How to Beat Jet Lag
You’ve just landed in Melbourne having paid your steep air fare, almost forgotten the long argument you had with your boss over exactly how much vacation you’re allowed, and are congratulating yourself for having spent the last three weeks frantically topping up your fake tan.
Time to show these Australians a thing or two after you grab a quick nap. Except the nap becomes a full day and a half in bed recovering from the effects of a colossal bout of jet lag.
Jet lag is a traveller’s worst enemy as it eats into precious holiday time when you could be enjoying the attractions you’ve seen splashed over those brochures you’ve been reading so avidly.
What can you do to prevent it?
Setting the body clock to holiday time
The trick to beating jet lag is to understand more about how your body works and why it reacts to a shift in time zones the way it does.
The first thing to remember is that air travel is inherently unnatural, we were never meant to skip across multiple time zones in such a short period. When you consider the rationale of this, it’s not that long distance travel drastically affects your sleep patterns. Not only is it disruptive, but disorientating as well. In fact, studies have shown that jet lag does more than merely make you tired, it can affect your verbal skills, memory and decision-making. A scary thought when applied to world leaders and the amount of travelling they do while making decisions that affect us all! But let’s put that aside and get back to you.
As a scale it is useful to calculate that for each time zone you cross it should take around a day to recover from the resultant jet lag. Travelling west is generally easier than travelling east as your body finds it less problematic to readjust if it faces a shorter day than it does arriving at the start of a brand new one.
If, for instance, you fly from London to Chennai, your body will find it easy to remain awake throughout the flight and landing, but much harder to wake up once you’ve had a night’s sleep. Jet lag is your body’s way of realigning itself with a new environment and time zone.
Subtle changes in your routine can help to prepare your body for this shift. Gradually adjusting your sleep patterns for a week prior to travel will help to correlate it with the time zone at your destination. But make sure that you get the same amount of sleep as you usually would; being overtired can worsen jet lag.
Another trick is to adjust your meal schedule to more closely resemble the times you would eat breakfast, lunch and dinner while on holiday. You can also change your watch before you fly to mentally prepare yourself for the new time. Always remember to drink plenty of water and try to avoid alcohol or sleeping pills as these only disrupt your natural sleep.
While on board the flight, try to sleep at a similar time as you would if you were at your destination. Because this is an almost impossible task for most travellers, take anything that will help you achieve it including neck support, eye mask and ear plugs.
British Airways has a helpful “Jet Lag Calculator” developed by the UK’s leading sleep expert, Dr Chris Idzikowski. The calculator works by evaluating the time difference between your home and holiday destination, and then recommending the optimum time to expose yourself to light. The tool works because our internal body clock is harmonised with the world’s natural 24 hour light cycle. Gradually shifting your exposure to light patterns allows you to more steadily synchronize your body to the time zone of your destination. For this reason, if you arrive at your destination during the day, you should resist the temptation to “catch up” on missed sleep and only hit the hay once it’s night as the light and setting of the sun are powerful influences on your internal body clock.
With these tricks in mind, we wish you a safe journey and a relatively jet lag free break. Sleep tight...
