You are here

Jet lagged

By Nickunj Malik - Jun 08,2016 - Last updated at Jun 08,2016

I was one of those people who made fun of jet lag. Call it the arrogance of youth but I really believed this condition was a whole lot of balderdash created by the moaners. These were folks who constantly moaned and complained about everything and I did not have much time for them. 

I loved travelling and had vowed to see as much of the world as possible as soon as I could afford it. I would carefully save my money and instead of splurging on expensive accessories I rushed to buy flight tickets. The result was that most of the travel agents became my good friends who would get me fantastic deals. With the advent of the Internet I became an expert at getting the best prices on all the online booking sites. 

For a couple of decades I was a happy frequent flyer and visited one place after another at the drop of a hat. My suitcases became battered and my passport swelled to accommodate all the international visas. New cultures enthralled me and the alien languages were like music to my ears. From taxi drivers to bartenders, everyone gave me their visiting cards and urged me to make a trip to the unusual hideouts. I noted the instructions carefully and would try my best to comply. 

Amidst all this excitement I never got jet-lagged. Crisscrossing the globe did not bother me one bit. All I needed to do after reaching a new destination was to unpack my bag and dive headlong into the local time zone. Whatever they were having, breakfast, lunch or dinner, I enthusiastically joined the rest of the citizenry, and my body clock adjusted accordingly. It was as simple as that. 

But suddenly, I came to the painful realisation that I was no longer immune to it. All my jokes about jet lag came back to haunt me, and the scorn I treated it with, bit me in the head, so to speak. Soon, after every 11-hour transatlantic flight I started to become disoriented and the extreme fatigue I experienced lasted for days on end. 

For years, I considered jet lag as merely a state of mind. But studies have proved that it actually results from an imbalance in our body’s natural “biological clock” when we go across different time zones. Basically, our bodies work on a 24-hour cycle called “circadian rhythms” that is influenced by our exposure to sunlight and determine when we sleep and when we wake.

While travelling through a number of time zones, the person’s body clock gets out of synchronisation with the destination time, as it experiences daylight and darkness contrary to the rhythms to which it has grown accustomed to. The natural pattern no longer corresponds to the environment and so the body cannot immediately realign these rhythms, it is jet lagged. The speed at which one adjusts to the new schedule depends on the individual as well as the direction of travel; some people may require several days to adjust to a new time zone, while others experience little disruption.

I copy this information to my husband on messenger. He reads it at his office. After 20 minutes my phone beeps with a response. 

“Are you writing with your eyes closed?” he types. 

“How can you tell?” I ask. 

“You seem sleepy,” he types back. 

“No, no,” I deny. 

He sends me a toothy smiley. 

 

“Zzzzz,” I give up, and go to sleep.

up
88 users have voted.


Newsletter

Get top stories and blog posts emailed to you each day.

PDF