The most reliable, time-tested “cure” for a case of mind-numbing jet lag is pretty much along the same lines as for a severe, head-splitting hangover.
Just stay home and don’t drink anything stronger than low-fat milk.
Of course, with that strategy you would miss seeing much of the planet’s special places. Or, an up-close and personal view of the inside of your floor-mounted, porcelain bathroom appliance.
As I have been intermittently reporting, I just got back from a dive trip to Fiji, which apparently is not really just around the corner.
At this point, I don’t clearly recall that anyone warned me that this trek would entail a three-hour drive for a one-hour flight, and then a ten-hour flight, which lead to a three-hour bus ride in the pouring rain on a windy island road, to get where we began a one-hour boat ride across a wind-whipped, lumpy sea, only to transfer to a rain-slicked small metal dingy, which took us almost all the way to the beach at the resort.
And, all of that doesn’t include the many hours spent at multiple airports, which includes getting X-rayed, magnetometered, patted and probed, and dizzy from watching the luggage carousel go round-and-round, while praying that my dive bag did not end up on Mt. Fuji instead of at our beach on Fiji.
The bottom line is, all that traveling added up to many hours across a multitude of time zones, which left us sleep deprived, succumbing to diet disasters, and generally mentally debilitated. Our bottom line was about 37 hours “pillow to pillow” (from the bed at our place to a bed at their place).
Or, as otherwise described: jet lagged.
By some strange happenstance, as if to taunt my compromised physical and mental state with preventive methods after it is too late, I came home to the latest edition of the Wellness Letter to which I subscribe. As if reading about getting in better shape will somehow trump poor eating and a lack of exercise.
One of the featured subjects for the month was, “Easing the Turbulence of Jet Lag.” You can link to the short article for yourself, but you have probably heard it all before:
1. Get to your destination late for eastward travel.
2. Before you leave, go to bed early for eastward travel and late for westward travel.
3. For a late flight, go right to sleep on the plane—as if you can ignore the constant stream of announcements, seat-belt demonstrations (REALLY…after all these years, you still have to show us this?), food and drink cart deliveries, and talkative seat neighbors.
4. “Drink enough.” (A lot more on that in a moment.)
5. Re-set your watch (assuming you are one of the three people on the airplane that even still wears a watch).
6. Expose yourself outside. (The last time I tried this suggested method, I promptly got arrested.)
7. Take drugs. Sleeping pills, maybe not. Melatonin, maybe yes, but who knows?
8. Ignore diet cures. (Gee, I thought that those dozen Cinnabons I bought at the airport WAS to prevent jet lag.)
Of course, a couple of those preventative strategies require some knowledge of whether you are traveling eastward or towards the west. It is my experience that smart phones, Garmin and Google have pretty much replaced whatever comprehension of navigation most people never had, in the first place.
In that case, I suggest just skipping directly to method No. 4.
Personally, the whole concept of crossing multiple time zones leaves me to avail myself to “drink enough.”
Our flight from LAX left on a Thursday evening. We arrived in Fiji on the subsequent Saturday morning. The flight was just under ten hours.
You do the math…what happened to most of Friday?
Did I mention that we flew on Friday the 13th? (Cue the Twilight Zone intro.)
On the return flight, we left Fiji on Saturday night, crossed the largest ocean on earth, and got home mid-day Saturday; yes, the same Saturday! In other words, we got home before we even left.
Talk about a rift in the space-time continuum. Anyone got Stephen Hawking’s phone number?
Is it any wonder why I “drink enough” while doing all this trans-global gallivanting?
We scuba divers log our dives for future reference—like, was it ten or twelve times I had to pee in my wetsuit during that dive?
So, for this trip, I decided to log my beverage consumption, just to make sure that I would “drink enough.”
- The night before we left I had a wee dram of whisky (as in Scotch).
- At our first airport, I ordered my requisite Bloody Mary (Absolut vodka, a double, as I recall).
- On the SWA flight to LAX, they had a special on a gin & tonic, so what else could I do?
- I quaffed a drinkable red wine to accompany the fine airport cuisine at LAX.
- On the long Air Pacific flight, I sampled Fijian Bounty Red Label dark rum, which the label claims is “over-proofed.” I imbibed this high octane spirit, only slightly diluted with orange juice.
- En route we stopped at the Hare Krishna-inspired, Indian-influenced little town of Sigatoka where I purchased a bottle of the aforementioned Bounty rum.
As you can discern, world travel is not for the faint of heart, or for that matter, anyone leaning towards temperance.
Thank goodness, I do not suffer from either affliction.
