Pack these top tools to continue your intentional anticancer lifestyle while away from home.
Whether you are traveling by motor vehicle, bus, or airplane, you can bring things with you to help ease your needs while on the trip and to help you continue in your healing journey.
Within the first year of my cancer diagnosis, I went on at least 8 different trips that included driving in cars, riding and sleeping in tour buses, and flying on commercial airlines. Now, years later, I have been on more trips than I can even remember while living with cancer. Some of the trips have been for cancer procedures, therapies, and doctor’s appointments, other trips have been to tag along with my handsome husband in his adventures on tour, while other trips have been to see family or go on a short vacation.
All of the trips have taken effort on my part, and often times with help from my husband and the generosity of our friends. I am sharing that because while showing these tools, I want to express my sincerity in that traveling while doing an anticancer lifestyle and healing cancer is hard work but it IS doable!
Want to see some of these tools in action? Check out the video here!
A Cancer Thriver’s Top 5 Tools for Travel
- Silicone Stasher Bags
Stasher bags are made of platinum-grade silicone, the highest grade of silicone. These are reusable, food-safe, human-safe, BPA free, phthalate free bags that can be used for years. These bags are non-toxic and can be heated without risk of chemicals leaching into our food or whatever contents we may have in them.
I use the Stasher bags in my purse, carry-on, and checked bags to hold whatever snacks or toiletries would typically go in a plastic bag. I often make my “Jenny approved” muffins and freeze them in a couple of these Stasher bags then pop the frozen bags in my carry-on when we are leaving the house. The bags work well in a refrigerator or freezer. In other words, these reusable silicone bags have a variety of uses in a variety of places and are totally worth it!
2. Organic Plant based Protein Powder Packets
These protein powder packets can be stirred into oatmeal, made into smoothies, and give your nutrition a quick boost while traveling.
I use this packets of plant based protein powder because they are full of the helpful healing and anticancer properties of mushrooms. They also don’t put junk in their powder. There’s no artificial ingredients, which is another important filter when choosing food items on an anticancer journey. And it’s organic and gluten free.
While I don’t personally choose to use a protein powder every day of my life, these packets come in handy when on a trip to help fill in the gaps as needed in rounding out a well-balanced meal or snack with functional food ingredients.
3. Portable Personal Blender
A portable rechargeable blender is something I take on trips when I think I will need to get my own meals or snacks multiple times through a trip. I bring a handheld blender like this along with the protein packets and throw in some fresh berries from the local grocery store to make a quick smoothie wherever I am. Typically, I also have a packet of organic unsweetened almond butter with me that I also use to add fat to the smoothie to make it a more balanced snack with all three macronutrients of protein (powder), carbs (fruit), and fat (nut butter).
This blender could also be used to mix up a matcha or coffee elixir in the mornings with a few intentional ingredients.
4. Purified Water wherever you are
Yes, we use this portable water filter on ALL of our trips ANYWHERE including the USA. Water is one of life’s essential needs and having purified water free of extra chlorine, fluoride, and all the various chemicals that get brought into the body with tap and bottled water is a foundational component in an anticancer journey.
After discussing with the integrative side of my medical team, we quickly made the decision soon after my diagnosis to prioritize having purified water that did not come from a plastic bottle. For those of us with hormone receptor positive cancers, limiting exposure to added hormones, hormone disrupting chemicals, and pharmaceuticals drugs means we need to take action to put our tap water through this type of purifying filter that is proven to remove those materials.
Water that comes in plastic bottles is not an answer for every day consumption since plastic leaches hormone disrupting chemicals and that water also has not necessarily been purified to the extend the Berkey filters have been shown to do.
Having a Go Berkey gives us the ability to have purified drinking water wherever we are whether it is in a hotel room, backstage at an arena, on a camping trip, visiting family, and more. Having the confidence that my water is less contaminated with things that can fuel my cancer makes me all the more secure in taking care of my nutritional needs.
5. Compact Silicone Electric Kettle
Bringing my own silicone electric kettle on trips has been so incredibly handy. It heats up my purified water so quickly for me to use for anything from matcha, coffee, tea, oatmeal, or whatever I want to put hot water in to help me enjoy the day.
I bypass the plastic kettles and plastic based coffeemakers in hotel rooms and can use it anywhere there is an electric outlet. It has made life much easier on trips when I want to make my own anticancer matcha or filling oatmeal in the room with my own purified water.
This food grade silicone kettle collapses down onto itself for packing. I typically put it in my checked bag and pull it out to use throughout my trips! While there are some questions if silicone is as safe in high temp and frozen, I’d rather bring this known tool with me in my bag than wonder what other elements are leaching into my hot water.
There you go! Some of my most used tools on trips while living an anticancer lifestyle! As I mentioned in the short video linked towards the top of the page, you don’t have to get all of these things all at once. But you can start with something. As I like to say, “Something is better than nothing”!
No companies shared above have compensated me for sharing these products. These are my own recommendations based on much time studying info on safer items to use in the kitchen and on the go as a cancer patient. This post contains affiliate links from Amazon. This means I may earn a commission should you chose to make a purchase using my link. Any commissions I earn from my work, time, energy, and effort spent on Shrink the Mutant School go back to paying for the resources needed to keep this running or to my on-going medical treatment. Thank you for your thoughtful consideration and support of my work.
