Healthy Living and Travel Tips

5 Ways to Lessen Jet Lag

Did you know that while we have 24 hours in a day, our biological clock (i.e. circadian rhythm) actually runs on a 25 hour cycle?  I found this out while researching how to handle Jet Lag from crossing 3 time zones twice a week.  You see I was doing cross-country air travel East to West on Mondays and West to East on Fridays every week a few years back.  If you have ever done this kind of travel for an extended period of time (in my case it was for over 2 years), then you know what jet lag can do to your health.

Our circadian rhythm is in tune with the time of day, environmental factors and magnetism of the area and time zone where we reside.  This monitor tells us when we should eat, sleep and be active.  So when we change time zones, that internal clock can become out of sync or disturbed.  For me it was insomnia.

Other symptoms of jet lag can include nausea, fatigue, appetite loss, stress or anxiety and irritability but these are only temporary once you stop traveling.  It can take as many days to recover from jet lag as the number of time zones you cross but you can help to maintain your health and lessen the effects of jet lag by doing some of these simple steps:

• Sleep – If traveling West you can and will probably want to stay up longer, but train yourself to go to sleep earlier on your first night in a new time zone.  It goes back to the 25 hour body clock – we can naturally stay up easier than getting up earlier.  If traveling East, however, you need to go to sleep 1 hour earlier and wake up 1 hour later adding an hour to sleep/wake each progressive day equal to the number of time zones to be crossed.  If traveling across many time zones, I also try to arrive a day early to have time to adjust.
• Meals – Some people adjust when they have their meals to correspond to the new time zone prior to leaving.  A simple diet of fresh fruits (I usually carry-on an orange or an apple to munch on in the cabin) and vegetables chosen over heavy carbs, sugars and fats really helps and eliminate as much table salt as possible.
• Water – Keep yourself well hydrated with healthy water (see Oct 7th post on how to have inexpensive, good quality water at the airport) while in the airport and on the plane.  I also eliminate the alcohol, carbonated and tomato-based beverages which are loaded with sodium to avoid dehydration in the dry cabin air.
• Exercise – While exercise is very beneficial especially on the road, overexertion can add to our jet lag, so easy does it the first day or two in a new time zone.
• Other Remedies – If you are still suffering from physical distress, there are some supplements that can ease your distress (see my next post for a review of several homeopathic and alternative remedies for jet lag)

So by taking some preventative measures before the long trip, we can have healthy travel and minimize the physical distress from jet lag.  Please comment with some of the things you have done to minimize jet lag.