planned to stay.
• Your boss cancels your leave and you are facing the loss of thousands of dollars in non refundable travel payments.
• You are in a horrific bus crash and need medical care you can’t afford without insurance.
• Your checked luggage goes to Spain but you’re headed to Hawaii with nothing but a credit card in your pocket.
• Some jerk breaks into your car and steals the briefcase containing your passport before an overseas trip.
• You have a heart attack on a cruise and need to be medically evacuated to a qualified hospital.

So, please stop listening to the scare tactics, take a little time to determine the risks you’re facing on your trip, and compare travel insurance plans, coverage, and price with our travel insurance comparison tool. You’ll have just what you need without spending a lot of extra money.

A recent online survey conducted by eHealthInsurance and PlanPrescriber.com in November, 2011 reveals that more Americans are concerned about overseas travel than they have been in previous years.

According to the report, nearly 1/3 of respondents indicated they did not know if their existing health insurance plan would cover their medical expenses if they became ill or got injured while traveling outside their home country. A recent horrific story of one 79-year-old traveler injured in Mexico proves the need for travel insurance.

We know travelers are becoming increasingly aware of their liability and risks when they travel, and travel insurance can provide the coverage you need for peace of mind and financial security when you travel.

Simply focusing on the medical and evacuation needs of travelers (i.e., ignoring baggage delays, volcano eruptions, flight cancellations, etc.), here are the facts:

1. Your home health insurance coverage does not usually extend to care received outside the network and not outside the country (although some plans will allow you to submit claims to be considered and at times paid).
2. Medicare and Medicaid do not extend to care received while you are outside the country.
3. Medical care outside the country is often pre-paid, meaning the traveler must pay up front to receive care.
4. The cost to transport an injured or ill traveler out of a country where they can receive quality health care can be very high (as much as $100,000 or more).
5. The cost to transport the remains of a traveler who has died to their home country is also high (as high as $40,000 or more) and the effort can require a great deal of inter-country negotiations and regulations.
6. Traveling in a foreign country, where you don’t understand the local language, can mean additional difficulty.

The right travel insurance plan can:

• Arrange for pre-payments to the hospital where the traveler has been transported.
• Coordinate and pay for a traveler’s evacuation out of the foreign country back home or to a country with better medical facilities.
• Coordinate and pay for the return of a traveler’s remains.
• Deliver translation services and monitor communication between the medical staff in one country with the traveler’s friends and family back home.
• Return children who are traveling with the injured or ill traveler back home – with a caregiver, if necessary.
• Transport a friend or family member to the injured or ill traveler so they have someone they know nearby.

Travel insurance plans are relatively inexpensive when you look at the financial loss you could incur on vacation. Many plans are available for as little as $40-$60 depending on the coverage, your age, and destination. See our travel insurance comparison tool and enter a few trip details to get the prices. Be sure to carefully review your plan so you understand the coverage too.

The combined disaster of an earthquake in Northern Japan, followed soon after by a devastating Tsunami and a nuclear disaster, caused great personal suffering for many Japanese people. The compounding after effect, however, has been severe losses in tourism dollars resulting in additional financial losses.

We’ve written before about the long-term effects on tourism after a natural disaster, but one Swiss man has decided to take matters in his own hands and prove to foreigners that it’s safe to travel in Japan.

Thomas Koehler, a former travel agent from Switzerland, is walking across Japan to encourage people to visit the country, and he’s blogging as he goes. You can review his blog (not yet available in English translation) and read more about his story (in English). His trip is self-funded and he’s been traveling about 20-30 KM per day.

Related posts

• Radiation fears are not covered without ‘cancel for any reason’
• Travel insurance companies explain post-earthquake coverage for Japan
• Headed to Japan to aid relief efforts?

In a disturbing and continuing upward trend, travelers are being surprised by a number of hidden fees just when we’ve gotten used to hauling our limited luggage through security to avoid baggage fees and carrying our own blankets, meals, and pillows thanks to the fees charged by airlines.

These days, travelers have to be aware of hidden fees imposed by just about everyone, and they can really add up quickly!

When you stay at a hotel

Hotels have begun imposing resort fees, which are extra per-day charges tacked onto your hotel bill. Unfortunately, this is another example of simply gouging customers because most travelers have no idea what services they are getting (if any) for these extra fees and hotels aren’t required to pre-disclose them. Plus, the traveler pays taxes on the fees on top of everything else.

When you rent a car

Rental car companies may not tell you about airport fees, which can be $10, $15, or more per day. You won’t be aware of these fees unless you do some research because they’re charged to your card when you return the car and not before.

When you see a game

Ticketing fees and convenience fees are being added to sporting events, as well as a new fee called a delivery fee, which is added to your charge to print the ticket or send it in an e-mail.

When you find a great airfare

Some time ago, we wrote about online airfare purchase websites catching travelers by surprise by automatically adding travel insurance to their purchase, and apparently passenger outcry has prompted at least one company, Travelocity, to implement opt-out so that the checkbox is not already clicked when you make your purchase. This change won’t occur until January 2012, however, so be cautious when making travel supplier purchases until that time.

Note: here at Travel Insurance Review, we encourage you to purchase your travel insurance from an independent, third-party because you have greater control over your coverage, you can add necessary options, and you can compare plans to select the best price.