Jet lag can be a killer. Jet lag is a serious problem for those who travel across time zones frequently, because your body has to adapt to new sleeping patterns. The desire to sleep at night and wake in the morning often conflicts with the new time zone. For example, if you are traveling from New York to Los Angeles, you will have three hours’ less time to sleep at night than usual.
I am writing this article on my way back from a trip to Australia. I had a few days in Sydney, and then flew up to Cairns. On most of my trips I suffer from jet lag, but this time I had a perfect night’s sleep on both flights and felt great when I landed. How did I do it?
Here are six tips that will help you avoid jet lag when you travel:
1) Start adjusting before you leave: If you are traveling east, go to bed earlier each night before your trip; if you are traveling west, go to bed later each night. This helps your body start making the adjustment before the trip so that you don’t have as far to go once you are in transit.
2) Get some exercise: Try to get some exercise during the day before your evening flight. Exercise increases
As a frequent flyer and high-mileage traveler, I have experienced jet lag on numerous occasions. This usually occurs when crossing time zones or traveling for long durations of time. The symptoms can include fatigue, a loss in appetite, and difficulty concentrating; however, it is possible to avoid jet lag with the right precautions.
Before:
1) Get plenty of rest before you travel.
How to Avoid Jet Lag
You’re on a business trip or going on vacation and you want to be in tip-top shape as soon as you arrive. You’ve heard about jet lag and want to avoid it. No problem: here’s how.
Jet lag is a temporary condition that can affect your sleep, alertness and performance after you travel rapidly through different time zones. It can cause insomnia, excessive sleepiness, irritability, gastrointestinal problems such as nausea and constipation, and even an increased risk of heart attack and stroke.
To find out how long it will take you to recover from jet lag, add one day for every time zone crossed to the number of hours difference between your new time zone and Greenwich Mean Time, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention in Atlanta. For example, if you travel from the West Coast of the United States to London (a six-hour time difference), it would take at least seven days for your body clock to fully reset itself (six hours plus one). The CDC recommends that you begin adjusting your schedule a few days before leaving so that when you arrive at your destination you will already be close to its local time zone.
Begin by regulating your sleep/wake cycle before departure. For
If you want to avoid jet lag, don’t fly.
If you do fly, pick your flights carefully. Don’t go east and don’t fly overnight.
If possible, don’t go west either.
If you can’t avoid flying west, book an overnight flight and sleep on the plane. Stay up as long as you can before boarding, and ask for a window seat on the left side of the plane so you can watch the sun rise.
If you must go east and arrive in the morning, take a sleeping pill just after takeoff and another about two hours before landing, so that when you wake up it will be local time at your destination.
In any case, try to avoid dark glasses and bright lights in the days before your trip.
Once you’ve arrived at your destination, get out into natural light as soon as possible—preferably within an hour of landing—and try not to spend all day indoors or in dim light. If it’s nighttime at your destination when you arrive (as it usually is if you’re traveling east), try to stay awake until at least 10 p.m., local time; if it’s daytime (as it usually is if you’re traveling west), try to stay out of doors until at least
This is a chronic problem for me. It doesn’t matter how much sleep I get the night before or how short the flight, I always end up with at least a few days of jet lag. And since I approach each new trip with a sense of optimism about my ability to overcome it, I’m often left feeling a little foolish when I find myself nodding off in the middle of a business meeting or waking up at 4:00 in the morning.
I’ve tried just about everything. But after doing some research, I may have found a solution: light therapy.
The human body has an internal clock that is constantly tracking and adjusting to changes in light and dark cycles. When this clock gets out of whack, it causes jet lag. The idea behind light therapy is to use artificial light to reset your internal clock before you travel and after you arrive at your destination.
The basic procedure is simple enough: you sit in front of a light box for about 30 minutes every day for several days before you leave for your trip. The tricky part is timing the sessions properly to trick your body into thinking it’s already at its destination. There are several different protocols that can be used depending on whether you’re traveling east or west and how far you’re traveling (these
The simplest way to avoid jet lag is not to fly. But if you do have to fly, here are some tricks for minimizing its effects.
The most important rule is to get on the schedule of the place you are going as soon as possible. If you arrive at 6am, force yourself to stay awake till 10pm. Don’t take naps, even if you feel like it. Your body’s clock doesn’t know it’s 6am; it knows it’s the middle of the night. You can reset your clock by staying up later than usual that first day.
A variety of over-the-counter drugs can help reduce jet lag. Benadryl (diphenhydramine) and Dramamine (dimenhydrinate) have a mild sedating effect and will help you sleep when you should be sleeping. Antihistamines, however, cause drowsiness and may make you feel “hung over” in the morning. A non-sedating antihistamine such as Seldane (terfenadine) or Hismanal (astemizole) is better for daytime use. For more information on these drugs, see Jet Lag: Over-the-Counter Treatments from FamilyDoctor.org.
Jet lag is a physiological condition that results from alterations to the body’s circadian rhythms resulting from rapid long-distance transmeridian (east–west or west–east) travel on a jet plane. Symptoms include fatigue, insomnia, and irritability.
Jet lag was formerly classified as one of the circadian rhythm sleep disorders. It is now classified as a subset of “Shift work sleep disorder” (SWSD) because its symptoms are more commonly experienced by shift workers than other people, and it is also more prevalent amongst night shift workers who typically experience misalignment between their internal biological clocks and the external environmental light-dark cycle. Jet lag can also be exacerbated by stress, dehydration, and excess consumption of alcohol or caffeine.