As a book publisher who travels the world, Leslie Adams is all too familiar with the ills of jet lag. He’s tried everything to beat it, from steam baths and sipping martinis to homeopathic pills–and none helped. The latest device: taping flashlights under his knees during a 40-hour plane trip to Mongolia. (Don’t ask.)
“My friends think I’m crazy,” says Adams, chief executive of Palladium Press in Birmingham, Ala. But after years of nodding off at his desk following long trips, he insists no treatment is too drastic. “I’ve suffered,” he says. “Bad.”
He may not have to suffer much longer. After years of treating jet lag about as seriously as lost baggage, the travel industry is coming to the aid of sleepy sojourners. In the last year, some airlines have launched remedies ranging from in-flight spa treatments to “noise-cancelling” headsets.
Boeing has considered installing special lights on planes to help reset travelers’ body clocks. And for the first time, hotels are waking up to the problem too–offering everything from jet-lag tea to a “sensory deprivation” float tank at the Four Seasons in Singapore.
All this comes at a time of record international travel–and more frustration than ever about the symptoms of jet lag, which include not only grogginess and indigestion but also memory loss.
So serious is the issue that Harvard University has earmarked $4 million to research countermeasures for a problem that affects nearly three-fourths of all U.S. travelers crossing time zones. But here’s the question everyone wants answered: Do any of these help?
According to experts, some new remedies are surprisingly helpful. From light therapy to low-dose sleeping pills, “real progress is being made,” says Dr. Gary Zammit, director of the Sleep Disorders Institute in New York.
Jet lag involves more than just loss of sleep, which is why a quick nap and a cup of coffee won’t always do the trick. In a nutshell, everything from sleep to digestion operates on an internal clock dictated by cues such as light, food, exercise and drugs. Crossing time zones changes the timing of those cues, hence throwing our body functions out of sync.
While always a thorn for jet-setters, the ills of jet lag couldn’t be more pressing these days. Not only has the number of Americans venturing overseas risen 26 percent in the last three years, but also travel to Asia, a grueling 13-hour flight from New York, has nearly doubled in the last decade. With corporations trying to squeeze more productivity out of workers, the average business traveler is taking more international trips each year–but staying fewer days, compounding jet lag.
Indeed, with a fourth of its travel now overseas, film giant Eastman Kodak gives globe-trotting execs travel packages with sleep aids, aspirin and lotion to help them revive before conducting business abroad.
New York Mets management was so concerned about jet lag hurting players during the team’s season-opening games in Japan, they posted a clock with Tokyo time in their clubhouse before departure.
At Alertness Solutions, a consulting firm in Cupertino, Calif., Dr. Mark Rosekind estimates that jet lag can degrade decision-making abilities, communication and memory 30 to 75 percent. “There’s a price to be paid,” says Rosekind, adding that the costs associated with problems have gone up “as bigger and bigger deals are on the line.”
A panel of five experts, ranging from sleep consultants to researchers and doctors at Cornell Medical School and the Kennedy Space Center, critiqued more than 50 of the latest remedies.
They had some clear favorites when it came to treatments, but cautioned that each one can affect travelers differently. Some even liked the under-the-knee light technique, a homespun remedy that Cornell studied and said had some merit. (One tip: Make sure the light faces directly under the knee, where there’s a lot of blood circulation.)
Here, in order of effectiveness, are the latest in jet lag remedies:
– Light switching. Every time he lands after a long flight, professional golfer Gary Player walks 18 holes, even if he’s not teeing off. Love of the game? No, “it’s the light,” says Player, 64, who has flown some 12 million miles. “I’m a great believer in sunlight to combat the time change.”
Turns out Player’s thinking is on par with the experts’. Light, when used correctly, holds the greatest potential for helping travelers adjust to a new time zone, says Dr. Philip Scarpa, medical officer for the Kennedy Space Center.
NASA occasionally quarantines astronauts before launch and douses them with light to help prepare their body clocks for space travel.
It’s “like fuel,” adds Dr. Charles Czeisler, co-director of Harvard Medical School’s Division of Sleep Medicine. “It shifts you to a later or earlier hour.”
Figuring out the precise time to use light is complex, but a rule for U.S. travelers goes as follows: When headed east on an overnight flight, seek sun or artifical-light in the mid- to late morning at your destination, but wait until late afternoon and early evening when headed west. Within five years, Czeisler predicts, there will be software available to schedule when each traveler should get light on their journey.
While natural light is the cheapest remedy, many business travelers have a tough time abandoning the boardroom for the beach. By July, a company called Enlightened Technologies Associates plans to release a pair of sci-fi-looking eyeglasses, code-named Somnavue, that can be programmed to beam light into travelers’ eyes.
Hilton hotels recommends jet-lagged guests test its “Sleep Tight” rooms. Included are desks with light boxes that beam a soft white glow onto guests’ faces while they work.
– Pills. As it turns out, just saying yes to drugs may be a good idea–at least for some long-distance journeyers. Check with your doctor, but prescription sleeping pills got high marks from the experts, who suggest using them on the plane or when you’re trying to get sleep in your time zone–and can’t.
Exhaustion is one key side effect of jet lag, a woe compounded by the fact that most travelers are already sleep-deprived. More than 50 percent of workers say sleepiness interferes with the amount of work they do, according to the National Sleep Foundation.
“If flying west to east, I would recommend the use of a sleeping pill after takeoff,” says Zammit, of the Sleep Disorders Institute. One drawback to dosing: Boise, Idaho, travel agent Eva Henry once took sleeping pills that left her so groggy, flight attendants couldn’t rouse her upon landing. “They were like `come on, it’s 8 a.m.,’ ” Henry recalls. For that reason, the panel liked Ambien and Sonata, because the fuzzy side effects were minimal.
The other popular popper, with travelers and sleep experts, is melatonin. Again check with your doctor, because it’s not federally regulated. Nevertheless, the drug has been touted as a jet-lag remedy for years, and its usage has been growing.
While our bodies actually produce melatonin naturally, a synthetic form in small doses can help some travelers conk out during a flight or after arrival.
“I call it Dracula juice,” says Rosekind, with Alertness Solutions. Still, he and the other experts prefer light remedies by and large, if only because they’re safer: For example, some melatonin users complain about side effects such as nausea or mild depression.
The panel wasn’t impressed much with homeopathic pills, including Jet Lag Tonic, sold at the Elixir tea shop in Los Angeles. (They “strengthen the spleen,” says the store owner.)
Magellan’s International Travel Corp. sells about 1,000 packages a month of another pill called “No Jet-Lag,” an herbal concoction of plant extracts.
While Rosekind puts these potions in his “snake oil” category, he’d get quite an argument from Mike Ellis. On a trip to San Diego two years ago, the Hong Kong-based helicopter pilot popped a No Jet-Lag pill every two hours and was so full of energy on arrival he went jogging. “I didn’t have any of that foul buzz I usually get after a long flight,” Ellis says.
– Spa artillery. It was a toss-up between the next two categories, but spa services–from massage to steam rooms–prevailed because experts liked the comfort factor. “It’s like a warm bath,” says Rosekind. “Will it cure your jet lag? No. But you might get a good night’s sleep.” Plus, he adds, long plane rides can often cause swollen feet, which lead to blood blockage in the body. “Massages can reduce that,” he says.
Cure-all or not, hotels, spas and airlines are cashing in. After frequent requests for midnight massages, this January the Park Hyatt hotel in Toronto launched an in-room “Time Warp” package, which includes a lavendar eye mask, bath salts and peppermint foot cream.
Likewise, Loews Coronado Bay Resort in San Diego sells four jet-lag bathtub services, including one with chicken soup and vitamin C. And then there’s Virgin Atlantic’s Hydrotherm massages, free for “upper class” passengers at its London airport clubs.
But the strangest find has to be the Singapore Four Seasons’ sensory deprivation Float Tank, where jet-lagged guests lie in a darkened chamber listening to preselected audio–such as dolphins talking.. And it’s hard to argue with the price: $27 for a 45-minute float.
– Food. The experts were divided on the merits of munching. While there’s no firm scientific proof, anecdotal evidence suggests food might help the body ease into a new time zone, says Zammit of the Sleep Disorders Institute. the StopJetLag plan found at www.stopjetlag.com gives fliers a customized diet that involves feasting and fasting with high-protein and high-carbohydrate meals in the days leading up to departure.
Henry, the Idaho travel agent, tried it last year before a trip to Australia. For three days before to departure, she meticulously followed the plan, which included small doses of melatonin. The morning after landing, “I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” says Henry. Everybody else, she brags, “whined and slept on the bus all day.”
Still, most of the panel found food overrated as a cure. “There’s no biological evidence that food has any impact on enhancing adaptation across time zones,” says Harvard’s Czeisler. But what should you eat during the trip?
Scarpa, at the Kennedy Space Center, suggests shifting to the new time zone’s meal schedule ASAP to adjust the body physically and psychologically. “If you land in the early morning and you’ve just had breakfast on the plane, have it again,” he says.
Other food for thought: Delta Air Lines now serves Ideal Performance Meals designed to keep passengers either alert and productive, or relaxed and sleepy. The trick is manipulating body chemicals stimulated by certain foods; so the airline suggests pan-roasted duck for workaholics and vegetarian pasta for snoozers.
– Time-warp gear. Think of this as the trick-and-treat category.
If all else fails, there are now gadgets to simply fool the body– and the mind. Needless to say, these were the experts’ last-resort picks, though a few praised the marketing ingenuity. Take the Jet Lag Watch, which gradually moves its hour to a new time zone as you travel, going a little faster or slower depending on where you’re headed. “It shifts you psychologically,” says creator Ross Mitchell of the $49.95 invention.
For those wanting a more hands-on experience, consider the Jet Lag Eliminator, a plastic wheel that tells travelers where to massage themselves during flight to reset their body clock. Unfortunately, the eliminator doesn’t come with a masseuse, leaving passengers to rub themselves in a variety of awkward places–like their feet–every two hours.
Nevertheless, inventor Paul “Mick” MacKenzie says he’s sold 1,500 Eliminators at $19.95 a pop since the product’s introduction 18 months ago, including one to Jack Canfield, CEO of Chicken Soup for the Soul Enterprises.
Canfield whipped out his Eliminator on a flight from Los Angeles to Frankfurt in October and upon arrival, the CEO says he felt so great that he stayed up until midnight, dining and drinking wine with publishers. Of course, he adds, it helped that he was seated in first class with room to maneuver his limbs. “I’d hate to be using it in the middle seat in coach.”
As is the case with all these jet-lag cures, believing can count for something. “People underestimate the placebo effect,” says Scarpa with the Kennedy Space Center. Just thinking something helps, he says, “can actually affect the results.”
