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7 Surprising Facts About Jet lag, And 11 Best Ways To Avoid It!
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If you have ever traveled to another time zone, you’ve probably experienced jet lag. You were used to a certain time frame and had to adjust to a completely different one. You don’t actually have to travel to experience jet lag; you can have changes happen to your social schedule that could make your internal clock to shift out of what you are used to.
If you keep one schedule for the week and another for the weekend, it is considered social jet lag. Getting up early every day of the week and sleeping in on the weekend will definitely throw you off.
Jet lag occurs when your body is used to sleeping and eating at a certain time, and you travel to another area where those patterns are different. If you travel from one time zone to another or even across several, you may arrive at dinner time when you had dinner several hours ago. The same is true about sleeping. If you leave Florida at 11 p.m. and arrive in Hawaii at 5 p.m., you left at a time you might have gone to bed and arrived at dinner time.
There are the surprising truths about jet lag:
- It is not the result of too little sleep. Jet lag has little to do with being tired and has more to do with missing the regular time you go to bed. Other factors besides an alarm clock will throw you off, such as the way the lighting is when you arrive at your destination. If you expect it to be night time and the sun is shining, your internal clock is getting confused.
- There is not one specific sleeping pill that can treat jet lag. Check with your physician about a sleeping pill that will work for you. Do not add alcohol because you don’t think it is working. Take your prescription after the plane takes off — that way you have plenty of time for it to kick in.
- It doesn’t matter which direction you are going — you can still get jet lag. Some people think traveling from east to west is easier on your internal clock, but it really has little to do with whether or not you get jet lag.
- Taking a nap when you get to Europe from the U.S. won’t help fight jet lag. It has been suggested that when you know you are traveling to Europe, you practice setting your clock to European time the week before you leave so you can get used to the timing when you arrive. Succumbing to a nap when you get there will just throw you off.
- Drinking wine while on the plane will not help you sleep or alleviate jet lag . Having a glass or two of wine will not help you sleep, but it will dehydrate you, which you don’t want to have to deal with in the closed environment of a plane.
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