Travel is exciting, and it’s great to have a distraction from your everyday life. But traveling across time zones can really throw your metabolism out of whack, disrupting your natural circadian rhythms and leaving you fatigued for days on end. Getting back on schedule can be a challenge, especially if you have to return to work and perform well at your job. IV vitamin therapy can help you overcome jet lag quickly, giving you the energy you need to jump back into your regular routine.
What Causes Jet Lag?
Your body adjusts its internal clock to your surrounding environment. Your internal processes like blood circulation, digestion, temperature regulation, hunger, thirst and drowsiness are all regulated by the time of day.
If your flight is in the evening and you reach your destination in the morning, your body becomes confused, even if you slept on the plane. You may feel fatigued all day and find it hard to get to sleep at night. In addition, air travel causes dehydration, making your jet lag symptoms worse. It can take several days to get your metabolism back on track.
5 Interesting Facts About Jet Lag
Most people have experienced or at least heard of jet lag, but few know about the following facts:
1. Flying East is More Stressful than Flying West
The body’s daily cycle is a bit longer than 24 hours. It takes about 24.5 hours for your body to complete all its daily processes. Because of this, it is much easier for your internal clock to adjust to a longer day when traveling west than to a shorter day traveling east.
2. Recovery Time Depends on Your Trip’s Direction and Distance
One theory is that you need one day of recovery for every time zone you travel through. If so, you would need four days to recover if you fly through four time zones, However, a study using mathematical models found that this formula doesn’t always work, and recovery time varies depending on your direction and distance of travel.
The table below shows recovery time in days for westward and eastward traveling across three, six, nine, and twelve time zones:
The difference is especially obvious for nine-day trips. It would take eight days to recover if traveling west, and more than 12 days if traveling east.
3. Unusual Ways to Treat Jet Lag
Exposure to bright light early in the morning is a tried and tested way to reduce jet lag symptoms. Scientists have also explored other solutions.
- One study found that the vasopressin molecule in rat eyes normalizes circadian rhythms. Vasopressin eye drops could potentially help humans recover from jet lag, but more in-depth studies are needed.
- A slight decrease in oxygen levels was found to accelerate circadian rhythm recovery in mice. Researchers used oxygen levels similar to those inside an aircraft. As in the previous study, more human trials are needed to confirm these findings.
4. You Don’t Need to Fly to Get Jet-Lag
Flying itself is not the root cause of jet lag. It has more to do with the disruption of your internal clock. When you dramatically change the time you wake up and go to bed, you experience what is called “social jet lag.”
This phenomenon can occur to you if you sleep between 11pm and 7am on weekdays, but shift your sleep pattern on weekends to 3am to 11am. A night of boozing at parties or staying on your computer is all it takes to throw you off. When you wake up at 11am on Sunday, you’ll have trouble falling asleep at 11pm, making Monday morning miserable.
Research shows that circadian rhythm imbalances not only cause sleep disorders, but also obesity and other serious metabolic problems.
5.Bad Eating Habits Contribute to Social Jet Lag
Sleep is critical for normal bodily function, but so is timely food consumption and its conversion to energy.
Nutritionists often insist that breakfast is the most important meal of the day because it fuels your brain and body throughout the day. You don’t need to eat as much in the evening when your energy demands are lower.
Many people skip breakfast, only to feel fatigued and hungry during the day. By lunchtime they are starving, so they overeat, which makes them drowsy and unable to concentrate. Dinner is often the largest meal of the day, but going to bed on a full stomach can interfere with sleep, creating a vicious cycle of low energy and poor sleep.
Research shows that an evening meal produces more blood sugar than a morning meal, shifting your daytime processes to nighttime and confusing your internal clock, creating social jet lag.
Can Jet Lag Seriously Harm Your Health?
If you only travel occasionally, you will probably recover from jet lag with no enduring health effects. But if you are an avid tourist or you travel frequently for work, repeatedly subjecting your body to jet lag can cause serious genetic damage, interfere with brain neuron growth, impair your memory and cognitive function, and cause ongoing depression.
If frequent long distance travel is unavoidable, you can reduce jet lag symptoms and mitigate metabolic imbalances and damage to your health with IV vitamin drip therapy.
How IV Therapy Works
Jet lag IV vitamin therapy is similar to an IV infusion given in a hospital or clinic, except the IV solution contains vital nutrients and medications designed to help your body heal and recover from travel stress. A jet lag IV cocktail contains anti-inflammatory medicine, amino acids and essential vitamins to help your body quickly bounce back from jet lag. Your IV drip also rehydrates your cells, restoring balance and replenishing electrolytes. You will start to feel better almost immediately after your IV vitamin therapy session.
You could take similar vitamins and medications orally, but they could take hours to absorb. Oral supplements often lose their potency during the digestive process, depriving your of their benefits. IV therapy bypasses your digestive tract and delivers potent vitamins directly to your bloodstream. From there, they travel quickly to cells in your brain and body to replenish depleted nutrients and provide relief from inflammation and dehydration.
Jet Lag Therapy in NYC
If you are planning an overseas or cross-country trip, contact InVita Cryo NYC ahead of time to reserve an IV session for the day you return home. Jet lag IV therapy will help you return seamlessly to your daily routine without the lingering effects of travel lag.
