Jet lag can affect everyone, from seasoned travellers to pilots. The key to beating jet lag is not to take medication like many companies would like you to believe, but to understand the nature of jet lag so you can take control of the very factors that cause it.
If you’re in the process of planning a trip and you’re worried about getting jet lag, I’ll show you how you can completely avoid it.
Suffering with jet lag right now? No problem. At the bottom half of this article I’ll share some simple but effective methods to cure your jet lag as quickly as possible.
I’ll begin by covering the causes of jet lag and its symptoms.
Causes of Jet lag
Before we can kill the beast, we must first understand how it works. So let’s look at what exactly causes jet lag.
Travelling across time zones
Essentially, the more time zones you travel across, the greater the effect of jet lag. If you travel east, you’ll loose an hour and if you travel west you’ll gain an hour for each time zone travelled across.
Most people find jet lag worse travelling east and better travelling west. This is because most people find it easier to stay up a few hours later rather than fall asleep a few hours earlier. But of cause this is down to personal preference. Travelling east would usually have the worse effect on teenagers since their body clock tends to get naturally pushed forward, while for older people it’s the opposite.
For more on time zones, check out the Wikipedia time zones article.
Body clock mismatch
The sudden change of time creates havoc for your body clock, which enjoys it’s contestant, regular, non changing day to day timings.
So while you might be in a different time zone physically, your body clock will be operating at your home time zone. And since now its natural clues to the time of day like meal times, daylight, sleep and wake times are different, it can get pretty confused.
Lack of Oxygen
While you’re in an aircraft, you’re in an atmosphere with 20 to 25 per cent less oxygen than what you’re used to on the ground.
The lack of oxygen in the air causes the oxygen levels in your blood to reduce. This impacts your physical and mental abilities making you feel foggy, drowsy and sleepy.
Unable to sleep on the flight
Just because you’re on the aircraft at the time you’re usually in bed, don’t count on being able to fall asleep as easy.
I learnt this lesson the hard way, thinking I’ll be able to sleep on an over night coach from Birmingham to Edinburgh. I managed to sleep around 2 to 3 hours, despite feeling completely exhausted before the journey. As soon as I got to my hotel room, I collapsed on the bed and slept a full 8 hours, waking up sometime in the evening. So I essentially got jet lag in the same time zone!
Whether it’s the lack of comfort, the noise, vibrations, excitement or watching your coach nearly get wiped out by a garbage lorry, sticking to sleep times while travelling can be a very hard feat.
Items such as ear plugs, eye masks and neck pillows are worth their weight in gold when trying to fall asleep on a flight. A website called Dream Essentials has a good range of travel items available to purchase.
Early morning flights
Haven’t got a clue why, but more and more flights seem to be scheduled for early in the morning. And considering you need to travel to the airport and arrive 2 hours early, your sleep pattern can be messed up even before you’ve left the ground by having to get up at what seems like the middle of the night.
This can be an advantage if you’re travelling west, since you’ll be able to get to sleep at the earlier time much easier. But it can be particularly gruelling if you’re gaining hours travelling west lengthening the time you should stay up before going to bed.
Jet lag Symptoms
Jet lag comes with two main symptoms. Sleep deprivation (the obvious) and illness and discomfort (the not so obvious).
Sleep Deprivation
Easily the most recognised jet lag symptom.
Sleep deprivation causes you to become sleepy and disoriented. Anything that requires effort or skill becomes much harder to handle, with tempers easily triggered. If your sleep pattern doesn’t get back on track soon, it can continue and develop into long term insomnia.
For a more detailed overview, take a look at the sleep deprivation article.
Illness and discomfort
Sitting in the same cramped place for hours on end can be seriously discomforting. And as mentioned above, the lack of oxygen really doesn’t make things better. The dry air on board can give you headaches and dehydrate your skin, sometimes causing soreness and irritation.
Your immune system often isn’t working to its best while you’re flying due to the stress or excitement of travel. To make things worse, because the air on board is recycled through the air vents, you’re intensely exposed to all the bugs and illnesses your fellow passengers may be carrying. So unsurprisingly, it’s quite common to become ill after a flight.
How to avoid jet lag
Interestingly, jet lag can actually be completely bypassed. Here’s how…
Consider sticking
If you’re only going away for a couple of days, consider sticking to your old sleep pattern at home.
For this to work, you must keep to the same mealtimes, bed times and wake times as you would as if you were at home. If possible, expose yourself to the same light conditions as you would normally at home. For example, don’t keep in darkness if it’s daylight at home and don’t expose yourself to the daylight if it’s dark at home. A light box may be particularly useful for this.
It can be pretty tough to do, since you’re ultimately trying to hide from your body the fact you’ve changed time zones. But if you can do it, you can completely avoid jet lag.
Your chances of succeeding depends on your situation. If you’re in New York, you should have no problem finding places to eat and things to do even at 4am with their 24 hour culture. But the same can’t be said for a small Caribbean island. Social interactions may also be harder since it would be considered completely normal to hold a meeting at 4am home time if it’s 10am local time.
Adjust early
Another method of avoiding jet lag is to slowly adjust your sleep pattern by an hour or two each night to gradually transition yourself from one time zone to another.
This would mean changing your mealtimes and bed times each day, with a large enough change to make progress but small enough for your body clock not to put up a fuss.
You may not be able to adjust completely to your new time zone, but anything is better than nothing.
This method requires careful planning and a bit of flexibility but it can help to bypass jet lag completely.
Jet lag cures
Can’t avoid it? No problem. Here’s how to cure jet lag as quickly as possible:
Keep well hydrated
Dehydration makes the effect of sleep deprivation much worse so make sure you drink plenty of fluids. This can also help counteract the effects of the dry air and helps keep your immune system in good shape against the airborne germs from your fellow passengers.
This doesn’t apply for alcoholic drinks though! Alcohol has the opposite effect and actually increases dehydration by encouraging your body to loose water (by making you go to the toilet more often). It also has 2-3 times the effect in the air as it does on the ground. So while it can be a great source of entertainment on a boring flight, it’s best to save it for after. 
Tea and coffee have higher than usual caffeine levels on flights for added taste so make sure you don’t drink too much if you plan on sleeping anytime soon.
Keep active while travelling
Get off the plane where possible at ground stops and try to get active again. Take a walk around the terminal, take a look around the duty free shops, go for a stroll outside, anything that gets you moving.
If you get the opportunity, take a shower on the ground stop. It’ll help freshen you up, tone the muscles and get the blood pumping around your body again. Marvellous!
Have the right mindset
Having the right mindset can help with many things in life, and sleep and jet lag are no exception.
If you plan on sleeping, make sure you have the right mindset for sleep. Try to keep calm and not stressed out. It’s pretty much impossible to sleep when your heart’s pounding from all the stress, not to mention being bad for your health.
A large portion of jet lag is psychological. If you think you’re going to suffer with jet lag, you probably will. But it works the other way round too. Never underestimate the power of your mind!
Be physically up for it
Get good nights sleep before the flight. It’s the very least you could do. Make sure you’re not tired or hung over from the night before, especially for early morning flights.
Try to get in plenty of exercise the days before so you’re nicely worn out and relaxed on the flight and not bursting with energy.
Set your body clock
The sooner you adjust to your new time zone, the sooner you can enjoy yourself on holiday or be mentally ready for your business trip. And since you haven’t really got much to do sitting on the flight, this is the best time to do it if you haven’t already.
So this means sleeping when it’s night time at your destination and staying awake when it would be daytime. It’s best to avoid naps if you can.
An eye mask to block out the light, ear plugs for the sound and neck rests and blow up pillows for comfort can all help your chances in getting to sleep during the flight.
Along with sleeping and waking at the new times, you should also start eating at your new times. Try to stick to these the best you can. You don’t need to eat anything big if you’re not feeling hungry, just a small snack will do the trick. Aeroplane food is often served at a schedule to match the time zone you’ve just left so it’s best to bring or own food or if possible save the aeroplane food for later on the flight.
Eating and sleeping are two of your body clocks main indicators of time. Get these pushed forward or back and you’ll be well on your way.
Exposure to sunlight is the final main factor for your body clock. You can’t really control this on the flight but when you get to your destination, expose yourself to plenty of sunlight during the day and avoid bright lights during the night
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Once you understand what causes jet lag you can see exactly what you need to do to fix it. To cure jet lag, you just need to uproot your body clock, change the time with as little fuss as possible and get it right back on track. Simple! 
