Ahh, travel. Is there anything better than leaving the status quo behind and heading off to a foreign land? For some, maybe. But for those of us who’ve been bitten by the travelbug, there really isn’t anything that compares to the feeling of an impending journey.
As wonderful as exploring distant lands can be, usually the worst part of any trip is the actual step(s) to getting there (wherever that may be). In particular, jet lag can be a real b*tch to deal with when jetsetting through multiple time zones. As such, there is no shortage of advice on how to cope with this unfortunate side effect (stay hydrated, sleep on the plane, etc), including some helpful tips courtesy of BA’s jet lag calculator.
According to BA’s scientific site:
Jet lag occurs when the body clock is disrupted by crossing a number of time zones. The symptoms can include fatigue, disorientation and an inability to sleep.
The “calculator” has you input your regular wake up time, whether you “usually sleep well,” the current time for your destination, and the current time @ your home. Once you click “advice,” the a popup appears with some relatively (obvious) helpful information about how to use light (“Light is important because it is one of the primary cues that the body clock uses to maintain it’s link with the outside world.”) and adjust your eating schedule to mitigate jet lag symptoms.
Admittedly, it’s not the most useful web app in the world, but considering the advice that its spits out comes from “the UK’s leading sleep expert” it might be worth a try.
Hmm, everybody on the ‘Net seems to be referring people to that BA jet lag calculator or the one at Bodyclock.com, and that’s a disappointment. Both of them skip over the vital data of “What time of day does your flight leave?” and “When does it arrive?” – and both of them recommend only “Seek light” and “Avoid light,” which are almost completely ineffectual at combatting jet lag.
The information I’m seeking is the information needed for *real* jet lag management, information that ought to be the obvious focus:
1. Whether to sleep en route or stay awake;
2. Whether to force oneself to “burn it through” to late evening at one’s destination after arrival, or to succumb to fatigue and just crash immediately.
There is a virtually insurmountable confusion point for those of us who are epistemologically inept, or maybe just mathematically inept, in puzzling out the relativity among the variables of: direction of travel, clock times at departure and arrival points, real duration of flight vs. time gained or lost due to time zones, how those relate to your normnal sleep cycle. etc.
Mental pictures of that weird thing Einstein was going on about with what a ball dropped out the window of a moving train would look like to a stationary observer alongside the tracks vs. the guy sitting on the train who’d dropped the ball, etc. A few minutes of that and the mind tends to get surly, rebel, and begin demanding beer.
Maybe experience and experimentation is indeed the only way around this…?
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I’m currently using HostICan, but to be honest I’ve had a so-so experience with them. Inexpensive, yes. But reliability has been an issue on multiple occasions.