When we came back from this latest trip, I thought I had mastered jetlag. I had ultimately abandoned all of my well-thought out strategies to handle the condition, tossing them out of the unsurprisingly loose-fitting passenger doors of our Boeing 787-10. The truth is, I can’t follow the strategies. I know I should stay awake or go to sleep, but inevitably I end up doing the opposite, and my red-rimmed eyes only end up staring at my watch in desperation, my butt cheeks clenched for another agonizing few hours of flight, and my fingers tapping out another movie to watch on the seatback screen. Every bit of me dreading the few days of the topsy-turvy internal time to come.
The day after landing, I thought the issue was vanquished. I wasn’t at all tired. It was the late morning, and the family and I seemed prepared to deal with the rest of the day, as bright and chipper as we ever are.
But there’s a problem with living in Brussels. Already it’s quite north, so the winter days are quite limited as it is, but on top of that, it’s raining and overcast almost all the time.
So, when we woke up the next morning to darkness, I thought nothing of it. I must be night, I’ll just sleep for a bit longer.
And longer.
And then it was eleven o’clock. But which eleven o’clock? I could have sworn I went to bed later than that. But maybe earlier. Or wait—that’s the morning, isn’t it? But where’s the sun?! And why isn’t my kid jumping up and down on my bed?
I peered into his room. He was sound asleep. I looked out the window. It was a typically meh Brussels day, a hazy, muted glow from the thick layer of heavy grey stratus clouds. Victory was not mine. I should have followed my damned strategy.
The curse of time
Jet lag, as most of us veteran travelers know all to well, is when your body has physically moved across the earth while your mind has failed to catch up. We flew from Colorado to Belgium, and our subconscious minds are still in Colorado, controlling those invisible managerial mechanisms of our body, ensuring that our blood cells and bacteria counts are following the right timecards.
The internal body is somewhat incapable of knowing that it has moved halfway around this giant ball called a “planet” and that it must change its schedule accordingly. There are natural outside indicators of requiring these changes—namely, the Sun can rise and shine, blasting through the eyes and indicating that the schedules are somewhat off and an adjustment is required.
As we are in Belgium, then what of the Sun? It fails in such a duty, and we are left tired and miserable, unsure of what the “day” is and the “night”, a condition already existing without the jetlag, but now much more greatly amplified.
But what if I told you things didn’t have to be this way?!
Jet lag fandango
There are ways to mitigate this time-curse. They are not for everyone and certainly not for the weak of heart. These time-tested, winning strategies are for those globe-spanning flights that are certain to whack out your circadian rhythms like a mafia thug who’s upturned his mattresses. Had I followed some of my own advice here, it wouldn’t have taken me a week to recover. Or if I were living in Spain rather than this desolate, Vitamin D-deprived land.
The time of arrival is the most important thing to keep in mind when seeking to overcome jet lag. This defines how you approach your strategy. Do you land in the morning or in the night? When you know this and keep this in mind, then you’re already on your first step to dominating your rhythm and forcing it into place like pieces on a locksmith game.
Morning arrival
Arrivals in the morning can be tough, and these are by and large the worst for me. This is what threw me off this last round of travels, because the older I get, the harder it is for me to follow my recommendations. Like most advice in life, this stuff works best for when you’re young (which is also, ironically, the time in your life when you’re least likely to listen to advice).
Sleep
Get as much sleep as you can. I know it’s going to feel weird. Likely you left at 10 in the morning, you’re flying for nine hours, and you’re arriving at 11 in the morning. It’s weird. It’s freakish. You’ve got to do all sorts of calculus operations in your head to get a hold of it, but you’ve just got to accept it. Go to sleep as soon as possible.
On these long, over-the-ocean flights, they normally try to put you to sleep anyway. They toy with the oxygen levels, dim the lights, and serve free alcohol. Anything to make you more likely to sleep that doesn’t include giving you a comfortable place to snooze.
If you’re short, then rolling up in a ball and blasting your Zzzz’s probably isn’t a big deal, but for those long-legged kings like myself… we’ve got some issues on the comfort wagon. Every time I let my leg straighten out, it gets kicked by some dufus stumbling down to the toilets.
Alcohol
Nearly every international, ocean-crossing flight offers free alcohol of some kind. Take it and down it. Usually, it’s just wine and beer offered. Wine is better because you won’t have to pee so much with its higher concentration of the good stuff. Enough drinks will help you pass out, even while those aisle prowling bastards are smashing your leg repeatedly.
You can always use Dramamine or whatever your sleepy potion of preference is. Bottoms up and let it roll!
Post-flight mitigation
If you do manage to sleep, it will jolt your clock into place when you wake up and land in the morning. I would then recommend a short nap around one or two, coffee, and then force yourself to stay awake until as late as possible. When you do finally go to sleep (as late as possible), be careful not to oversleep on the next day. The sooner you can force yourself back on a schedule, the better!
Evening arrival
An evening can be a real slog depending on how many connections you’ve made, but in total I prefer such arrivals. This is mainly because now that I’m a quadragenarian, I can’t really sleep on planes anymore, no matter how much beer I’ve had. It used to be when I was younger, I could sleep anywhere. Planes, buses, park benches (even the ones with those spikey bum deterrent rails)—nothing was a match for my sleepiness! But now I just end up in a half-drunken daze, slobbering over my cheese fudge while watching Deadpool for a second time since I was too sleepy to understand the jokes.
But when I’m not trying to sleep, not being sleepy is no problem! I happily sip my beer, catch up on all my movie watching guilt-free, and head out of the flight, running on some 30 hours being awake. The absolute best is if I can catch a late evening departure with the late evening arrival. Heavenly. Only rarely works out like that, but I digress.
My methods?
Coffee
Of course, I still drink that free beer. But when they roll down the aisle post meal, I stock up on coffees, too. Inevitably, this forces me to get up and walk around (to pee), which gets my blood going, which keeps me awake. I advise the same for you. Drink it up and pee it out and you’ll stay awake the whole flight.
Post-flight mitigation
One might be tempted to go to sleep immediately. Don’t do it! You’ve got to wait just a few more hours to top off the exhaustion. Once midnight hits, hit the sheets with full escape. You’ll sleep well into the morning, but also here it’s important not to oversleep, as I mentioned before. Set that alarm for eight hours later.
Dealing with kids
If you have a five-year-old like me, then you probably know that kids have no idea about the importance of sleep. Most adults don’t even know about that. But unlike adults, kids need about 10 to 12 hours of sleep. And in Belgium, they also don’t seem to realize that the Sun has very little to do with “daytime” or “nighttime”.
Luckily, with kids, their rhythms are a little more easily manipulated. We made the mistake of letting our kiddo play his tablet and watch the seatback television on the way over to the United States. The next day he was suffering greatly and out of rhythm since we made it to our destination in the mid-morning and he had had no sleep.
But on the way back we knew better.
As soon as the lights went out, we unplugged all his equipment. “Okay, it’s sleepy time now.”
And the usual argument: “But Shawn isn’t going to sleep!”
So, I read to him, waited for him to pass out, and boom, beer and Deadpool for me.
Consequences
If they’re not able to sleep and they balance wrong, you can have a difficult first few days of adjustment. Which is why I always recommend planning a few days of padding before the real big vacation events begin (like skiing) or before the return to school. They’ll definitely need that time to adjust.
What can happen while they’re rhythms are out of whack? A kid can get lethargy, drag around, wake constantly at night (and keep you up), and even get a low fever. Yes, fever, because ultimately their bodies are super confused. Well, our guy got a fever when we went to Colorado, but that also might have been altitude contributing to that.
Whatever, he got better, and that’s all that counts.
