oops,
"The third time she was in St. Lucia" - not meaning the 3rd trip to St. Lucia, but the 3rd vacation which she experienced it -

when i went to ixtapa, mexico in 2000 i got terribly sick to my stomach the day we returned- i mean diarreah every 20 minutes or so. i think it was montezuma's revenge, and so that being very common, i didn't think anything of it.

then, on our honeymoon in 2004 i got EXTREMELY sick on the final 24 hours in tahiti. beyond anything i'd ever experienced before. with high fever and aches and pains. bathroom every 5-8 minutes. not kidding. this lasted for six weeks. turned out it was giardia.

so, stomach ailments are common for a lot of people while travelling in foreign countries. i'm generally a VERY healthy person- went three years without getting sick (2001- 2003). i'm afraid it'll happen again when we go to hawaii next month....

This happens to me quite often. I agree with other posters that it's probably a combination of water and stress. My stomach is fairly sensitive and even a change in water in the United States can throw my system for a loop. I guess that makes sense, since different cities treat their water in different ways. Since switching to bottled water and skipping ice tea on trips, it's been much better.

I kind of crashed and burned on the last night of a weeklong trip to North Carolina last week. Headache, dizziness, stomach cramps--the whole thing. Spent the whole evening in bed watching Dancing with the Stars and Boston Legal and felt much better the next day. We'd been on a dead run for the whole trip and I think my body finally rebelled. Plus by that time I was missing my husband and kids (and dog...)--it was definitely time to go home.

Yes, escargot, I was going to mention the soups and liquid/sauce food items as well. I didn't because people who don't have it think you are nuts, and that everything "cooks" off. In the Southwestern USA, desert environs- all the way to Lake Tahoe in CA- I have the same thing and do not have soups or stews, or ice cubes or ANYTHING with the water. And it is not something that cooks off of the water, it's more like a mineral or element content problem.

It took me 3 full 5 day to 7 day trips of misery before I figured it out. Afterwards, never had it happen. This is not the runs at all, quite the opposite- and intense and steady stomach/ full abdominals pain.

Try that first and I bet it will help or narrow down the problem. And yes, LoveItaly is so right about women having this a whole lot more than men do.

People are describing kind of different things. If it is travel to Mexico, likely it is a bacteria you pick up from the food (without going into the gory details or montezumas revenge). Giardia another possibililty is even more serious.

Do you take the standard precautions in Mexico? No salads or raw vegetables, etc. Only bottled water. (Ice is OK in a place like Puerto Vallarta because restaurants buy it from the purification place, not make cubes from tap water).

lukesaunt, Without analyzing what you eat and drink when you travel, how careful you are, it's hard to tell whether it is from what you are intaking, or simply from a nervous stomach and digestive track brought on by the stress of the trip.

Purified water - from municipal plants or other places - is certainly better than drinking 'strange' water, but for some people, people with high sensitivity, (like my daughter) it can still cause problems - everyone's body and chemical make up differs - purified water , by nature of the process, is acidic - and the more you drink (whether liquid or ice) the higher acid content in some people's bodies, and the higher loss of electrolytes (which can cause stomach cramping, similar to the ones people can experience in the beginning stages of dehydration) - this is basically how her physican described it to us after one of our trips when she had bad stomach pain.

so for some it is fine, but for others who are sensitive it can still upset their systems.

balancing the electrolytes and acidity in everyone's system is different - just like some athletes need to replace electrolytes in their bodies with drinks that have electrolytes in them, (but for high endurance training) and others sometimes put too much of that stuff in their bodies when they don't need to replace or jack up their electrolytes which too much of can cause problems from that imbalance....so it's a balancing act for every individual.

that's the short version, longer versions are probably available from physicians and/or google health articles, but even with purified water in some spots we've traveled, my daughter needs bottled drinking water, juices, etc and even the purified water in and out of the US in some spots can cause havoc with her system and cause stomach pain.

Do you eat nuts on the plane? Maybe it is diverticulitis. It happens to me a few days after eating nuts.

I should have been more clear, when I said "threw out that it could be the change in the water" I meant "throw out" like "just throwing it out there that it could be this," NOT "threw out" in the sense that he threw it out as a possibility. In other words, my husband agrees with several of you on here that I might not be used to the water. To answer one of the questions, I'm a pretty careful person. In Mexico, I would only drink bottled water, etc. I will also try skipping plane nuts, but I think this time it was pretzels anyway! You all are great for replying!

yeah, I figured out after I replied that you probably meant that was a possibility, not that he had discarded the idea as not possible. Well, you can only do your best, I know my problems are nothing like the severity of yours.

I don't think bottled water is always a perfect solution, as some of it has a much different mineral content than I usually drink, and that alone can be a laxative or diuretic or cause stomach upset. I think people say that in relation to bacteria in the water, not thinking that some bottled water may not be so great either in terms of your stomach. I know some European brands of bottled water really affect me. But, it's certainly safer (probably -- who knows the quality of a brand you don't know in some of these places, or the quality of the plastic container) if one is concerned about bacteria.

I have the same problem and only drink bottled water and watch what i eat-no spicey foods or anything that is hard to digest such as peanuts. I really think the bulk of the problem lies between our ears-stress!

Eat local yogurt and take Fiber-Con or generic (fiber-tabs @ Costco).
Wash (really wash) your hands 10 or more times a day.
Yerba de Perro (herbal tea) works well here.
M (SMdA, Gto.)