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You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.
I'm Regina Barber, filling in for Maryl Seguera.
If you're lucky enough to have traveled several time zones in a matter of hours, then you've
most likely experienced Jetlag, feeling groggy at a sync with your surroundings and overall
crappy.
This year, Taylor Swift caused a stir for answering a question after the Super Bowl about her
flight on a private jet in a less from Tokyo to Las Vegas after she performed.
When asked, how do you not have Jetlag right now?
She said, maybe jokingly, Jetlag is a choice.
She is very wrong in this instance because Jetlag is very real.
It's not a choice, it's very biologically ingrained.
That's Jade Wu, a behavioral sleep medicine psychologist and researcher at Duke University
School of Medicine.
I asked her to tell me what Jetlag actually is.
Jetlag's circadian misalignment is an umbrella term for any time your body clock is out of
sync with the clock on the wall or solar clock, which is where the sun is basically in the
sky.
Jetlag is one form of it.
Shift work is another form.
Being an extreme night owl, some days of the week is another form, so Jetlag is just
the easiest to understand form of circadian misalignment.
Even though world travel is nothing new, the speed in which humans travel across the world
has drastically changed in the last 100 years.
We haven't evolved fast enough to keep up.
Our bodies are constantly trying to adapt to our outside environment, so our bodies are
designed to be adaptable like that.
We can adjust if we go gradually.
So, if you're taking two months across the ocean, then you'll have adjusted already by
the time you arrive here.
And if you're flying in a few hours, your body wakes up in the United States eastern
time and then goes to bed London time, it's going to be very, very confused.
The speed at which we cross time zones is not meant to be this fast.
In this episode of Life Kit, Jetlag, we talk with Jade about the signs of sleep, prepping
your shed eye for traveling both east and west, and what to do on that first night and
day in a new location.
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Okay, so can you tell me exactly like what's happening in our brains and our bodies when
we're experiencing that jet lag?
Right.
In a nutshell, our bodies during jet lag, we are basically misaligned with our outside
environment, which means the internal body clocks, which we have billions of them.
All of our cells have their own clocks.
Our organ systems, our hormone systems, our brain, cognitive function, blood pressure,
everything that runs in our body runs on a clock.
And ideally, what's happening is all these clocks are synced up to each other and running
on a predictable consistent schedule.
And what happens during jet lag is suddenly all of these clocks are confused.
Like, wait a second.
I thought it was daytime.
Why is it night?
Or I thought it was supposed to be dark.
You know, why is it so bright in the environment?
So then our brain gets confused.
The master clock in our brain called the superchisematic nucleus, the SCN.
If that superchisematic nucleus gets confused, then all of the clocks get confused.
So think of all the clocks in your body as like, it's like a billion person orchestra.
And the master clock, the SCN is the maestro.
And if the maestro can't keep time, then the entire orchestra falls apart, right?
So take away one.
Jet lag is a result of our circadian rhythm being off.
Flying to a new time zone is giving that master clock in your brain, confusing signals,
which can throw you off.
So that's why we feel sluggish.
We can't sleep when we want to sleep, but we can't feel awake when we want to be awake.
Our thinking is slower.
Our mood is worse.
Our metabolism is not as good.
You know, so everything basically functions a little bit worse.
So how does one then prepare or like mitigate these effects?
Yeah.
So there are a few things you can do before travel, during travel, and after travel.
So first of all, I would say it depends on how far you're going and how long your trip
is.
So if it's like a one to two hour time difference and you're only going for a few days,
you might as well just stay on your regular schedule.
Like recently, I went to see my best friend in Colorado.
I usually live in North Carolina.
I just stayed on my regular Eastern time schedule.
So from her perspective, I was like a super early morning riser and went to bed really
early.
But I didn't have to do any adjusting back and forth.
It was easy peasy.
But if you're going like at least three time zones over, then that requires I think a little
bit of preparation.
Part of that preparation can be booking a flight that isn't going to disrupt your sleep
too much if you can swing it.
Once your flight is set, it's time for takeaway number two.
Prepare for jet lag by resting up beforehand.
That means time shifting your sleep little by little, but also getting more sleep before
your trip.
So this is called banking sleep.
I wouldn't push it too hard.
Like don't force yourself to sleep when you're not sleepy.
But make sure you do get lots of opportunity.
If your body really even has a little bit of desire to sleep, let it do so.
You can even take some supplemental naps.
So bank sleep first of all.
And then you can also start gradually shifting your timing towards the target time zone.
So if you're traveling six hours east to Europe from the east coast here, you can start getting
up 15 or 30 minutes earlier every day, going to bed 15 to 30 minutes earlier every day,
and do that for a few days, maybe a week or so.
You won't be all the way adjusted over maybe, but you'll be closer and you'll be more ready
to adjust to your new local time by the time you get there.
Makeaway number three, remember good sleep hygiene.
Avoid alcohol if you can because it can disrupt your sleep.
Maybe don't have that cup of coffee at 6 p.m. before your flight.
Jade generally discourages using caffeine to fight jet lag because it can lead to unpredictable
outcomes.
So sometimes making you exhausted or wired or both.
But if you must, you could aim to have some caffeine if you're heading eastbound to
stay up.
Avoid it if you're going west.
In a kind of direction, it's helpful to keep in mind which way you're headed.
Yeah.
Oh, first of all, I think because if you're going west, then you're delaying your sleep
phase, right?
You're making your body stay up later and wake up later if you want to be attuned to
the local sun.
And if you're going east, you're having to become more of a morning person.
You have to get yourself sleeping and waking earlier.
So westward travel tends to be easier. In fact, there's research showing that during
March madness, teams that are traveling west to play games perform better than if they're
traveling east because they're suffering less jet lag, less circadian misalignment.
And that's because our body clocks actually run a little bit longer than 24 hours.
It's more like 24.1 to 24.3 hours.
So that means we're always trying to delay a little bit.
If we all lived in a dark cave with no clocks and no regular routines, we would just go
to bed and get up 20 minutes later every day.
And so that's why going west is easier because your body already kind of wants to go to
bed later.
So going west is, you know, but going east is hard because then you have to fight, you
know, the fight upstream kind of doubly hard.
So if you're traveling west, if it's a long flight, I would try to take a short nap on
the flight if you can, because then you can go to bed at the desired local time.
You can stay up long enough once you get to your destination to go to bed at whatever
is conventional.
And hopefully you're sleepy enough that you can sleep a nice solid night and wake up the
morning local time and then you're on your way.
If you're traveling east, try to stay up during your flight.
And that might be hard because you might have gotten up really early to go to the airport
and, you know, whatnot.
But try your best, you know, watch movies.
And now when you land, you're going to not be sleepy yet by the local bedtime.
So you might need to take a sleep aid to help yourself fall asleep that night or you
could just rough it and just go to bed really, really late and sleep a short night and then
just get up early and hit the ground running.
That brings us to takeaway number four.
Do your best to match your sleep schedule to local time, even if that means staying
up late or going to bed super early.
So what do you do that day after?
So the best thing to do is get lots of light first thing in the morning local time.
So ideally you go outside, you exercise, you walk, you hike, you go around town.
The quicker you sort of get actively engaged in the rhythm of the local schedule, the more
quickly you'll adjust, especially when it comes to getting light in your eyes.
So not just inside a bright building with big windows, but actually outside air on the
side of staying up too long so that you save up lots and lots of sleepiness in order
to adjust to the local time, rather than going to bed too early before you're sleepy enough.
So if you want, just stay up that whole first day, even if you feel sleepy, just stay
up during the local day.
And so you make sure you have lots of sleep drive saved up for that night.
My daughter and I went to Scotland and we stayed up the entire day and by the time it hit
like nine o'clock Scotland Glasgow time, we started feeling like we started hallucinating
almost because we had been up for like 30 hours.
Oh wow.
Or like 25 hours or something like.
Yeah, we'd been up for like 25 hours and we were like the walls feel like they're
moving.
Maybe we should go to bed now.
Yes, yes, that is one good way to do it.
Although I would say 25 hours is definitely on the long side.
Maybe there was a nap opportunity somewhere before then.
I did we did nap.
We did good.
But like, but it wasn't like straight 25 hours, but it was moving and traveling for 25.
Oh, yeah, that's tough.
But we did it.
We did what you said.
Okay, good.
We were we were fine the next day and for the rest of the trip.
Beautiful.
So I have family in Taiwan going even more, more west than it becomes the east.
That's right.
And the time zones aren't, you know, just a few time zones.
There are many, many, many time zones.
It's like like 12 or 13.
Yeah, 12 or 13 hour difference.
Like I, what do you do?
Because there's that there's that saying that like for every one hour that's different,
it'll take one day to adjust.
So it would take you two weeks, but it took me shorter than that.
So what are some misconceptions about jet lag?
Well, one misconception is that well, as long as you use these techniques, then it's
fine.
No, no harm, no foul.
But I think it is worth remembering that every time we experience jet lag, it is putting
burden and stress on our bodies.
So yes, we can use these kind of tips and tricks to try to mitigate how bad it feels in
the moment.
But jet lag is never a good thing.
And circadian misalignment is never a good thing.
You're always taking a hit.
So you kind of have to think, you know, is it worth it?
And often the answer is yes, you want to visit your family in Taiwan or you want to go
on a big hiking vacation in Europe.
Like I wouldn't pass that up, you know.
But I think we do, we don't want to be cavalier about like, oh, so and so is a jet setter
for their career and they travel multiple time zones all the time.
It's fine.
It's really not fine.
I wouldn't advise someone to do a career like that for multiple, you know, years and decades
because that's, you're basically then a shift worker and shift workers have a higher chance
of having cancer, for example, than day workers.
Yes.
In fact, shift work is one of the only, if not the only non-biological, non-environmental
carcinogens.
So it's, it's literally recognized as a carcinogen when we have circadian misalignment.
So jet lag, not great.
If it's occasional, not a big deal, but hopefully someone is not doing this, you know, all the
time.
So that's one misconception is that it really is a problem for your body.
And then in terms of how long it takes to adjust, I think it's different for different
people.
Some people are more able to adjust quickly.
Right, right.
I've seen that, right?
Because I'm okay with jet lag, but my mom, she's over 70 and she doesn't really even get
jet lag.
She's always been that way, but you know, she does travel a lot.
Oh, good for her.
But like you said, some people are just more susceptible than others.
Why do you think that is?
Well, for, I think there is an age effect.
So your mom must be a magical creature.
She really is sort of outside the rules.
She is.
She's always outside the rules, believe me.
Generally, as we get older, we tend to be, you know, we tend to shift our circadian rhythms
less readily, in part because the light that comes into our eyes, that's really the main
signal that tells our brain what time it is outside.
So you know, someone who adjusts quickly is able to respond to that light signal very,
very quickly.
Wow.
Okay.
You actually addressed this, but I'm going to ask the question anyway.
So in the end, experiencing jet lag for like many people is actually like a symptom of
luxury.
Like it's traveling vast distances in a short amount of time.
But like you said, there's some serious consequences to not paying attention to your body
if you need sleep.
So what other serious consequences are there if you're depriving your body of sleep?
So if we're looking at sleep overall, then not getting enough sleep is depriving our
bodies of very vital functions that keep us healthy and happy.
So during sleep, our brains are doing things like clearing toxins from the brain, consolidating
our memories, you know, releasing growth hormones and sex hormones that regulate our, you know,
reproductive systems and immune systems where our metabolism is regulated.
We need sleep time even just for our cortisol levels to come down, for our body temperature
to come down, blood pressure to come down.
All of these things are necessary for our very life.
So cutting that short or having it at irregular times really curtails our ability to function.
And actually it's, I'm so glad you're doing an episode on jet lag because we focus so
much on how much sleep people need.
We don't focus on the timing of sleep.
And the timing is just as important if not more important.
The recent really big study came out following, you know, a few thousand people to see, you know,
basically their behaviors at time point one and then looking at how well they're doing
years later.
And it turns out the regularity of their sleep at time point one is even more predictive
of whether they have cancer, whether they have died, whether they have heart disease
years later, than how much they slept at time point one.
Wow.
This is like terrifying me.
But it's also intriguing me.
So Taylor Swift really wasn't right that jet lag is a choice.
It kind of sounds like she needs to brush up on her science.
Swifties, don't come up.
Well, I think probably for her she can deal with jet lag more easily because she has, you
know, the comforts and the resources.
The resources, exactly.
And I'm sure she has a whole team managing her nutrition and her, you know, exercise
and like her everything, right?
So someone with resources like that.
And her bed on the plane.
Oh, I'm sure it's very comfortable and nice.
So for her, maybe jet lag is a little bit more of a choice and, you know, a little bit
more manageable, but it is still a biological reality.
Excellent.
Okay, jet setters, it's time for a recap.
Take away one.
Remember, jet lag is a result of our circadian rhythm being off.
According to a new time zone is giving the master clock in your brain, confusing signals
which can throw you off.
Take away number two.
Get lots of rest before your trip.
Bank some sleep.
Try to shift your bedtime little by little to adjust to your new time zone.
Take away number three.
Are you flying west or east?
If you're traveling west, a short nap on the flight might not hurt since you're going
to bed later.
Going east?
Try to stay up on the flight so you can go to bed earlier.
Take away four.
Do your best to match your sleep schedule to local time.
It might mean an early bedtime, but then you'll be rested the next day to enjoy the rest
of your trip.
For more on LifeKit, check out our other episodes on Insomnia and another one about caffeine.
You can find that at npr.org slash lifeKit.
And if you want more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash lifeKit newslet.
Also, we'd love to hear from you.
So if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, email us at lifeKit at npr.org.
This episode of LifeKit was produced by Andy Tagle.
Our visuals editor is Beck Harland and our digital editor is Malika Garib.
Making Cain is our supervising editor and Beth Zonevin is our executive producer.
Our production team also includes Audrey Wynn, Claire Marie Schneider and Sylvie Douglas.
Cain support comes from Robert Rodriguez.
I'm Regina Barber.
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