How to Avoid Jet Lag
A Science-Based Playbook For Preventing Jet Lag
My first 3 days in Denmark sucked.
Luckily it was a 14-day trip, but man, those first few days were the worst!
It was the summer between graduating high school and starting college. I was working at Rutgers University, making sure our winless football team was getting fed. In my free time, I reffed a volleyball league at my high school and filled any other time with working out.
I was very busy, so when my grandparents offered to take my brother and I on a trip to Denmark, I was thrilled. But, there was one issue.
I had just spent weeks building a workout program, inspired by Ben Greenfield’s Beyond Training, and I had been following it to a “T”. The workouts would literally take me 3+ hours to complete, but they got me really fit. Our trip to Denmark was going to disrupt my program, and for some reason, I thought I was going to lose all of my progress by taking off a few weeks.
Disclaimer: no muscle was lost on our trip and it was stupid to think that a two-week trip was going to impact two years of consistent lifting.
To compensate for the two-week workout hiatus, I thought it would be a good idea to absolutely crush myself the few days leading up to departing for Denmark.
Little did I know, this was a terrible idea.
We had a late afternoon flight out of Newark and arrived in Copenhagen in the morning. I got zero sleep on the flight, which was probably a product of how sore my body was from working out super hard the days leading up to and on the morning of our flight, and the copious amounts of coffee I had drank before taking off.
Looking back on this, my actions leading up to and during the flight were an absolute recipe for disaster.
I remember landing in Denmark and being so excited to be there, but so tired that I was absolutely miserable. Our aunts, uncles, and cousins greeted us at the airport with signs, Danish flags, and huge smiles. I was so happy to see them, but on the inside, my head was foggy, I was fighting to keep my eyes open, and I literally felt like I could pass out at any moment.
I had a severe case of jet lag. All I wanted to do was sleep. But no. You can’t go to sleep. You have to stay up in order to adjust to the new time zone. So what did I do? Pounded more coffee and pushed through it.
Three espressos later and a series of caffeine crashes, it was finally time for bed. I closed my eyes and prayed for a good night's sleep. But I couldn’t fall asleep. I didn’t understand. I was so tired earlier in the day I literally felt sick, but now that it was finally time for bed, I had a new boost of energy.
My internal clock was still set to New York, and the lack of sleep, physical exhaustion, and excessive caffeine weren't helping me adjust.
The next couple of days were rough. I was tired, cranky, and overall just not having a good time. I walked the streets of Copenhagen feeling drunk, lackadaisical, and exhausted. I was on vacation and I wanted to feel good and enjoy my time in Denmark, but I was so overly tired and my body was so goofed up that I literally could not enjoy myself.
Finally, after a few days, my body adjusted and I was fine.
Although the first few days in Denmark were a wash, it became one of my favorite and most memorable vacations ever. We walked the streets of Copenhagen, toured the Carlsburg Brewery, and created memories that I’ll remember forever.
But after that horrible jet lag experience, I made a promise to myself: I would never feel that level jet lag ever again.
When I’m on vacation, I want to be focused, alert, and engaged in what I am doing. Especially if it’s a beautiful place like Copenhagen with a ton of great history and cool architecture!
So, in an attempt to never feel that way ever again, I'm writing this piece as a guide for my future self, and for you, to prevent and reduce future jet lag.
What actually is jet lag?
Jet lag is a sleep-wake disorder that occurs when your internal clock doesn’t match the local day and night cycle. Your body wants to align itself with the sunrise and sunset. So when you travel across time zones, it puts a major strain on your body resulting in difficulty sleeping, daytime sleepiness, brain fog, physical exhaustion, emotional distress, and stomach issues.
The symptoms you feel during that transition period where your body is trying to align itself with the local time is called jet lag. Below are a series of factors that influence the likelihood and severity of jet lag:
Sleep prior to traveling
Time zones crossed
Distance traveled
Arrival time
Caffeine
Fatigue
Alcohol
Stress
Age
But the thing is, avoiding these factors isn’t going to totally eradicate your jet lag.
How can you prevent or reduce jet lag?
Jet lag can have terrible effects on vacations and business trips. Nobody wants to feel crappy during their relaxing vacation or “out of it” for their important business meeting. Fortunately, there is a way to prepare for jet lag so you don’t have to experience the effects.
The key to preventing jet lag is by rapidly aligning your internal clock with the local time zone where you’re traveling.
For short trips, you can avoid jet lag by never adjusting yourself to the local time. For example, if you’re traveling from New York to Austin for a couple of days, since it’s only a one-hour time change, you'd probably be safe just staying on New York time for the duration of your trip. This is what I did last week.
For longer trips, you can’t do this, unless you want to be miserable! If you’re traveling for more than a few days, and you want to prevent jet lag, you need to acclimate yourself to the local time zone prior to reaching your destination. This involves creating a phase shift in your circadian rhythm.
The next few sections get pretty sciency. If you're not interested in the science, jump to the last section titled How To Create Your Jet Lag Prevention Schedule. However, I really recommend hanging around and at least skimming some of the science stuff. It's good to at least have an understanding of how this stuff works.
What is a phase shift?
There are two types of phase shifts: phase advances in which your wake-up time will move earlier in the day and phase delays, in which your wake-up time will move to later in the day.
If you are traveling east, you want to advance your clock.
If you are traveling west, you want to delay your clock.
Advancing or delaying your wake-time is a function of viewing bright light before or after your body’s temperature minimum.
What is your body's temperature minimum?
Your temperature minimum is the point in every 24-hour period in which your internal temperature is the lowest. Your body reaches its temperature minimum 90 to 120 minutes prior to your average wake time.
It’s not really important that you know what your temperature minimum is, but if you’re interested, you can find it by waking up 90 to 120 minutes prior to your average wake time and checking it with a thermometer.
What’s really important is that you know when your body is reaching its temperature minimum, so you can use it to shift your internal clock.
How to find when you reach your temperature minimum
Finding your temperature minimum is easy.
First, find out what your average wake time is. Do this by recording your wake time over the course of a week, and taking the average.
Second, subtract your average wake time by 90 to 120 minutes. This is the range of time in which your body experiences its temperature minimum.
Once you have your temperature minimum, you can now put together a plan to advance or delay your circadian clock. But that depends on whether you are traveling east or west.
What should you do if you are traveling east?
Let’s say you’re traveling east from New York to Italy and you want to reduce jet lag symptoms. Since Italy is 6 hours ahead of New York, you need to advance your internal clock to align with the local Italy time.
So if you regularly wake up at 6:30 AM, your temperature minimum occurs around 4:30 AM. What you need to do is wake up between the hours of 4:30 AM and 6:30 AM and view bright light. This is going to make you want to go to bed earlier and wake up earlier the following day.
In the subsequent days leading up to your departure, you'll have to wake up and view bright light earlier and earlier until your internal clock is aligned with Italy time.
What should you do if you are traveling west?
Now, let’s say you’re traveling west from New York to Los Angeles. Since LA is 3 hours behind New York, you want to delay your internal clock.
If your wake time is 6:30 AM, your temperature minimum occurs at 4:30 AM. If you want to delay your clock, you want to view bright light 4 to 6 hours prior to your temperature minimum; between the hours of 10:30 PM and 4:30 AM. This is going to make you want to go to bed later and wake up later the following day.
In the subsequent days leading up to your departure, you'll want to stay up and view bright lights later and later until your internal clock is aligned with LA time.
Alright! We're done with all the sciency stuff. Let's dive into how to create your jet lag prevention schedule.
How To Create Your Jet Lag Prevention Schedule
There is an awesome tool called Jet Lag Calculator where you plug in your average bedtime, departure city, departure time, arrival city, and arrival time, and it automatically creates a schedule you can follow to prevent jet lag.
Below is the schedule I'll be following prior to my two-week trip to Italy. I’ll be sure to report back to y’all with how it goes.