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Mentor
I use to travel to Europe and Asia frequently. I was told to “not buy into the jet lag” by someone who flew even more often than me. It seemed redic at first, but it’s true, the more you stop thinking about it, the better off you are. I also break the rule of trying to stay up on the first day. If I get there and I’m exhausted, I’ll go ahead and sleep like 10 hours till morning and that helps me a ton.
Blue light supressing glasses for 2 hours before sleep, if a redeye flight, melatonin 5-10mg, night shades
I do 30 min of cardio before I go to sleep,30 after i wake up, get some sun during the day. Don't drink on the flight and if I'm sleepy even the evening I'll take a nap. I eat at a caloric deficit, supplements like omega 3, zinc, magnesium, vitamin D3, K, Bcomp, CoQ.
I'm guessing it's not going to be sustainable but this has kept me highly performant through the 3 months I was doing EU-US every week.
One more thing - skip the meals if you can. This was very hard for me to do because they do a nice job with options and plating on business class but I'd typically eat just the mixed nuts and cheese plate. I cut back on sugars, carbs and alcohol - made a huge difference
Melatonin to sleep better on planes and in country. Works wonders.
It is alway better to be able to cope with natural methods (inc melatonin, gaba), I agree with blue light blockers. You can also try sleep yoga, herbal teas, meditation… Severely limiting food intake in general and especially 2-3 hours before sleep also helps.
You can try a more Rx oriented approach.
I am not advocating for it. Just giving options.
For flights where I need to sleep: Zolpidem for flights less than 6-7 hours (ex: us-eu). Benzos for flights where i can have 7 hours of sleep. (us to asia or south america). These are also useful to reset the first night after I land. I skip food service and take the pill and go directly to sleep once the plane has stabilized. Be careful of the side effects and addiction with long term use. Talk to your doctor.
For flights during the day (ex: eu-us), just take a good nap and keep awake until late evening. Stabilize with a pill the first or second night if needed.
I have been trying different things over the years. My take is that you really have to experiment and see how your body reacts. Age will also change things. We are all different when it comes to sleep.
Im in between the US and Europe most weeks. My main approaches:
- stay in between timezones biologically to reduce changes, so I start days 4am rather than 8am in the US
- keep the bad day of changing over at one day by immediately living in new timezone, always by forcing myself to stay up late- forcing to go to sleep never works
- on planes i rest with eyes clised even if I cant sleep, it helps
Other than that agree its terrible and I hope to reduce amount of timezone travel moving forward
Move to Europe. You can do plenty of international travelling in the same time zone 😉
[obviously not helping but I was literally thinking when I first read it: “what’s the issue with international travel?!” which reminds me on what we are being anchored to]
Spend a little time understanding how your sleep cycle is managed and how melatonin works. It’s not a sleeping pill. But if you take it and then go to sleep, when you awaken, your body will mark that as your new “morning” and start a new day/night cycle
At Accenture, we travel cheaply. Surprisingly, this has a huge benefit. When you’re in the middle seat near the back of the plane, you find yourself awake the entire time. For short trips overseas, it really helps you adjust quickly to the local time.
Intra EU I'm guessing ? Anything above 3hr is business
Melatonine to adjust body clock to local time + compression socks on flights to reduce “heavy legs” syndrome