5 Ways To Avoid Jet Lag
By: Schuyler Diehm
Tags: Airports, Travel Tips, Health, Traveling, Travel

Changing time zones isn’t easy.

Our body is an amazing thing. It can take a lot of stress in multiple situations, and come out the end even stronger. But when it comes to traveling, when we enter new time zones, our body sometimes has a very difficult time adjusting. We begin to have trouble staying awake or falling asleep, and our energy levels begin to fluctuate. If we’re traveling to a new time zone, we most likely want to have enough energy, regardless of whether we’re traveling for work or for pleasure. The best way to make sure you stay energetic is to allow your body to adjust to the new time zone. In order to help, here are 5 ways that we can hack our body to avoid jet lag and adjust to new time zones a lot easier (without using melatonin as a supplement).

Get Grounded — Grounding basically means standing on the earth barefoot. While you may read that and brush it off as hippie nonsense, grounding is something that is backed by science. While you’re flying in the air, your body becomes static charged, and once you stand barefoot on the earth, the ions bring you back to your normal negative state. Grounding works on soil, grass, sand, and even brick or concrete, but just make sure you’re outside to get the full benefits. Get Some Sun — Sunlight is a great way to help regulate your circadian rhythm, which is your internal body clock. If you’re outside and you absorb some sunlight, your body does a great job at telling what point of day that it is, and has an easier time adjusting to a new schedule. Before your trip, if you can hack your time outside to replicate the place you’re going, you may be able to slightly adjust before you actually get there. For example, if it gets dark at 7pm in the location that you’re heading, and it’s five hours of ahead of your current time zone, get inside and avoid the sun around 2pm while you’re still home. And once you get to your new location, make sure you get outside to allow your body to adjust. Exercise — Your body does a great job at adjusting to routines. If you have a certain time where you exercise, exercising at that same time in your new time zone will allow your body to adjust. A study done on mice showed that exercising shifted the internal body clock of muscle tissue within those mice. If you can’t exercise at the same time for some reason, just getting in any form of exercise will still help the body make somewhat of an adjustment. Fast — Fasting for 12–16 hours before breakfast in your new location will allow your body to adjust to the new time zone. When you’re normally asleep, you’re obviously not eating, so when you enter a fasted state, your body has an easier time adjusting to the new location. For example, if you normally eat breakfast at 8am, you would want to stop eating anywhere from 4pm to 8pm in the new location’s time. So if that new location is 12 hours ahead of you, you would want to stop eating anywhere from 4am to 8am your time. Confusing, right? Drink A Lot Of Water — When we fly to new time zones, it’s tempting to order a glass of wine or a beer on the flight. If we really want to get adjusted to new time zones, it’s in our best interest to skip the alcohol, soda, or juice, and drink a lot of water instead. Drinking water not only will help keep us hydrated (the moisture in the air on an airplane is less than the Sahara Desert), but will also allow our body to shift gears and adjust to new time zones more efficiently.

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