Four Non-Supplement Ways to Crush Jet Lag
If you’re reading this, it means my wife and I are on vacation, three time zones from where we usually live. Or, likely, you’re going on or considering going on a trip that traverses multiple time zones. That means a couple of things: 1) I’ll be doing many obscure things to shift my circadian rhythm, and 2) My wife will watch, point, and laugh at me as I do all of the obscure things. Just kidding! She’s incredibly supportive, except for my sardine habits. We’ll be traveling three hours ahead of time, meaning my goal is to shift my circadian rhythm forward, sort of into the future.
There will be four environmental factors I’ll be focusing on to shift my body three hours ahead. In order of importance:
- Light
The sun is the best signal to communicate time; your body is meant to be up when it’s out, and when it’s not out — dark — your body is meant to rest. We also know that blue light from your environment — light bulbs, overhead lamps, etc. — helps keep you awake and that the absence of blue light tells your body to start getting ready for sleep.
The more natural light you see earlier in the day, the more tired you’ll feel at night. The less artificial light you see at night, the more tired you’ll feel before bed.
For me, that means on the day we fly and shift time zones, I’ll be waking up as the sun rises and trying to get as much outside time as I can within the first 90 minutes of the day. I’ll walk, work out outside, and read on our patio. Once we land at our destination, I’ll put on my blue-light-blocking glasses, dim the lights if possible, and do everything I can to minimize the artificial lighting. (If you don’t have blue light glasses, that’s okay. Just really emphasize getting natural light in the morning).
2. Temperature
Raise your hand if you love sleeping when you’re sweating. Bueller? Bueller? Ah, yes, no hands. Why do many of us sweat in the middle of the night? There are many reasons, one of which is that our core body temperature is too high by the time we go to bed — more on why that is under the “Food” point. We want it to be cool in the first 3/4 of the night and progressively warmer about 90 minutes before we wake up. How do we achieve that?
Ensure the place where you’re sleeping is “cool,” and not like your former high school math teacher cool, I mean somewhere between 65–68 degrees Fahrenheit. If you’re at a hotel or Airbnb, that’ll probably be easier to control than if you’re staying with your parents or someone else other than you who owns the home. My wife and I will be in the ladder situation, so I’ll manipulate my nutrition and exercise to ensure my core temperature is cool before bed — points to come now.
3. Movement
Exercise raises your core body temperature, and the astute reader who remembers that there’s a particular time of day when we don’t want our core body temperature elevated: as we’re going to bed — don’t worry, I forgot to, and I’m the one writing! But we’d want it elevated in the morning to help us wake up, with exercise — cardio, strength, baby carries, etc. — being a phenomenal tool for that. Exercise also generates lots of adenosine, a molecule that builds up throughout the day as we take on stressors and challenges, making us feel tired (Caffeine partially works by blocking the buildup of adenosine; if your block the molecule that makes you feel tired, you’ll feel more awake).
If you’ve ever exercised close to bedtime and found it hard to sleep, that’s partially because of the increased core body temperature.
That’s why many outlets recommend you avoid “strenuous” exercise several hours before bed.
On travel day, I’ll get up and go for a short walk to get some natural light, build up some adenosine, and then I’ll get a workout in shortly after, earlier than usual. I’ll also try to get extra walking in throughout the day to build up adenosine further. (Step hack: Walking around your terminal while waiting for your flight works well if you can manage it. I always found it funny that we sit in the airport to wait to sit on the plane…). These movement behaviors will help ensure my body is “tired” but the end of the day in our new time zone!
4. Food
Regarding circadian rhythm shifting, it’s just as important, if not more, to focus on when you’re eating. I’ve seen the intermittent fasting (IF) crazy do a number on people’s sleep, including the writer of this article. Why? Twofold: 1) Cortisol peaks in the morning, and if you stack that with not eating for 16–20 hours + having coffee, you’ve got a cortisol dump. Cortisol is the mortal enemy of melatonin, and we need melatonin to ensure sleep quality. Cortisol high, melatonin low, and vice versa (It’s far more nuanced than that, but that works for now). 2) When people do IF, when do they usually eat their biggest meal? Dinner. Aka, several hours before bed. Eating such a large meal so close to sleepy time significantly raises our body temperature — digestion takes work. Yay, gut health! And then we try to sleep with all the ruckus in our stomachs, and va la! You get sweaty.
To help keep my body temperature cool before sleep, I’ll try to have dinner be my smallest meal of the day, and I aim to avoid eating 2–3 hours before bed. I will also eat an early breakfast to help control the cortisol response. On travel day, I’ll aim to eat breakfast that corresponds to the time we’ll be eating breakfast in our new time zone, i.e., on vacation, I anticipate we’ll eat our first meal around 9 AM, so I’ll try to eat breakfast at 6 AM in our local time zone.
In recap:
I’ll be getting lots of natural light the morning of the travel day, and wear blue-light blockers within one hour of my intended bedtime
I’ll eat smaller dinners and avoid eating within 2–3 hours of bedtime to ensure my core body temperature has decreased since we won’t have our SleepMe.
On travel day, I’ll work out first thing in the morning and try to be conscious of my step count to help build up some adenosine, and I’ll also have my first meal several hours earlier than normal to mimic the time we’ll be eating in our new time zone.
Amongst all we just discussed, is there a place for supplements and other exogenous compounds? 100%. Especially if you’re going to be traveling across 7+ time zones in one day, hard to do that on exercise and light habits alone. That’s where you can begin to use things such as Phosphatidylserine, Ashwagandha, and TINY doses of melatonin.
That topic requires an entirely separate article 😉
