Jet Lag Recovery – This is How to Avoid the Drag of Jet Lag!

One of the best trips I have ever taken was several years ago when I went to Italy with a good buddy of mine.  Experiencing the history, culture, and meeting a ton of new people made for an amazing life experience. Unfortunately, I enjoyed myself a bit too much and returned to the United States without something important – more on that later. While I did leave something behind, I did return home with memories to last a lifetime, as well as a lovely case of jet lag. Which brings us to the subject of today’s blog post – jet lag recovery.

Before we get into jet lag and jet lag recovery, tick tock, let’s talk about your…

Biological Clock

To understand jet lag and how to proceed with jet lag recovery, it is important to understand how your biological clock works. Basically, how alert (or sleepy) you are is determined by your biological clock, which is a bunch of cells located deep in your brain. To be more specific, they are located in a place called the hypothalamus, or the brain center, which is responsible for regulating such things as your body temperature, your appetite, your alertness, as well as other biological states.

By controlling the rise and fall of hormones and other chemicals, your biological clock or circadian rhythm determines if you feel awake or tired. Your biological clock operates on a 24-hour schedule that typically makes you feel energetic early in the morning, a little tired after lunch, with a rebound later in the afternoon or early evening. You then experience another drop in energy once the sun goes down and it doesn’t come back until the next morning. Night owls are an exception, as they get energy at night and are slow to get going in the morning. In summary, the reason you get up and go to sleep with the sun is due to your biological clock as it responds to daylight as a critical clue to external time.

Now that you understand how your biological clock works, let’s proceed with a quick

Definition of Jet Lag

Jet lag, also known as desynchronosis (say that 5 times fast!), is what happens when you travel to a new time zone.  Traveling across time zones means you are going through daylight and darkness cycles that are different than what you are used to, which gets your biological clock all out of sync. This means that your biological clock needs to adjust and reset itself when you enter the new time zone. It stays on its current biological schedule for a few days, which is what makes us feel awake when we should be sleepy and is what makes us feel sleepy when we should feel awake.

Some of the common…

Problems Associated with Jet Lag Are:

  Insomnia and feeling tired.
  Being less alert and functioning less well.
  Headaches.
  Being irritable.
  Loss of appetite.
  Slight dizziness or unsettled feelings

Now, before we get to some tips for jet lag recovery, let’s look at…

A few interesting facts about Jet Lag

  Older travelers typically have more severe symptoms than younger travelers and it takes longer for their body clocks to adjust.

  The more time zones crossed in a shorter period, the worse the symptoms usually are. Typically, you need to cross 3 or more time zones to experience jet lag, as most people can adjust to crossing only 1 or 2 time zones.

  Going from west to east is harder than east to west as our bodies have less time to recover, traveling east removes hours from our days while traveling west adds them.

  The amount of time to recover from jet lag is dependent on the number of time zones crossed. Most people will adjust at a rate of 1 to 2 time zones per day.

Lastly, let’s look at some suggestions for…

Jet Lag Recovery

While there is no medical treatment for jet lag, there are a bunch of things you can do to help reduce the impact of jet lag, such as:

  Start switching before the trip – for a longer trip, start moving your bedtimes and mealtimes closer to those of your destination. For example, if traveling from the west coast to the east coast of the U.S. – start going to bed a ½ hour earlier and waking up ½ hour earlier each day for 3 days before – so, if your usual bedtime is 10 pm, by Day 4 you will be going to bed at 8:30 pm which will make it easier to adjust to the new time zone.

  There are some online jet lag calculators that I have seen that can help you figure out exactly how to reset your sleep schedule prior to your departure.

  Go to bed at your usual time once you reach your destination on a long trip.

  Try to spend as much time outside as possible for the first couple of days at your destination, so the sunlight can help reset your biological clock.

  Get lots of fluids in you to stay hydrated, but not caffeine or alcohol as they can mess up your sleep.

  When you get on the plane, change your watch to the new time zone to help you adjust psychologically.

Before we go…

You are probably wondering what I could have possibly left in Italy.

Well, one thing about me is that when I do something, I do it full throttle – usually, that is good, sometimes it gets me into trouble, and sometimes it results in crappy stuff happening.

Anyways, I took the saying ‘when in Rome…’ literally and did everything to the max – seeing everything I could, eating all types of awesome food and drinking too much of this stuff…

Which caused me to drop this a few too many times:

Causing me to lose all the photos on it.

On the bright side, I guess replacing those photos gives me an excuse to go back to Rome.

And seeing as how I now know more about jet lag recovery, hopefully, next time I will return with only my camera, more amazing memories, and less jet lag!

Until next time, fly high, watch the red wine and as always…PYMFP!
–Rick

Use It or Lose It:

Some suggestions for jet lag recovery are:

  Starting switching your hours before the trip.
  Try to go to bed at your usual bedtime once you reach your destination.
  Spend as much time as possible outside your first couple days to reset your biological clock.
  Get lots of fluids; avoid caffeine and alcohol.
  Change your watch to the new time once you get on the plane.

When To Use It:

When you are flying across 3 or more time zones!

What Do You Think?

Do you have any other suggestions for jet lag recovery? Please share in the comments below!

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References

Boosting Your Energy – A Harvard Medical School Special Health Report

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-topics/jet-lag-and-sleep

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/165339.php

https://www.skyscanner.net/news/jetlag-15-tips-beating-timezone-tiredness

https://www.medicinenet.com/jet_lag/article.htm#are_there_effective_medications_for_jet_lag_what_is_the_role_of_melatonin_in_jet_lag