How To Beat Jet Lag

Exhaustion and a frustrating inability to sleep is perhaps the jet lag symptom many of us are most familiar with. Cures aplenty swarm the net, from old wives tales to scientifically proven remedies that actually work. We set the record straight on which solutions can help you get over the symptoms as quickly as possible and explain why our popular jet lag massage or even just a full body massage are very suitable remedies. 

What is jet lag?

Most of wear a watch or use a phone to keep track of time. Your body is actually naturally very familiar to the concept of time and in fact regularly adjusts what it is up to according to the time of day or night – without any electronic assistance.

Biologic rhythms define how your body responds to periodic changes in time. Whether it be turning from night to day or from autumn to winter, your body is constantly adjusting itself to suit. By the time you’ve recovered that winter coat from the attic, your inner organs have already well prepared themselves for the oncoming snaps of colder weather. Usually, our body clock plans and manages all this internal activity with the precision of a Swiss train timetable and we are none the wiser. However, just like trains, external factors can disrupt the carefully laid plans, and when this happens we suffer various issues, usually temporary.

Travelling across several time zones on a long-haul flight and arriving at your destination to find it is still the same time in the morning that it was when you left your home several hours earlier, can play havoc with your internal body clock.

What are typical jet lag symptoms and how long do they last?

Reading a list of typical symptoms for jet lag may have you wondering whether you need a visit to your doctor. But worry not, whilst it can affect many different bodily functions, usually none of the issues are long-lasting or extreme in nature. You could almost feel a bit unwell in any respect, the key being it will only be a “bit”. It’s a great way to appreciate how much goes on inside your body to keep it feeling normal, as the disruption to the body clock can cause so many different factors to fall slightly out of sync.

Fatigue and insomnia are the two most common symptoms that sufferers report, but you may also experience low blood pressure, reflux, palpitations or constipation. Further, consequential effects from a general lack of sleep and enduring a long and tiring journey include muscle back in the back or neck and a feeling stressed or anxious.

Jet lag is worse when you travel long distances East because in this case your body clock suddenly finds it has to play catch up and achieve various additional functions that it had not yet performed. For example, a direct flight from London Heathrow to Beijing takes around 10 hours. Leaving London at around 9pm would mean your body clock will expect it to be 7am in the morning when you land but actually it will be 2pm in the afternoon. Suddenly your body finds it has to perform 7 hours of tasks in no time at all … no wonder you feel exhausted and disorientated.

The good news is that in almost all cases, symptoms are temporary and can disappear as quickly as they arrived or two or three days at the longest. 

How you can get over jet lag

You can bet jet lag either by preparing in advance and not getting it at all or if you find yourself in the middle of suffering it, other cures can help.

One of the most popular prevention techniques is a natural supplement called melatonin. This simply brings on sleep and tricks your body into thinking time miraculously skipped a beat. Just pop a pill when you board the plane and by the time you wake up your body will have made leaps of progress adjusting it’s cycle to the new time zone. That’s the idea anyway, although success depends on a number of factors, including the time of day and direction in which you are travelling.

If you find you’ve already landed and didn't use melatonin or it didn't work for you, then it should not be surprising to learn that a good quality relaxation massage can help ease the pain. Take a look at those symptoms again and you will see that massage naturally deals with many of them, regardless of whether jet lag or another issue caused them. Sleep deprivation, anxiety and muscle pain are all symptoms which sit squarely in the arena of massage therapy. So feel free to choose whichever treatment style takes your fancy, they are all able to help fix jet lag symptoms!