Jet Lag – You Can Suffer From It…Or You Can Do What This International Airline Captain Does
Jet Lag - You Can Suffer From It...Or You Can Do What This International Airline Captain Does
Whatever the reason for your travel, you have made a considerable investment. It costs you time and money. If you're stuck in a hotel room suffering from jet lag symptoms, you're missing out.Obviously, you'd like to make the most of your trip. You will get the greatest return on your investment if you're out of your hotel room enjoying your destination. I can help you achieve this."What Is Jet Lag?"In simple terms, jet lag is the disruption of your body's internal clock, or circadian rhythm. This clock sets your sleeping and waking times. It is complex and sensitive. Flying east or west messes it up. That's because you cross time zones much faster than your body can adjust.What are common jet lag symptoms? They include:* Headache* Disorientation* Anxiety* Exhaustion* Indigestion* Dehydration* Impaired CoordinationObviously, these things could ruin your trip. Following these guidelines will reduce your jet lag symptoms and let you enjoy your trip even more.I'll break this discussion into three sections:* Before Your Trip* During Your Flight* At Your DestinationA. Help Prevent Jet Lag Before You Leave Home1. Get Plenty Of Sleep. NASA found that getting as much sleep as possible beginning two days before your trip is significant in minimizing jet lag symptoms.2. Reduce Your Stress. All that running around can make you more stressed.3. Exercise. If you exercise regularly, make it a priority to keep that routine just before you travel. Also, continue it at your destination.B. Things You Can Do During Your Flight To Reduce Jet Lag1. Arrive Early At The Airport. Not rushing to make your flight will help reduce stress and make you more relaxed. That way you'll rest better on the plane.2. Begin Adjusting To The New Time Zone And Schedule. When you get on the plane, set your watch to your destination's time. Then think about when you'll eat and sleep there. Try to begin eating and sleeping at those times.3. Sleep As Much As You Can On the Plane. This is a key factor in reducing jet lag.4. Wear Comfortable clothing. Comfortable clothes, warm socks and a sweater will enable you to sleep better.5. Drink Plenty of Water. Not soda, not alcohol, not caffeine, but water.6. Get Up and Stretch Frequently.7. Use a Footrest. If you're tall, it takes strain off of your lower back. If you're not so tall (or a child), and if your feet don't touch the floor, this helps prevent cramps behind your thighs.8. Loosen Your Shoes to get some extra circulation to your feet.9. Avoid Pills and Supplements. There was a study reported in England's Lancet Medical Journal. It blamed 18% of deaths during long-haul flights from blood clots in the lungs. Sleeping pills cause you to sleep without any body movement. This reduces your circulation and increases the chance of blood clotting.C. Adjusting At Your Destination1. Try To Eat On The New Schedule. This helps your body clock adjust to minimize your jet lag symptoms.2. Try To Sleep On The New Schedule.3.Exercise. This is also among the important jet lag remedies. If you have a regular exercise routine, you'll want to continue it now.4. Get out in the Sunlight. This is simple to accomplish as long as you have a sunny day.Studies have shown that exposure to bright light helps shift the circadian rhythms (body clock), and therefore reduce the jet lag symptoms.That's just a brief overview. I highly recommend that you read my complete jet lag article before you go on your next long trip. You can find it on my web site.Copyright 2005 by Ph.Developments USA, Inc. All rights reserved.Pilot Paul M. is a captain at a major U.S. airline. He also hosts http://www.Pilot-Pauls-Travel-Accessories.com where an airline captain helps you with your travel needs.If you would like to learn more travel tips, see travel accessory reviews and recommendations, learn insider's secrets, find travel discounts, or receive our FREE newsletter click on the link below:Click here for Pilot Paul's Travel AccessoriesThanks and have a great trip!Pilot Paul M.
Jet Lag ? 5 Pre-travel Steps to Reduce the Effects of Jet Lag
Jet Lag ? 5 Pre-travel Steps to Reduce the Effects of Jet Lag
Ask any regular long-haul flyer about their experience of flying and you will soon discover that everyone has a different "magic" formula for overcoming or avoiding jet lag.In reality of course no magic formula exists ? and there is certainly no magic pill or tablet. There is, however, a great deal that you can do in preparation for your departure to help you overcome or eliminate jet lag and here are just a few tips:1. Maintain a consistent sleep pattern.If you are not following a consistent routine in the days and weeks before your journey (going to bed and getting up at the same time each day) your body's internal clock will be disrupted even before you start your journey and your flight will simply magnify the effects of insomnia induced by jet lag.2. Ensure you are getting a balanced and healthy diet.Diet plays an important role in ensuring that you get a good night's sleep and an appropriate balance of whole grains, proteins, fruits and vegetables in your diet is essential.Alcohol and caffeine are two elements of your diet that are particularly important in relation to jet lag and these should be reduced, or eliminated, in the run-up to your journey if at all possible. If, however, asking you to give up your twelve cups of coffee each day is rather like asking you to cut off your right hand, then try to limit your intake to the afternoon between about 3 pm and 5 pm.Caffeine when taken late in the day tends to speed up your body clock, while taking it in the morning has the opposite effect. Taken during the middle of the day, caffeine has little or no effect on your body's circadian rhythms.3. Take regular exercise.Regular exercise can significantly improve the consistency, quality and duration of your normal sleep cycle. Some form of daily aerobic exercise, lasting at least twenty minutes, will go a long way to preparing your body for your forthcoming journey.4. Start to slowly adjust your bedtime.You should begin to "manage" your body clock by gradually and slowly adjusting your bedtime and wake up time in the days before your journey, to bring these into line with the local time at your destination.If, for example, you normally go to bed at 10 pm and you are flying to a country that is four hours ahead, at your normal bedtime the time at your destination will be 2 am. So, in this case, you need to slowly bring your bedtime forward a little bit (say fifteen minutes) each night for a week or ten days before your departure. This might mean that immediately prior to leaving you are going to bed at say 7.30 pm. However, when you arrive at your destination this will mean that you are now going to bed at 11.30 pm and that you have narrowed the four hour time difference to just one and a half hours.5. Reduce stress in the days before traveling.One often overlooked factor in the jet lag equation is that of stress and much of this stress is a direct result of the journey itself. How many times have you found yourself running around at the last minute trying to do 1001 things at once?Plan ahead and make sure that, as far as is possible, everything that you need to do both at home and at works is completed well in advance of your journey. In planning for your journey, clear as much as you can as early as you can and make specific time available in your pre-journey planning for plenty of relaxation in the days immediately prior to your departure.These are just a few examples of things that you should pay attention to when planning any long-haul trip and, together with other specific measures taken both during your flight and following your arrival, will considerably reduce the effects of jet lag, or even lead to no jet lag at all!Copyright 2005 Donald Saunders - http://help-me-to-sleep.comDonald Saunders is the author of a number of health-related publications looking in detail at curing insomnia and managing other common sleep disorders. Drop by for more information on jet lag and to pick up your free copy of "How To Get A Good Night's Sleep".
Do Jet Lag Diets Work?
Do Jet Lag Diets Work?
Anti jet lag diets have been around for some time now, but do they work?Perhaps the best know anti jet lag diet is the Argonne Diet, developed at the Argonne National Laboratory in 1982. Over the years thousands of people have downloaded copies of this diet online and it is reputed to have been used by an impressive list of people including the late President Ronald Regan, the US Secret Service, the CIA and the US Army and Navy. In addition, it is purported to have been used by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Canadian swim team.However, when you realize that the only evidence to support the effectiveness of this diet is a study conducted by the US military, this list of 'supporters' doesn't perhaps seem quite so impressive.On the surface the US military study does appear to support the effectiveness of the diet, although the report (published in 2002) pointed out a number of problems with the study and stated that "larger and better controlled studies need to be used to verify the usefulness of the Argonne diet".Perhaps the biggest problem with this study however lies in the reasoning behind the study and in the group of people used for the study.The US military deploy hundreds of thousands of troops around the world every year and jet lag has a significant effect upon their operations. Preventing jet lag is thus something of a priority issue. However, curing jet lag on this scale can also be a very expensive business and so looking for a simple, inexpensive, convenient and readily available solution, with few if any side-effects was essential. It is not perhaps surprising therefore that they focused their attention of the possibility of using a diet as nothing could be simpler, or cheaper, to implement. It also represented a natural solution, without any of the emotional or medical problems so often associated with the usual pills or injections.Perhaps more significant though was the group chosen for the study. Volunteers were taken from 186 National Guard personnel being deployed to Korea. Of these, 95 used the diet on the outbound leg of the journey and 39 used the diet coming home.Two questions seem to arise here.The first question is whether or not results seen in a group of National Guard personnel could reasonably be expected to appear in the general traveling population. I think most people would agree that this can hardly be said to be a representative sample.The second question is why only 39 people volunteered to try the diet on the return home when 95 people had used the diet on the outbound journey. Surely, if those using it for the deployment had found it effective then you would expect more than 41 percent of them to have wanted to use it again coming home.These questions are of course important but perhaps the real question that we should be asking is why a diet should be effective at all as a jet lag cure.Jet lag results from the inability of your body to adjust its own internal clock fast enough to bring it into line with local time when traveling. For example, when you arrive at your destination and the clock says it nine o'clock in the morning and time to start the day's work, your internal body clock may still be reading two o'clock in the morning (the time back home) and telling you that you should be in bed.So just how is a diet supposed to help solve this little problem?Well, the simple answer of course is that it can't. Yes, what you eat and drink can play a part in helping your body to overcome the effects of jet lag and can assist in reducing jet lag symptoms. Diet, however, is only one small element in the equation for solving the problems of jet lag and simply making some adjustment to what you eat and drink before, during and after your journey, along with other preventative measures, is all that is required.Curing jet lag through the use of so-called anti jet lag diets is a nice idea, but, unfortunately, it's myth rather than reality.Copyright 2005 Donald Saunders - http://help-me-to-sleep.comDonald Saunders is the author of a number of health related publications including "Jet Lag ? A Natural Approach". Learn more about jet lag and pick up your free copy of "How To Get A Good Night's Sleep" to discover the secret to curing insomnia.