Sleep and Jet Lag

It’s that time of year when many of us are beginning to look forward to some kind of summer holiday. If you’re set to go abroad and have concerns about jet lag, it pays to be prepared.

What is it Jet Lag?

Jet lag hasn’t always had the recognition it has today. For many years, experts believed it to be a state of mind rather than a physical condition. More recent research has proven however, that jet lag results from an imbalance in our natural biological clock and that this can cause problems no matter how frequently you travel. This clock runs on a 24 hour cycle and it loves routine. During this time, our exposure to daylight (or lack of it) signals to the body when it is time to sleep or wake.

Jet lag is now actually recognised as one of the most common sleep disorders. It occurs when we travel quickly across time zones and our natural body clock remains on our original schedule, becoming significantly out of sync with the time at our destination. The experience of needing to sleep in the middle of the afternoon or of being wide awake late into the night is jet lag.

It is generally less of a problem when travelling from East to West as it’s easier to delay your sleep time (i.e. make your day longer) than make it significantly earlier but either way, it can take a few (fairly miserable) days to reset itself. And if you have kids… well, read on!

What can you do about Jet Lag?

The good news is that there are some simple things you can do to make the transition that little bit easier.

• Plan in advance and if you’re travelling East, start going to bed and getting up earlier for a few days beforehand. If you’re going West, go to bed and get up later.
• Try not to nap on the day of travel. If you absolutely can’t keep your eyes open, set an alarm to ensure you don’t sleep for more than two hours.
• Wherever possible, choose a flight that lands in the early evening and stay up until 10pm local time.
• Alcohol, caffeine and tobacco are stimulants so try and avoid them for at least 3 hours before bed.
• As soon as you’re on that plane, adjust your watch to your destination time.
• Keep your fluid intake up. Dehydration will make it more difficult for the body to adjust.
• Earplugs and eye masks can be bought quite cheaply and work brilliantly at creating the right conditions for sleep.
• If you’re feeling drowsy when you shouldn’t, spend as much time outside in the daylight as possible to stimulate your body clock.

Aiding Jet Lag for kids?

• Still adjust your watch to your destination time once you’re on the plane, but keeping something (a travel clock?) that shows you the old time can be useful in keeping track of when babies and small children would have needed naps / feeds at home.
• Don’t plan any major activities or expensive outings for the first few days. It can take kids longer to adjust and these could end up being an expensive wash out.
• If you’ve all been on a very long flight, napping on the first day is likely to be unavoidable. From the second day though, trying not to let the kids nap more than they would at home is a good idea.
• Making the kids bedtime later than normal for the first few days may help them to sleep through the night and speed up the adjustment process.

Last but not least have a fantastic holiday and remember that like most things, it shall pass!

We can’t do much to help you sleep when you’re away from home apart from offer our advice, but at home is another story. At Dormeo we are a pretty happy bunch, because we sleep on Dormeo mattresses. For us it’s quite easy to recommend our products to others because we all sleep on them. We know them, use them and enjoy the benefits. So why should you tolerate poor sleep? Dormeo can help eliminate the most common causes of a lack of sleep but don’t just take our word for it. All our mattresses are available in Single, Double, King and Super King sizes and come with our 15 year warranty and our 200 night Comfort Guarantee. We are that sure that you will experience the best sleep that if you don’t agree within the 60 day trial period, we'll happily refund you the cost of the mattress with our ‘No Quibble Refund’.