Gratefully in the zone...

“Where we love is home – home that our

feet may leave, but not our hearts.”
­– Oliver Wendell Holmes

I got home this past Friday morning, and it was really good to do so!

I actually landed in Tucson Saturday evening, six days earlier, but when I got up Friday morning this week, I knew I was home.

I used to deny getting jet lag, and I think when I was younger, I handled it pretty well. I took that position that if I didn’t give into it, it wouldn’t affect me.  I had a generously plump religious friend who used to say, if she didn’t believe in calories, she would not put on weight. Neither one of us was right.

Jet lag happens because of the difference between our internal (bio or circadian rhythm) and external clocks changes as the result of moving across time zones. These rhythms are the day-to-day way our bodies settle into the patterns of living, like eating, sleeping exercise and so forth. Like everything else, our bodies thrive on consistency – depending that things be recognizably the same, or at least similar. It takes time for our insides to come to grips with changes in the patterns mentioned above.

Over the years, I have tried every conceivable approach to managing this phenomenon.  There is lots of advice available as to how to avoid jet lag. The most common, in summary, include these suggestions:

Adjust your internal clock: a few days before travel shift eating and sleep patterns toward those of your destination time zone.

Fly overnight: This works well if you can sleep on the flight.

Curtail coffee and eat lightly before and during flights.

Stay hydrated: Try to drink 8 ounces of fluid  (water/juice) every hour you’re in the air.

Avoid or limit alcohol: It will dehydrate you and increase jet lag symptoms. The crazy thing is that it is free on the overseas, long haul flights.

Try to sleep on the flight: This works for some, not for others.

Exercise on the fight: While sitting, ankle rotations and shoulder stretches are good. When getting up for the bathroom, ten knee bends and toe raises are helpful to keep blood from pooling. The actual number you do depends on how much you care what other passengers think about aisle exercise.

Use sleeping pills wisely: Know the effects these pills have on you before you fly. The airplane is NOT the place to try out a sleeping pill for the first time.

Take Melatonin: Melatonin helps set our body’s biorhythms. Some research suggests three milligrams of fast-release melatonin before bed for several days at the destination can help.

Get outside: Sunlight does an excellent job in helping to reset your biologic clock.

Don’t go to bed too early: It is better to stay awake until the time you would usually go to sleep.

By now, I have flown nearly 2.7 million miles with a few hundred thousand miles on overseas flights. I have tried all of the above, except sleeping pills, most of which have proved unsuccessful. 

By now I have found a few things that do work for my gently aging body.  I hydrate (water and juice) as much as possible, which causes me to get up (a little exercise) frequently to proactively dehydrate (bathroom).  This happens every forty minutes or so while I’m in the air.

Ialso  protect my ears with noise canceling headphones and/or earplugs.  Take off and landings can generate 105 decibels of sound, and cruising altitudes are generally around 85 decibels. Lingering tinnitus (ringing in the ears) often occurs following long flights, and if the noise goes beyond 90 decibels for more than eight hours at a time, it can lead to ear damage. So, protecting my ears has been a longstanding habit. 

Staying up at the destination and exercising before going to bed has been helpful.

Interestingly, there is a time zone/jet lag calculator. It works like this:

- Flying west, take the number of time zones crossed and divide it by 2.5.

- Flying east, take the number of time zones crossed divided by 2

From May 15^th, through June 17^th, I crossed 50 time zones back and forth from Asia to Europe and home. I tried the calculations just to see how they matched my real experience. As it turns out, the math and timing were a beyond my reach.

So I know this…It took nearly a week for my rhythms to settle down and believe I was home, rested and in the zone.

Yep, “I got home this past Friday morning, and it was really good to do so!”

- ted