It's impossible to fight jetlag
I was determined to not have jetlag, and was unable to avoid it. I read articles and books on avoiding it, and was unsuccessful.
My advice: just plan to make your first day nice and easy, and write everything down, preferably on your arm, so you will not forget or lose everything.
Here is what I was told to do, and how each piece of it went.
1. Melatonin helps prevent jetlag
I took melatonin on the plane and almost immediately passed out. I woke up shortly before we landed. Great to get some sleep. However, it was because of this that I was unable to do step 2.
Melatonin does still come out well in the research, with one large caveat nobody told me: the timing matters more than the dose. It is a signal about when night is, not a sleeping pill, and taking it at the wrong hour can shift you further the wrong way. A small dose in the early evening of your destination's time zone is the version that works. Passing out over the Atlantic at three in the afternoon Reykjavik time is not.
2. Drink lots of water
Yup, did not do it. And when you get to Iceland, you will discover the water often has a sulphur smell. Yum.
Still good advice, and still the one everybody skips because they are asleep. Cabin air is dry and dehydration makes everything about the next day worse.
3. Take your shoes off on the plane
I guess this advice was given to make sure you are totally relaxed. As soon as I did it, my very proper flight attendant asked me if I would mind moving up ten rows. No problem.
4. Get some sleep right away, take a brief nap
So eager was I to do this correctly that I got it exactly wrong, which is the common way to fail at this.
The thinking has moved on since I wrote this, and it has moved towards light rather than sleep. The strongest single lever is getting outside in daylight at the right end of your new day: morning light if you flew east, late afternoon light if you flew west. A walk beats a nap. If you must nap, keep it under twenty minutes and do not do it after mid-afternoon.
And eat on the new schedule from the first meal, even if you are not hungry. Meal times are a clock signal too.
But mostly, just make the first day easy
Which is what I concluded then and still think. You are not going to beat it. You are going to be stupid for a day and a half. So do not put anything on that day that requires you to be sharp: no long connection, no complicated check-in, nothing booked and non-refundable, nothing that involves reading a timetable.
Write things down. Your own handwriting on your own arm will make more sense tomorrow than your memory will.
Posted 01 June 2005 by Cherie in Eurail Planning