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Jet Lag - and the Misery of Air Travel
Who is there among us who hasn’t suffered the miseries of jet lag? I guess there must be some lucky souls who don’t. Babies and infants usually don’t, but then their puir wee ear drums suffer so from the change in air pressure they howl loud enough to puncture everybody else’s. Almost everyone is affected to some degree and it just adds to that miserable experience that is air travel today. Amazing to recall there was a time it was unusual and exciting and one actually looked forward to a journey on a jet plane. But Oh! That was another time and long ago........
On the other hand, the romance of rail is alive and well. To move around, have a half decent meal, converse with other human beings in an atmosphere that does not reek and is not oxygen deficient, and be in motion across the landscape still retains a mystique. But you can’t cross the oceans on a train and ocean liners take too long. I sometimes dream about airships though. What if the Hindenberg disaster hadn’t happened? What if we could travel the skies like human beings at around 400 mph, quietly and without pollution and without the danger of fire? We wouldn’t have to turn great swathes of countryside into slabs of concrete either. Apparently all of the above are technically possible but unlikely to happen. Much too much is invested in the aerospace industry and everything associated with it for that.
Herb Morrison, the American radio reporter witnessing the Hindenberg conflagration back in 1937 Lakehurst, NJ sobbed into the microphone “Oh, the suffering humanity, Ladies and Gentlemen. Oh, the suffering humanity.....” . Anyone who has seen film of this disaster in conjunction with the radio report can’t but fail to be moved by the horror and tragedy of it. The circumstances may not be as tragic, but it would really be something if the people who run our airlines and airports paid a bit more attention to the long-enduring misery of the suffering humanity that fills the skies today. Don’t hold your breath. Quite apart from the vested interests, and given the way the world is going right now, it doesn’t look like things are going to get a whole lot better any time soon. Bigger planes, not faster ones, carrying more people, with more security and formalities at either end. That’s the future in store for us.
They Don’t Care
Whatever they say, clearly airlines do not feel the need to respond to anything their passengers say and are none too concerned about their well being either. To cram so many human beings into such a pitiful amount of space for so many hours is clearly inhumane. So is the appalling quality of air circulated. It is now almost routine for people to become infected with respiratory conditions, even on journeys of a few hours. Airlines won’t listen to you, they know they can get away with almost anything. They divide and rule us through fare and ego manipulation and they co-opt the pathetic consumer organisations that exist. Some odious airline beancounter somewhere works out how many more dollars they can make by treating us like cattle while he travels 1st Class and for free. No, let’s face it, the only people the airlines have to listen to are the regulatory bodies governing the industry, but their lobbying power is potent.
Jet lag is an unavoidable fact if you fly and cross time zones. But, it doesn’t have to be anything like as bad as it is. It is aggravated many times over by the disgraceful conditions to which the airlines subject us. Nothing is going to get any better unless we, the consumer, become a good deal more active and effective in representing our views. A few class actions in the US for inhumane treatment would be a good place to start. But more directly, every one of us who flies should make a fuss to our political representatives about lack of space and poor air. More acceptable standards for both should be set and enforced. If these two factors alone were addressed jet lag would be much less of a problem.
Worst of All Possible Worlds....
In the days I travelled a lot more than I do now I tried more or less anything, from booze and sleeping pills to meditation, lots of water and uplifting tapes. There are two issues here. First is to survive and get through the purgatory of a long haul flight and second to avoid or minimise the jet lag at the other end. The worst possible thing is to have an awful flight AND terrible jet lag. Some people are fortunate and can sleep on aeroplanes. I am not one of them. A miserable doze about an hour before touch down is usually it. If I read or watch the inflight movies for much of the trip, by the time I land I am in a terrible state. My eyes are on stalks and my brain mush. Of course alcohol is about the worst thing you can do to wile away the hours. Stuffing yourself with the disgusting food they dish up is going to bung you up for weeks. It all reeks with the same sad sour smell of pre-prepared micro-waved food peculiar to airlines, however it is presented and whichever class you fly. You emerge from the process smelling like a goat.
Drugs won’t do it, either. The best trip I ever had was from London to Hong Kong. My doctor pal from the Foreign Correspondent’s Club in Hong Kong gave me some great sleeping pills. They were just right, they put you to sleep and you didn’t feel the least bit drowsy when you woke. I embarked at Heathrow, told the stewardess I didn’t want any food, dropped the tab and next I knew I awoke, bright and alert as we were descending into Hong Kong fourteen hours later. I was over the moon! I really thought I’d got it taped at last. Wrong! I may have had the best flight ever, but I had the worst bout of jet lag in living memory. It lasted 6 days and nights during which I was completely out of it.
Out to Lunch in LAX
The trip I dreaded most was the trans-Pacific flight from Hong Kong to LAX, which I used to make frequently. As most everybody knows, flying west to east makes jet lag a lot worse. Don’t ask me why. Flying against the rotation of the earth, into the sun or moon, some good reason like that, but if you gain a day - you feel like it’s knocked a week off your allotted span. You invariably arrive first thing in the morning and while it may be bright and sunny up there, as you look down you may see the ocean, you may see the sierras, but you don’t see the town. No, that’s covered in a nasty off-white opaque smog. And under that is where I was going to be spending the next week or so. I would emerge from LAX feeling disoriented and just awful with the whole day yawning before me. Next day I would have to get into some serious meetings, knowing that I was in for another 3 days and nights before I would be feeling remotely normal again.
I decided I had to do better than this and began to look for a practical solution. What I found out is that there really isn’t one. I couldn’t avoid jet lag altogether but I could mitigate the effects considerably. It may be possible to avoid jet lag completely by changing your body clock, circadian rhythms over a period of time before you fly and I have heard experts maintain this. But I don’t really believe it and for me, and most people I reckon, it’s far too complicated to be a practical solution.
Melatonin is It......!
What I found out was by taking melatonin in a certain way and adopting certain measures while in flight I could get through the first day at my destination and sleep reasonably well the first night. The next day I would be able to operate pretty well in the morning, feeling a little tired, but not paranoid or disoriented, as the afternoon wore on. An early night and by the second day I was back to normal, but happy to turn in early for a couple of days more. I’ve fine-tuned it over the years to fit other times and other places.
Here’s what I found.
Sleep on arrival: if arriving before noon, get to where you’re going putter about a bit and then go to bed and sleep for 3 hours. You almost certainly won’t sleep longer than that and you mustn’t. Use an alarm clock if necessary. This will take the edge off your exhaustion but will not stop you sleeping later. After that, get up potter around some more and go have dinner. If you drink alcohol don’t do more than two glasses of wine or the equivalent.
Melatonin: before you go to bed take 6 - 10 mg of melatonin. Then take 6 - 10mg of melatonin before going to bed for two more nights. Then reduce to 1 - 3 mg per night, which is what I always take anyway. If you don’t want to take melatonin on a regular basis, it is a major antioxidant and antiaging agent, just stop after three nights. To which I have added one further refinement, which makes it all work even better. What I now do is take one 3mg cap of melatonin and a 5mg time-release cap of melatonin for the three nights. I find even a small dose of melatonin makes me sleepy very quickly and, provided I don’t read myself through it, I’m off to slumberland real fast. But a one-time hit often doesn’t last the night through, so a further time-release cap does the trick nicely. It is hard to OD on melatonin and on anything below a gram it’s impossible. If you find you are still sleepy when you wake up just reduce the dose. Melatonin is not like a sedative, it wears off quickly as you become active.
I’m not going to give you any obvious advise like buying a First or Business Class ticket with seats that become full length beds, other than to say if you can -Do It! It’ll make more difference than anything else you can do. Next best is to keep an eye open for those wonderful times when 3 or 5 seats lie vacant back of economy. Stake your claim as fast as you can, but be prepared to be a bit pushy and thick-skinned about doing it. Not for the fainthearted this, there will be competitors to outmanoeuvre, cabin crew to cajole or browbeat and disapproval from those who’ve not got the bottle.
You Know this......
The following is pretty routine advise while in flight but it really does make a difference.
- Don’t eat a heavy meal and drink too much before you leave.
- Don’t drink alcohol inflight or keep it to a minimum.
- Don’t take a sleeping pill and don’t take melatonin inflight.
- Don’t watch more than one in-flight movie.
- Don’t listen to the audio channels much, if at all.
- Don’t read for more 90 minutes at a time and not more than 4 hours in any trip max.
- Don’t eat too much. Better still, avoid the garbage they give you or pick from it selectively. Best of all, bring your own healthy finger food to snack on.
- Do drink a lot of water. Bring a couple of your own bottles as most airlines invariably run out and you end up with chlorinated tap water.
- Do get up walk about and do stretches at least every 3 hours.
- If there is a stopover, invest in a shower if the transit area has one. You’ll feel much more able to face the onward slog.
- Bring a companion. One of the best of all aids is to travel with someone you like and get on with, as hours slip past in pleasant conversation.
- To avoid: hell in the sky is a stranger next to you who insists on talking no matter what, or even worse those odd people who make kinda internal hawking noises somewhere in their sinuses or throats. Almost all means of discouraging or avoiding such people are legitimate.
You could try to meditate through it all I suppose.
A New Age friend of mine once told me she felt it was the best place of all to meditate because you were closer to the stars. It’s a nice idea, but so far as I know my friend had never flown outside of the US and even then rarely. So what did she know? Whenever I tried it, it worked partially at best. It’s worth a go though. I’ve also tried tapes of all kinds but in the end they really don’t make much difference. A good audiobook can help waste a couple of hours, but that’s about it.
‘ Cos the Army Says So!
As I say, most of it is pretty obvious stuff. Other than that, the thing to know is that melatonin used in the right way really does work. It’s not just me telling you, it’s the US Army, so - Lissen Up! After the Gulf War Army air crews were roundly used, abused and sleep deprived. They found 10mg used more or less in the way described had them back to normal quicker than anything else.
There is one other thing we can all do that would make an enormous difference. Like Peter Finch in the movie “Network” , I want you all to get up, go to your nearest airline office and political representative, put your face in their face and yell at the top of your voice “I’M FED UP & I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE!”. Bon Voyage y’all.
Insert Quote :
It’s a twofold problem. First you’ve got to get through a long flight, then you want to avoid getting jet lag. You’ve failed miserably if you have a lousy flight and then you get jet lag. Here’s what you can do.....
ParacelsusAsia
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