In my decade of travel writing, I never really put much effort into “beating” jet lag — despite the toll it routinely took on my trips abroad. Sometimes I would do the bare minimum, like avoiding alcohol or coffee on the flight over, or try to sleep when the hour was appropriate.
But rock bottom usually found me on day two. I have many blurry memories of 4 a.m. fugue states, and trying to peel my leadened body out of hotel beds at 11 a.m.
This spring, though, I was finally desperate enough to try something new. I had an important — and short — work trip to Paris and I couldn’t waste a minute of it. Plus I’m getting older, which Indira Gurubhagavatula, a professor of medicine in the Division of Sleep Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, said can make jet lag worse.
“The evidence shows that it is harder to acclimate as we get older,” she said in an email. “Our circadian clock and its responsiveness to light gets weaker, and the amount of melatonin generated under dim light also decreases with age.”
So, driven by fear, I downloaded Timeshifter, an app I had been hearing about for years.
After that trip and one other, I’m kicking myself for having waited so long.
In 2018, Timeshifter was released with the promise to reduce jet lag using “science-backed tips.” Those tips are delivered to users via a personalized “jet lag plan” that’s generated using their trip information and a few personal details (i.e. age, sleep patterns). Travelers can then follow the plan’s advice on how to take “small actions at specific times” to allegedly alleviate jet lag symptoms.
A week before my flight, I generated my plan. (The first trip is free, then customers can pay $9.99 for their next trip, or sign up for an unlimited subscription for $24.99 per year.) I wasn’t necessarily skeptical of the app, but as a self-diagnosed Type-B procrastinator, I was worried about my own ability to stick to new habits leading up to a trip.
But the tips were straightforward: Go to sleep a little earlier, wake up a little earlier — not for the full week; adjustments started a couple of days before departure. I got notifications on when to stop having caffeine and when I should get (and stop getting) light. I could tap on any part of my plan to read more about the logic behind the advice.
For example, regarding light exposure, the app told me that “light is the most powerful factor in resetting the circadian rhythms and reducing jet lag.”
Sleep experts told me the same thing.
“The most powerful resetting tool is light,” said Clara B. Peek, an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, whose lab studies disruptions of the circadian clock.
“The ideal situation is that, when you land, you get good light exposure in the mornings of the places that you’re at,” said Tony Cunningham, director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Harvard Medical School. “It can expedite your adjustment by two or three days just by really focusing on getting that good light.”
When my red-eye landed in Paris, I checked Timeshifter and saw I only had a short window to have any caffeine. The idea of not having a nice cafe au lait in the city center was a bummer, but not the end of the world, either. So I had a paper cup of burned espresso at an airport chain and made my way to the train.
The next morning, I forced myself awake at the recommended time and took stock of the process. Peek defined jet lag as what happens during the transition period “when your body is sort of catching up and getting back into sync with the environment,” she said. My body seemed to be catching up better than usual. It was far less painful than trips past. A heavier tired feeling hit me in the afternoon, but my rock bottom never came. I hadn’t beat jet lag, but it was certainly more mild.
It hadn’t felt like I’d done all that much to deserve the relief. I’d largely followed Timeshifter’s advice, but not precisely, and it had only been a few days of effort. But I guess the little nudges added up.
Cunningham said not to worry if you don’t follow a perfect routine ahead of a big trip.
“Even if you did nothing to prepare in advance, it’s not too late,” he said. “You can still do things when you land to help you adjust.”
Namely, he added, “force yourself to get up and get sun exposure.”
Jamie Zeitzer, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine who has been studying circadian rhythms for about 30 years, also vouched for a some-effort-is-better-than-none approach. In fact, the worst thing you can do is worry about perfection.
“There was a study done several years ago that was looking at the biggest predictors of jet lag,” Zeitzer said. “And what predicted it more than things that you would expect — like how far you’ve traveled or how many time zones you’ve traveled — was actually your fear of jet lag.”
He continued: “If you’re sitting there going, ‘Oh my God, I always get terrible jet lag,’ you’ve put a major psychological impediment into getting good sleep. Now you’ve convinced yourself that you can’t.”
Another bad thing you can do? Sleep the day away when you land.
“You’re avoiding light that will help you the best,” Cunningham said.
None of the sleep experts I talked to use Timeshifter, and you could probably mitigate jet lag without it, but I was a convert.
A couple of months after Paris, I paid $9.99 for another plan ahead of a vacation to northern Italy and followed the tips even more carefully. I woke up for breakfast without that why-are-my-eyelids-glued-shut feeling and fell asleep at a reasonable hour. And in between, I got plenty of Alpine sunshine. The gelato didn’t hurt, either.
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