point fu

Jetlag can put a major damper on several days of an overseas trip, and few people I know are truly happy with the typical solutions.  We've tried many approaches and have generally found that the Argonne Laboratories' plan of strategically-timed fasting works really well. The idea is that you fast for 10-ish hours during the hours when you'd be sleeping in the target timezone. Yes, it means being "hangry" for a bit and occasionally skipping an airplane meal, but it beats wasting a whole day of your trip being exhausted and sleepy and mentally checked out.  Sometimes the fasting schedule clicks really well with your travel plans, and occasionally it doesn't. Our return trip from Frankfurt was poorly-timed so I decided to try another approach I'd read about – Provigil . It's a prescription drug that keeps you awake without any type of stimulants. It can keep you awake for 10 or so hours, so it's important to time your dose correctly vis-...

I've written before about the science behind timed fasting to help your body adjust to a new timezone. We've done this on every long-haul flight since we learned about it, and our own "anecdata" is that it helps significantly . We're heading to Tokyo soon (via Taipei, which is one hour behind Japan), so we'll start eating our meals by the Tokyo clock while we're still here at home in New York. Research suggests doing this helps your body adjust to the new timezone much quicker. In practice, this often means a 10+ hour stretch of daytime fasting. While that's annoying, it's absolutely worth it to me if it means not wasting two days in Tokyo to grogginess and sleepless nights. Our flight leaves New York at 1:30am on Tuesday and arrives at 5:15am on Wednesday , so here's the plan: Monday 9am NYC (10pm Tokyo) Eat big breakfast first when we wake up in NYC (aka eat "late dinner" Tokyo) Then fast for 9 hours   Monday 6pm NYC...

(updated June 2018) I've read for years that researchers had found that selective fasting can help alleviate jet lag but I'd never tried it until this trip. The idea is simple: a day or two before you depart, you figure out when you'll be asleep in the new time zone and you fast during your pre-bedtime and sleeping hours. We were taking JAL's 787 service ( trip report here ) leaving Tokyo at 6pm, this meant that we had a late breakfast and then had to fast until they started serving food on board (ca. 8pm). My husband's "hangry" fits are legendary. Like I actually carry around power bars and nuts with me entirely on the off chance he gets low blood sugar and turns into a Snickers commercial. But he loves sleep more than anything so he fully volunteered to try this if it meant better sleeping when we got back. Not eating from like 11am until 8pm was tough for both of us, but the anec-data here is that we both had virtually no jet lag . From what I...