How Not to Handle Jet Lag

Tom and I were poster children for doing everything wrong when it came to recovering from 24 hours of traveling.

One of my first rules for avoiding fatigue after a long trip is to eat meals while traveling only during times when I would normally be dining at my journey’s end. I find that eating appropriately is a very effective way to synchronize my body clock to my destination time zone. Unfortunately, we did not do this when returning to BA.

The flight from Atlanta to Buenos Aires is an overnight flight. We should have slept during the flight and stayed up all day upon our arrival. As you might suspect, we did the exact opposite. We stayed up during the entire flight and then took several naps during the day we landed. Predictably, we had a hard time sleeping our first night home — what a surprise!

As a result, I have managed to reverse my body clock so that I desire to sleep all day and stay up all night. Since I am prone to this, I really should have been more careful.

The road to switching back starts today with no napping! *Sigh* Wish me luck.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 11:05 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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4 Responses to “How Not to Handle Jet Lag”

  1. Barbara August 17th, 2009 at 1:23 pm

    melatonin also works, and you can get it at Farmacity. I had to deal with readjusting my clock after a trip to Japan/China earlier this year, and it definitely helped. Good luck! (and welcome back!)

  2. Michele August 17th, 2009 at 7:53 pm

    Thanks for the tip Barbara! It’s probably going to take me another few days to get this sleep schedule thing back under control, but I remain optimistic!

  3. futbol August 18th, 2009 at 8:04 pm

    now you’re on my schedule! welcome back.

  4. Michele August 19th, 2009 at 6:13 pm

    I’m too old for your schedule, especially when I have to get up at 6:30 a.m. and get the girls ready for school (thankfully Tom takes them)! I’m slowly adjusting my way back. My natural body clock though is to stay up all night and sleep most of the day away. *sigh*

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