Beating Jet Lag

Happy trails to you without jet lag

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You've planned your trip so you won't waste a moment of your vacation hunting down headlamp batteries or stove fuel. Yet you arrive on your long-awaited journey to Pakistan (or Thailand or Russia) and spend days in a haze of lethargy AND insomnia—the demons of jet leg.

The symptoms of this circadian-rhythm disruption are well known: exhaustion, headache, and dehydration (dry eyes, throat, nose, even skin), disorientation, anxiety, indigestion—even impaired coordination—all, according to NASA, requiring roughly a day of recovery for every time zone you crossed. (While north-south travelers may suffer from air travel, these journeys do not cause jet lag.) And the World Health Organization links jet lag with travelers' lowered resistance to infections such as those that cause diarrhea.

Potential remedies abound. The book Overcoming Jet Lag, by Dr. Charles F. Ehret and Lynne Waller Scanlon, calls for consuming caffeine and high-protein and high-carbohydrate meals at certain times of the day and in certain amounts, depending on the number of time zones you'll be crossing. Another remedy—the Jet Lag Light Visor—is designed around a light-exposure schedule specific to your itinerary. And those are only a few.

Despite the hype, the Mayo Clinic reports there is still no single pill or remedy for jet lag. Flying east is purportedly harder than flying west—but that fact too seems "up in the air"; just talk to countless westward travelers who've been wracked by lag. A major U.S. study showed that age and flying at night may exacerbate jet lag. The greatest sufferers may be people living in humid areas (airplane air is dry) or at low elevations (cabins are pressurized at 8,000 feet), people who have difficulty sleeping, are slaves to routine, or who are not fit or rested.