As a Californian living in Europe and work taking me all over, I end up doing a lot of long haul travel. I used to really pay the consequences of flying across 9 time zones in one day - I say 'used to' because I think I've finally got jet lag under control. Here are my top tips and tricks:
1) Skip the food & focus on hydration
Yes, I know they bring you those meals and some airlines can even make that dinner tray look pretty tempting. The problem is that eating and digesting make extra demands of your body when it's already dealing with major changes to your circadian rhythm, so it's better to lighten its load by fasting. In addition, because our sense of taste is dulled at 30,000 ft, most airlines add excess salt (and it won't be Himalayan) and flavour enhancers (yes, maybe even MSG) to turn low quality ingredients into something palatable.
If you have to eat something, focus on choices that are fresh, as in vegetables.
By contrast, do say yes to the water and make sure you have a large bottle at your seat. I think we all know that our bodies get dehydrated in the air, making our skin dull and dry and increasing the chance of a headache later, so enough said about the need for water.
2) Wear blueblockers to eliminate junk light
Blue light blockers are tinted glasses that block out the majority of blue spectrum light in the plane. This is especially important if you happen to be on a red eye flight and there is ambient lighting of any kind. You know the type. Even in Business Class, you can get it from other passengers' video screens, laptops or reading lights. When you need some shuteye, even a small amount of light hitting the photoreceptors in your eyes will suppress your body's production of melatonin, the hormone we need to get a restorative night's sleep. [1]
I have 2 pairs of TrueDark glasses, one with yellow lenses for late afternoon and early evening on the plane and another pair with red lenses that make me look like a Bono groupie but block out all blue light. I love these because they really hug the area around my eyes, which means not even a sliver of circadian-disrupting light gets through. But there are other great brands as well, like Swannies (hip, but pricier and no red lenses) and Uvex (amber gaming glasses). You can also use your sunglasses, a trick I learned from Dr Oz.
3) Add bluelight at the right time to wake up
The golden rule wherever you're traveling is to make sure you expose yourself to enough bright daylight and sunshine at your destination. Why? When bright morning light hits the photoreceptors in your eyes, it activates your central nervous system, producing hormones such as cortisol and thyroid hormone to help you stay alert and focus. [2] And of course walking outside in the sunshine is the best way to do this.
What if there isn't any sunshine at your destination? Expose yourself to a SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) lamp or, better yet, travel with some glasses that do the same thing. The Re-Timer glasses were developed by Flinders University sleep researchers, Prof Leon Lack and Dr Helen Wright after working with insomnia patients for over 25 years. The glasses are larger than normal so you can actually wear them over any other prescription glasses you might need to wear. They are just heavy enough that they can leave an indentation if you leave them sitting on your nose for more than 5 minutes. They take up about the same room in your suitcase as a small toiletry kit.
If you want something smaller and more discreet, you should definitely look into the Human Charger by Valkee. I met the folks behind this Finnish company almost three years ago at the Bulletproof Conference in Santa Monica and, frankly, I thought their in-ear light emitting device was a gimmick, but having tried it a dozen times, it either works for me because of the placebo effect or there is something to it. Valkee point to a number of studies demonstrating that the human brain has photoreceptor proteins similar to those in the eyes which are sensitive to light. You can shine light dimly through the skull (transcranial light stimulation) or you can do what the Human Charger does and shine a light across the thin membrane of the inner ear and hit those photoreceptors on the surface of the brain more readily. [3] Pilots at Finnair and Air France have used these to combat their own jet lag, so worth a shot.
4) Take Primeadine spermidine
Spermidine has been shown to reset the Circadian clock in mice and also in the CLOCK gene which helps our body determine when it is daylight and we need to be alert and when darkness falls and we can relax and sleep. Primeadine spermidine specifically is my ‘go to’ supplement for seamlessly shifting across time zones and while I must confess that I am the maker of Primeadine (full disclosure!), gerontologist Zora Benhamou has also conducted her own experiments time shifting her studies in Los Angeles while living in Spain. You can read about it here.
5) Take glutathione
Biomedical researchers at UC Irvine in California did a study on the effects of jet lag on mice. What did they discover? That circadian disruption changed their brain chemistry and reduced their cognitive powers, in a way similar to what Alzheimer's patients experience. In addition, they all suffered loss of glutathione, the body's master antioxidant and one of the keys to mitochondrial health. Without it, your brain can become inflamed. [4] I personally like Altrient Setria Glutathione which comes in sachets. They are unfortunately not the greatest tasting however anything for my health - you just need to have a small glass with a little bit of water, squeeze the sachet into the glass and knock it back like a shot. This is the easiest deliver method I have found. I tried many other types of glutathione and unfortunately my functional medicine doctor could not detect them in my blood when measured them. Now that I am on the Altrient Setria Glutathione she says she can see it and that my levels are great. You can easily take these on the plane with you for travel, just make sure to declare them in your liquids bag when going through security! When I land on the ground, I try to get IV glutathione along with a Myers’ Cocktail of B vitamins, C, magnesium and calcium. My favorite place to get this done when in Southern California is The Hydration Room but you can often find clinics - even mobile clinics that will come to your hotel room - of doctors and nurses in most cities.
6) Supplement with NAD
This is a new hack for me, but one that a nutritionist friend of mine swears by for eliminating jet lag. I've been experimenting with nicotinamide riboside, a form of vitamin B3, separately for general anti-aging and mental clarity since every cell in our body needs NAD and find it very effective. Taking a small dose of 125mg works best for me but some studies show efficacy at 1000mg. Chromadex licenses use of NAD to a variety of companies including Life Extension and Jarrow, but it also has its own in-house brand, Tru Niagen. You can also take Nuchido, a new supplement I have been trialling that comes out of the UK and works on the same pathways.
7) Take a traveler's probiotic
Saccoromyces boulardii, aka, S. boulardii, is a great probiotic as it's been shown to reduce diarrhea, which can often afflict travelers. It also crowds out other bad gut inhabitants, like yeast, so a double win. There are hundreds of studies on its efficacy - just Google ‘Pubmed’ and ‘S boulardii’ to find all the scientific evidence. You can buy supplements at most health food stores. Here in Britain, OptiBac is a good choice and is available at Revital Health Shops in the Southeast, but you can equally source direct from OptiBac or on Amazon.
8) Get some sleep with melatonin
If you know it's night time at your destination when you get on the plane, try getting to sleep as soon as possible so you can adjust your body clock to local time quickly. I know that sounds easier said than done, but a very small dose of melatonin works for me. Sleep Mode is my favourite sleep enhancing supplement because it has a small amount of caprylic acid or C8 to keep me feeling sated so I don't wake due to hunger pangs and it also has less melatonin - only 300mcg vs 1-2mg in other supplements. A meta study done on melatonin and jet lag showed that doses of 500mcg were just as effective as those with 10x as much melatonin at 5mg. [5] Dr Satchin Panda, a sleep scientist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, says that by age 50, we are only making 1/10 of the melatonin we make at age 5, so supplementing won’t suppress our own production of melatonin that much, since by age 50, we’re hardly producing any anyhow.
In addition, when I'm on the ground, I use the hacks in my earlier article about getting good sleep to make sure my body clock adjusts as quickly as possible to my new time zone.
Everyone has their own jet lag hacks. What are yours? Share in the comments below!
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3047226/
[2] https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/86/1/151/2841140
[3] https://humancharger.com/research/
[4] https://news.uci.edu/2015/10/28/uci-study-finds-jet-lag-like-sleep-disruptions-spur-alzheimers-memory-learning-loss/
[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12076414
Photo credit: Andy Beales