Dealing with Jet Lag

Jet lag is something that can be managed with minimum difficulty by just observing a few simple rules.

Ignore them and you’ll still recover but it may take a bit longer and you may feel out of sorts for a few days and not necessarily draw the connection between sleep deprivation and appetites at strange times of the day.

We all know that jet lag is caused by quickly moving through several time zones and not allowing your natural body clock to adjust. Were you to take a cruise to Europe this summer, you’d hardly notice that every day you were losing an hour of the day until at the end of the voyage you’d have recouped the seven hours and be hungry and sleepy at the same time as the locals. However, moving across 7 time zones in as many hours can be a bit of a shock to your system. Here are some tricks to help you manage the adjustment:
It begins on the plane by drinking lots of water (or non-alcoholic fluids).  Alcohol is fine in moderation but the recycled air on planes is dry and you can easily become mildly dehydrated on a long flight especially if you drink lots of coffee and beer.  Best to go easy till you land. 

On the day you arrive you’ll be tempted to take a nap as soon as you’ve checked in to the hotel. I used to fight it and try to stay up till after dinner and then go to sleep. I’m no longer militant about not taking a nap upon arrival as long as its kept to a nap (one hour or less). The danger is that once you lay down you might not want to get up and then find yourself coming down to dinner after a 6 hour “nap”. Good luck getting to sleep later that night. The first night is always the easiest to get a good night’s sleep since you’ve been sitting prone in economy class most of the way over the Atlantic.

Here are some helpful tips: Bring a sleeping mask. In July in northern Europe it doesn’t get dark outside till about 11 pm and dawn begins around 4 am. If you don’t have a sleeping mask be sure to draw the black-out curtains in your hotel room making sure there is no light peeking in or it will seem like a beacon at 4 am in the morning. You might try using sleeping pills to help make the adjustment but I have always found that for me it just delays the adjustment. The night you don’t take the pill is the night you wake up at 1 am and lie there all night with your thoughts. I have learned not fight it if I just cannot get back to sleep. What I do is bring lots of reading material and just read till its time to get up or I fall asleep again. The new tablet readers all have a “night” option that reverses the letters on the page. With this option selected on your Kindle or Ipad your partner will never know you’re awake and reading. All our convention hotel room come with free wi-fi so if you’re inclined, you can use your insomnia to catch up on email or Facebook. Anyway….. let Jet Lag be something you enjoy while all around you watch the clock and worry about how they’ll manage on less sleep in the coming day.

The good news is that at your age you’ve come to realize sleep is overrated and not something you need like your teenager kids back home. You’ll function fine on limited sleep. Catch up when you get home if you must.