Airbus thinks it has found a way to alleviate jet lag
economist.com
economist.com
- Flying East to Europe: Get out in the sun after landing and don't fall asleep until at least 8:00 PM local time.
- Flying West to Asia: Stay on US time. Go to sleep at 6:00 PM local time, get up at 2:00 AM. Obviously, avoid evening appointments. If that isn't possible, at least schedule them after you've been in country a couple of days.
Mine is simpler. Once I get to the airport, I act as if I am on destination time. I plan flights around that, try and get overnight flights so I can sleep, land in the morning, and just have a full day. If I am on a daytime flight...have to stay up and stay active
I realize this darkness is what the majority of the passengers want on their eastbound transatlantic flights, and I'm sure the crew wants the passengers asleep and inert over the 4-5 hours, but IMO that just generates more jet lag than less. They want their sleep NOW even if it means screwing up their sleep for the next 2-3 days.
The difficulty is flying Westward. You're going to turn into an early bird for a while. Since you're going to sleep hours later than usual, you should take a nap during the day, as you would do locally if you had to stay up on New Year's Eve for example. Then you "crash" as late as possible and you wake up on normal time.
Think of it as switching from being an early bird to a night owl locally, and vice versa.
Melatonin works great when you're trying to adjust your bedtime to be much earlier than when your body is expecting.
http://www.google.com/patents/US5449683:
"the dose of melatonin administered ranges from 0.1 to 1.0 mg of melatonin"
The larger dosages supposedly have less risk of running afoul of the patent.
You may need to break up the pill yourself.
EDIT: That was supposed to be 0.3mg
The flights home were much easier -- arrive thursday evening, dinner and go to sleep.
rules: don't drink on flights you need to sleep, eat before you get on the plane (eating on the flight is a waste of time) melatonin is your friend.
(I'm assuming the OP is flying from the US, based on the destination choices.)
EDIT: removed bad NYC math.
BTW, all of China is on Beijing time.
What they should discuss instead is the color gamut of the LEDs and how much of the visible light spectrum they can accurately reproduce.
Talking about the number of colors the LEDs can produce is far more likely to convey to that audience how this is supposed to work than delving into the kind of details you'd probably have to read the spec sheet on the individual diodes to find.
However, 787 does have pressurization and humidity features as well and these made a huge reduction in my jet lag over the 777 and A380
That said, I unfortunately did not notice any reduction in tiredness or jet lag in either plane compared to older aircraft. But I did enjoy the lower noise levels and higher stability of the A380, which make for a more pleasant journey overall. I feel less worn off when I land, which means I'll take less to recover from the flight itself, which I find more damaging then the time zone differences.
These things made my trip significantly better.
On the way back it's the best part. I always end up going to bed early and waking up early. I love it. I normally can't sleep that easily or wake up so fresh early in the morning. I feel very productive working in the early hours of the morning (only on jet lag). Maybe I'm odd, but I wish I could stretch my jet lag even further, rather than get rid of it.
I feel the same on slight sleep deprivation: if you usually get a good night's sleep and one day wake up after 3/4 hours, after the groggy phase you'd feel in a positive, relaxed mood, probably not top notch mentally but it's very similar to having drunk a small amount of alcohol. I really enjoy it.
It doesn't work if you are already sleep deprived.
I recently flew the Dreamliner to Australia and experienced no jet lag. Noticeable difference.
A few other passengers can onto the "bridge" and the a stewardess came in and asked me if I'd like a drink. I had about two drinks before passing out. I slept all the way to Europe and was somewhat miffed at myself. But upon arrival I found that I did not experience any jet lag. Over a year I did the same trip a couple more times, was not so fortunate to be placed on the bridge, get free drinks, and be comfortable. On those trips I did experience jet lag.
Except this time. I had a six month old baby and jetlag felt completely the same as just being at home. :)
Not being able to sleep on planes doesn't help either. On the overnight flight back to LN, I'm the one with the reading light on all night...
I usually fast between 12-24 hours, depending on the traveling time, drink lots and it has worked for going both to the East and coming back from it. I wrote about it in more detail here: http://bitehype.com/how-to-successfully-avoid-and-hack-a-jet...
EDIT Not sure why the down votes. Being able to properly sleep while on a plane is absolutely the best way to beat jet leg.
The problem with travel hacking (it's not really economically feasible to fly business between Europe and US for most of us) is that you get so used to it that every single transatlantic work trip becomes a big complicated optimization game. Flying economy simple stops being an option.
This time the other day I lucked out via what seemed to be a Star Alliance-wide mistake fare between Scandinavia and Seattle and a few more US cities ($700 for r/t business class!). That plus a cheap connecting flight to the Bay area fixed it for this time.
Plus personal crawler projects and contacts with similar-minded people.
Warning: if you don't find this fun it's probably not worth the time. Expect to spend a lot of time chasing these deals.
It does seem to get harder over time, judging from my ~5 years in the game. Just a few years ago there were gaping holes in the system, allowing anyone to buy 100k miles from US Airways for $1200 and then spend them on quite on e.g. a 90k mile (or was it 110k?) First class roundtrips Europe/NA-Asia with e.g. ANA, Asiana iirc.
Pro:
- Decent almost business class for $1400 USD roundtrip
- You can buy single trips for 50% of the roundtrip cost
Con:
- Their irregular ops handling is disastrous. They use a small fleet of 787s for transatlantic flights, with zero spare capacity, so when a plane breaks somehow you basically have to wait for them to repair it. For that reason I avoid them on trips into the US (for planned meetings there) but sometimes use them on the way back.
Plus, business class only helps you avoid jet lag on certain itineraries. Sometimes due to timing, sometimes due to crappy business class on some shorter flights or less luxurious airlines.
That's because it is. The fact that there's a solution that costs money doesn't make it any less of a solution.
It's like if someone suggested how to improve public transportation and you answered "I found the best improvement - just take a cab everywhere."
Re: local transportation: What if it ends up being an improvement of the transportation market, to the point all middle class people can afford to pay for a ride in a car when you really need it? Virgin Atlantic started off with Richard Branson chartering planes across the Atlantic.
How could one disrupt transatlantic travel in a different way?
I think you mean the experience of public transportation, in which case, air travel is public transportation and buying 1st class tickets does improve it. Cabs are private transport and wouldn't be a solution to that specific problem.
When I listen to audio books I often use my D2 Oculus rift VR headseat and explore like a tourist cool looking custom minecraft maps with the MineCrift mod, I have experiences some confusion after being in a day time VR world and taking off the VR headseat and seeing that it is night time in real life, and the opposite with night time VR scenes at day time IRL. The ability of high quality VR to mess with the visual senses of people is really powerfull and not restricted to entertainment.
The solution for me is good noise canceling headphones. If you fly often, invest in a good pair and it will do wonders for you. It has for me.
Doesn't help with jetlag itself (I.e. the mismatch btw astronomic and biological time), but still a big deal.
When it's automatically controlled by the central system/crew it's fine, but when you want to manipulate them yourself the ~30 second delay from button press to actual change is quite annoying, and you wish for the old style mechanical sliders instead.
Wait is that a typo or a dig at Boeing?
Given that Air France recently converted outstanding orders for the A380 to three A350, that would make 777 as of last month consistent with 780 as of today.
This 780 figure is also including two orders for a total of 16 A350-800, which will never be built. So it is consistent with the 764 figure that do not include these A350-800.
Conclusion: not a typo.
[1] https://sites.google.com/site/a350xwbproduction/orders
[2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tSkBafqSz-xEdM1VLbQy...
Edit: added the AF recent order, and the A350-800 adjustment.
1. Your circadian rhythm [1] being out of sync. In a nutshell, a reasonable amount of internal biology is synchronized to the time of day to improve efficiency. If your activity isn't in sync with what your 'internal clock' is expecting, you experience jet lag.
2. A limited ability for the clock to adjust to a new timezone. The direction of adjustment is encoded by a phase response curve [2] and is affected by exposure to light -- practically nothing else can shift it.
11thEarlOfMar has the right idea -- if you can avoid light exposure entirely, your clock won't shift and you won't be jetlagged. Otherwise, large doses of light at the right times of day are (apparently) the best cure.
[1]: http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/274/6/R1751.short
There isn't "one simple trick" and not have jet lag. Everyone will have jetlag after going through a large time change. Your body can only accomodate so quickly depending on the magnitude of the change. IME people recover 0.5-2 hours of time change a day. So if you go through a change, it will take anywhere from 3-12 days to fully recover. You don't even realize it until you've been somewhere for a while and one day you wake up and realize you are fully rested for the first time in a week (even though the other days felt basically fine).
On long flights (e.g. London to San Francisco), I don't think any amount of fancy lighting will be able to compensate for the fact that your day has suddenly become 32 hours long and you've been awake for 24 of them.
Do you suddenly feel refreshed if you see another sunrise (whether real or simulated) after having been awake for 24 hours straight? Not me... at least not since my early 20s.
Even taking into account the extra radiation exposure?