17 Proven Tips On How To Combat Jet Lag Naturally

Sometimes when you arrived back home from a long journey, you feel like death. You become extremely exhausted, feel unmotivated, and pick up weird eating habits and sleep patterns.

Well, it is what people call as “jet lag”.

Almost all of us have experienced jet lag. Its symptoms include drowsiness, muscle ache, insomnia, irritability, and difficulty concentrating.

Your circadian rhythm has a tendency to run slightly longer than 24 hours. Studies suggest that we can push back our body’s clock about two hours per day.

Fun Fact: It is always worse going east than going west.

Photo: Wake up coffee / The Art of Travel Partners

Flying west over two time zones extends your day by two hours which we can adjust. Within the same day journey east has us waking up two hours earlier and going to bed two hours earlier which does not necessarily mean sleeping.

We can advance our sleep/wake cycle somewhere between 60 to 90 minutes per day. So it takes as much as two days to adjust to get your body to log back on track. So here’s the natural way to cure jetlag.

What is Jet Lag?

Jet lag is actually a disruption with our internal clock that helps us to anticipate dusk and dawn. These biological clocks help control blood pressure, stress, appetite and more. So if you mess with the clock, you mess with your life.

17 Proven Tips to Combat Jet Lag Naturally

Here are some tips that can help you come out of your jetlag faster so you can enjoy your trip as soon as possible.

Photo: The Art of Travel Partners

1. Exposure To New Light

You can ease yourself into a new time zone by consciously manipulating exposure to light that is green.

Photo: The Art of Travel Partners

Your body can feel extra exhausted when it is forced to completely adapt to a new light schedule so if you are traveling East; your body will feel like it is getting darker earlier and a way you can prepare for this is by leaving the light outside earlier in your day.

Indoors, get away from light so your body is trying to synchronize up with a light schedule of where you will end up if you are doing the opposite and traveling to the West then you want to stay up later and expose yourself to outdoor light as long as possible.

2. Spend The Day Outside In Sun

Sunlight helps us regulate circadian rhythm for eastbound flights. Try to get an early sleep. It will help you wake up for westward travel. Get Sun in the late afternoon and evening.

3. Re-Timer Glasses

Use light therapy to regulate your sleep-wake cycle. Use 450 minutes in the morning for eastbound travel or night for westbound travel. If someone asks tell them you are a cyborg.

4. Earplugs & Sleep Mask

Block out distractions with earplugs and a sleep mask. Complete darkness is ideal for melatonin (hormone that enables your body to know, when it is time to sleep and when it is time to wake up) production. Melatonin helps regulate our circadian rhythm.

5. Cold Shower at Night

Cold shower in the evening before bed can also help increase melatonin production throughout the night.

6. The 20 Minutes Nap

If sleep does not come easy at night, try 20 minutes nap throughout the day to make up for lost sleep but try to get at least four hours when it is dark out.

7. Stay Active

Exercise in the early morning or late afternoon but just not too close to bedtime. It can keep you up.

8. Drink Tea

Go for a tea; a natural brew of Yebra mate, a Ginkgo Biloba or Ginseng can recharge your body and mind in the morning and even in the evening.

Try Chamomile lavender and Valerian to help you not off. You can shop them online. Keep looking for their discount coupons and vouchers, promotional deals and promo codes and enjoy the rest.

9. Avoid Alcohol & Coffee

Avoid alcohol and coffee at least three hours before bed. Both act as stimulants and can keep you from falling asleep.

10. Choose Overnight Flights

The thing with overnight flights is you will get your sleep after dinner as you would at home. And when you sleep it off you reach your destination at morning or afternoon (in another timezone), Which is as close as you can get to your regular schedule.

In this way, you can cheat your body to think that it is replicating its daily schedule, so it gets easier for your body to adjust its biological clock.

11. Upside Down Your Internal Clock

It is a very hard thing to do, but it is effective. Just 4-5 days before your flight, change your schedule.

Make a schedule that coincides with your destination. Shift your sleeping and eating times with that of your destination, and when your body reaches the destination, you will feel like you are still at home.

12. Double Down on Hydration

In the flight, your body gets dehydrated faster, and to keep it healthy you need to compensate for the water loss.

Dehydration leads to weakness, so we advise that- to avoid weakness you do all necessary things. Drink enough water every hour ( at least 8 ounces ).

Use hydrating spray, moisturizing lotion, and lip balm to add water content to your skin as well. If you wear contact lenses, then use Eye drops. But remove them before you take a nap.

13. Sleep A Lot

To fight the exhaustion of Jet Lag, you need one silent weapon – Sleep. If you are on a long flight and traveling from Asia to the United States, then your body needs as much as sleep to adjust to the time zone change.

A business or a first class ticket is must for long flights because you want that reclining seat to sleep well. And if that is beyond your budget then do bring neck pillows and noise-canceling headphones with you- for a good sleep.

14. Can’t Sleep On A Flight? Try Sleeping Pills

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For some of us, sleep comes naturally. But for the rest, it takes hours of changing positions and a sacrifice to Gods to let the sleep coming. So, if going to sleep takes you a lot of time then take sleeping pills on the flight.

Check out the time duration of the effect of sleeping pills at home before you use them on the flight. Short Duration pills are better as they won’t make you feel groggy when you reach your destination.

15. Take Melatonin

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We are not talking about Melanin here but melatonin. It decides when our body goes to sleep and when it wakes up, or in other words, it controls our sleep schedule.

Doctors have tested that 3 milligrams of Melatonin every day after reaching your destination help your body to reset its sleep clock better. Try this non-prescription drug, and check if it works on you.

16. When Not To Sleep

If you reach your destination in Morning, then avoid sleeping. It is not a time for your body to take rest, so sleeping makes you more tired.

But, if you reach your destination at around bedtime then it is okay to go to sleep. A short nap of 20 minutes is okay if you are used to taking naps. But a longer sleep will result in you staying awake whole night.

Now, you wouldn’t want that, would you?

17. Do Nothing

If you are there for only a day or two, try doing nothing. I mean you are just going to have to go back to your home time zone; you might as well stay on that schedule. Do not even set your watch.

I hope these natural ways will help you to combat jet lag as much as possible.

Jet Lag Is Common

They say Jet Lag is for amateurs. But it takes a lot of skill and practice to beat the Jetlag.

Your body needs time to adjust to the change in timezone and also the exhaustion of the long International Flight. It is better if you catalyze your body’s recovery to the JetLag.

Author Bio

Abigail Kent is an enthusiastic blogger, who loves to write on Trending topics related to lifestyle, traveling, and money saving tips. She’s currently associated with Discount Codez, an online coupon code directory offering latest and updated deals, promos, and vouchers. Follow her at Twitter.

January 22, 2019 4:51 pm Published by Art Of Travel 1 Comment