Use cheat sheets to learn when and how to treat jet lag using exposure and light avoidance at specific times of the day, based on the direction you’re heading and how many time zones you cross.
Jet lag is a boon for circadian biologists because mental and physical health is immediately disturbed Highlights The importance of our internal “physical clock”, which is the focus of their work. We may feel general malaise expertise On long trips, it may just be “so-called ‘travel fatigue'”, which can occur ‘regardless of the mode of transportation and the number of time zones crossed’, leaving people feeling disoriented, tired and generally a headache.
Dehydration was blamed. The air circulating in commercial airline cabins is very dry, but although it can make your throat, skin, and eyes Feel Dry, the maximum fluid loss through breathing and perspiration, for example, would be no more than an extra half cup if you’ve already done the math. So, it’s not like you’re in Death Valley or the desert when you’re on a trek. “Further, the calculation assumes the passenger will be naked,” and I’m sure the airline will charge you extra for that!
Of course, “plane food – if served – tends to be starchy and sugary,” and giving passengers savory snacks like pretzels during the flight does not. helps. “Vegan…Special meals are sometimes an improvement, but you should order in advance. BYOF – bring your own fruit – is a good base to replace. A small bag of unsalted almonds or walnuts is a healthy alternative to those low-fat bags of salted peanuts” .
cabin air no Just dry, it’s also low in oxygen pressure, about what you’d get at 10,000 feet above sea level, which is twice as high as Denver. This alone can make you feel bad. Then, when you land, if you cross enough time zones, you can experience jet lag.
Jet lag is the temporary separation between the new time at your destination and the time of your internal body clock, which is still home time. “This asynchrony is abnormal,” since our internal clock is normally synchronized with the outside world. However, your jet lag symptoms don’t go away, as your body is at the hip at the new time. Jet lag can be in days calculated to be two-thirds of the number of time zones crossed towards the east, compared to half of the number of timezones crossed towards the west.”
Let’s look at an example. As you can see below and at 2:04 in my video How to treat jet lag with lightLondon is six time zones east of Chicago.
So, after you’ve traveled there, it can take up to four days before you’re back to normal — six eastward time zones multiplied by two-thirds. On the other hand, Londoners traveling west to Chicago must overcome jet lag in just three days — six westward time zones divided by two. The reason why it is easier to go west, where the day is longer than to go east, is that our internal clock he is It’s normally set for longer than 24 hours – “closer to 25 hours in fact” – and should reset every day. “This is why the observed rhythms are called circadian rhythms (from the Latin: about one day.”
Interestingly, you can see this in the performance of Major League Baseball. Researchers churning Through 40,000 games, mining in 20 seasons, they found “surprisingly specific effects of circadian disruption.” [jet lag] on athletic performance under normal conditions.” Indeed, “the effects of jet lag were largely indicative after eastward travel with very limited effects after westward travel, consistent with the length of human hours greater than 24 hours.” Well How do you deal with it?
As you can see below and at 3:05 in my country videoyou first need to He decided Whether he needs treatment at all. If you only travel in one or two time zones, you don’t have to worry about that. If you traverse three or more time zones, for example traveling from coast to coast, jet lag will “happen”, so it depends on how long you plan to stay. If it’s only for a few days, it probably isn’t worth the treatment, because you’ll then have to come back again once you get home. “In these cases,” if you’re in control of your schedule, it’s best to “times in the new time zone coincide with the day in the original left over, and avoid times that coincide with night” body time. But, if you’re going for a while, for a week or more, for example, you can adjust your body clock with behavioral techniques and/or medications, supplements, or foods.
“There is one surefire way to completely avoid jet lag and that is adapt to the new time zone before flight”, that is, before departure on your flight. However, changing your sleep schedule at home for more than two hours Can They are “counterproductive”, because they will interfere with your sleep before the flight and you don’t want to go on a long, sleep-deprived flight. In fact, before your flight, you want to Maximize your sleep. In flight, as you can see below and at 4:12 in my country videorecommendation he is For “instant adjustment of destination meal and light schedule,” although that’s easier said than done. Then, once you land, you want to “try to maintain the destination sleep schedule”. Try not to fall asleep for more than 15 to 30 minutes, and don’t drive when your body thinks it’s midnight.
However, the real key to treating jet lag is light therapy. When traveling eastward, expose yourself to bright light in the morning and avoid bright light in the evening. The opposite is the case when traveling west – “Evening exposure to bright light; morning avoidance of bright light…” Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It’s actually a little more complicated than that. “Advice the changes…if you travel across more than six time zones—say from Boston to Athens. Your biological clock may be set in the wrong direction, reacting to light in the morning as if it were the afternoon. “Okay, but what if I told you it’s equal more It’s complicated! “Light traces the acting Clock “actually only during a specific window in time when your body temperature drops, which is usually around 4 a.m. As part of our circadian rhythm, our body temperature typically drops from 98.6 degrees to 97.6 degrees, even when we are not sleeping. , as you can see below and at 5:02 video.
What is the bottom line? I show two cheat sheets at 5:12 in my video, which you can see below. Take a picture or capture it on the screen for future reference. If you travel east across eight time zones from Los Angeles to London, for example, on the first day, you should avoid light between 6 a.m. and noon local time and then expose yourself to light between noon and 6 p.m. local time. The rest of the first day, your exposure to light will not be significant and will not affect you in either direction. “On subsequent days, local times for light avoidance and exposure should be brought forward one to two hours earlier each day so that light avoidance coincides with nighttime sleep,” that is, when you sleep at night.
But for those first few days after traveling east, note that you’ll want to avoid the morning light, which “can be hard to achieve, especially on the day of arrival, since many flights are overnight and land in the morning…” which What you can do is wear very dark glasses until you enter the house. Of course, if it’s too dark you can’t really drive, which time those unattractive orange lenses that block out blue wavelengths can come in handy, because prevent You can get a dip in melatonin with regular sunglasses, as you can see below and at 6:09 in my country video. Regardless, the next day, you might have the urge to “get out and go”, but it’s actually possible Manufacture Your jet lag is worse by taking you in the opposite direction.
What if you fly east more than eight time zones? In this case, you subtract the number from 24 and treat it as moving west. For example, an eastbound flight across ten time zones – from New York to Delhi, for example – should be treated as a westbound flight, which would require a body clock delay across 14 time zones. In this case, it would be easy to go outside and get some sun, but what would you do if you just went four zones westward and needed to get light in the middle of the night?
A hardware company has created light-powered headphones, which you can see below and at 6:57 in my country video. The theory is that you can take a shower Your brain lights up directly through the ear canals. The researchers put them on the heads of cadavers and it looks like they’ve got some light penetration, but you don’t know…until you test it. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial demonstrated that “exposure to transcranial bright light through the ear canals Eases Jet lag symptoms.” Or … you can just turn on the flashlight.
Discussion about this post