Jet Lag: How to Recover Faster?

If you’re not a seasoned traveler making long journeys, jet lag is likely to show up. How do you fight it?

Smart Habits for Traveling

Where do you plan to travel? If it’s toward the east, that’s good news for your body, because recovery is much easier when you travel toward the west: the lengthening of the days better matches what we call our circadian clock. It’s indeed the feeling of a misalignment between our body’s internal clock and our environment that creates jet lag.

But you can not only fight but also prevent part of this desynchronization that creates this fatigue. American researchers from Northwestern University (USA)(1) have indeed identified the good habits to adopt when traveling to recover faster.

Internal Clocks Out of Sync

“The circadian system in mammals includes a network of endogenous oscillators, ranging from the brain’s central clock to the peripheral clocks of other organs, the researchers explain. These clocks are tightly coordinated to orchestrate physiological and behavioral rhythmic functions.” First finding: aging has an influence on the synchronization of these internal clocks.

Of course, sunlight and the number of hours of time shift directly influence the effects of jet lag. But if our brain accounts for that, the peripheral organs, they calibrate more to meal timing. Using a mathematical model, the researchers defined the interactions between the central clock, based on daylight, and our peripheral clock, which influences various organs, founded on feeding.

A Hearty Breakfast, Earlier in the Day

Reducing the effects of jet lag would therefore come not only from re-setting as much as possible during the return flight, but also through our stomach. Thus, simply having a heartier breakfast earlier in the morning, once you’ve arrived in your current time zone, helps to overcome jet lag. Conversely, avoid eating too late in the evening, or eating at shifted times.

Thus, thanks to their mathematical model, these American researchers demonstrated “the potential of the feeding–fasting cycle as an effective intervention to accelerate circadian re-entrainment.” Of course, if you pull all-nighters around the world during your travels, recovery upon return will be all the more challenging…