Hacker News Reader

Comment by peterarmstrong | Hacker News Reader

I've found the simpler solution that works for me is to fast for 16 hours, including the entire flight, and eat breakfast on the plane an hour before landing. Also, I sleep on the plane, starting right after takeoff, with a sleeping pill if needed. This has worked for me in both directions for flights like Vancouver to London (9+ hours). Instead of being ruined for a week, I get essentially no jet lag.

Yes this means turning down all food and alcohol on the plane, and just drinking water.

The idea is that your body has 2 clocks, a food clock and a light clock, and that the food clock will win if you fast and then break your fast (get it?) with an appropriately timed breakfast.

http://harpers.org/blog/2012/03/the-empty-stomach-fasting-to...

http://blogs.hbr.org/2009/05/a-fast-solution-to-jet-lag/

View on HN

Interesting - I do something similar, except that I fast for 24 hours before getting on the plane. Nothing but water for that period. Once on the plane though, I generally eat the first meal - it helps me to go to sleep on the plane - but no alcohol. Of course, if your someone that can't sleep in a plane seat, you're probably better off with your system, as mine is all about getting me ready to sleep on the plane.

The other trick for me is to try and arrive at night, so I can pretty much go straight to bed. When I wake up the next morning I'm in the right timezone.

If for whatever reason I can't organise to arrive in the evening, I just suck it up and stay awake until a normal bedtime (no cheating, although it's tempting, going to bed early will just leave you out of sync with the clock). It helps if you can be outside in the sun during the day whilst doing this.

One last thing, sometimes your problem is not having to stay awake until night, but that night arrives too quickly because you've flown east. In this case, my solution is to prepare by making sure I only sleep 3-4 hours the night before, meaning that even if it's 5pm bodyclock time and midnight wall clock time, I'm nevertheless ready to go to bed.

At any rate, I'm no longer young, but I travel at least a couple of times a year, and I have zero problems with jetlag.

I do something similar, except that the anchor is dinner at the appropriate time for the destination TZ. On my last two trips from Boston to Bangalore (9.5/10.5 hours depending on DST) this has led to approximately zero jet lag, compared to before when my second day there and my first day back would be almost total wipeouts.

My friend whose sister works in this area scoffs, and says that she recommends something very similar to the OP instead. Maybe my success with the fasting method is mostly placebo effect, but hey, I'll still ride that for all it's worth. ;)

It always bothers me that there never seems to be any particular pattern in when an airline serves meals during long flights- sometimes it's based on the departure time zone and sometimes it's based on the arrival time zone. I think more often it's the former for some crazy reason- maybe getting airlines to serve meals based on what we now know as best practice for this would be quite helpful.

Maybe they serve meals when the flight crew wants to eat.

I second this, food and light are both important parts of the process. Have used something similar to this to prevent jetlag on both legs of multiple transatlantic/panasiatic flights (though it has to be said travelling west-to-east is always rougher than east-to-west.

What if you usually don't eat breakfast? Even when I get up at 6 am, I normally don't feel like eating before 11 am.

After 16 hours of no food, eating breakfast is usually an easier sell. But if it's not, force it down anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com