Picture this: you’ve finally arrived home after a significant time traveling. You’re excited to see your loved ones again, eat foods you missed while you were gone, and rest all the fatigue away. You lay down on your mattresses in San Diego only to find out you can’t sleep when you’re supposed to be sleeping!

This condition is called jet lag. It happens when your body is accustomed to another time zone, disrupting your natural circadian rhythm. Depending on your sleeping habits, it can take days to maybe even weeks before your sleeping schedule goes back to normal!

This obviously can be a hassle for people who just want to go back to their everyday lives. Jet lag causes daytime sleepiness, fatigue, and even headaches. Thankfully, frequent travelers have come up with lots of tips to combat jet lag, and we’ve highlighted the most effective ones below.

1. Adjust Your Schedule Before You Leave

One of the best ways to get rid of jet lag is to prevent it from happening even before it starts! Before your trip, try and imagine yourself as already being there. Change your phone’s time to your destination’s time zone and start adapting your sleeping and eating schedules to it.

This change in the time zone doesn’t have to be instantaneous. You can start by sleeping one hour earlier, then two hours earlier, and so on.

2. Choose the Right Flights

If you’re a frequent flyer, then you should be well aware of your sleeping habits on the plane by now. You should be choosing a flight that can you can easily adapt your sleeping schedule to without suffering from jet lag!

What do we mean by this? For example, if you’re someone like me who absolutely cannot sleep on planes, then your best bet is to schedule a flight that’ll land at your destination at night. That way, by the time you’re at the hotel, you’ll be ready to sleep like everybody else! On the other hand, if you can sleep just fine on planes, you should schedule a trip that lands in the morning so you won’t have a hard time staying awake since you already caught some Z’s on the plane.

3. Regulate Light Exposure

Light is crucial to having a good sleep experience. It lets your body know when it’s time to be awake and time to be asleep. This is precisely why many night shifters have difficulty sleeping during the day—the sunshine is telling them to get up and go!

So, if it’s nighttime at your destination but bright where you are right now, then utilize some sleeping gadgets to help you sleep. These include eye masks, headphones, earplugs, sunglasses, and more. You should also close the windows if you’re by a window seat so you won’t be distracted by the sun.

4. Use Caffeine and Melatonin

If push comes to shove, you can also use good old caffeine and melatonin to help get you through jet lag.

Caffeine is a psychostimulant substance that can be found in foods like coffee, chocolate, green tea, some chewing gums, energy drinks, sodas, and more. It helps to keep you awake by blocking adenosine receptors in the brain that encourage you to sleep. It’s absorbed quickly in the body and is best taken in the mornings so it won’t disrupt your sleep at night.

Melatonin, on the other hand, is a naturally-occurring hormone in the body that encourages you to sleep. It’s believed to be crucial in regulating your sleeping schedule. So, if you need to sleep fairly quickly, maybe pop a melatonin supplement or two to get things moving.

5. Drink Plenty of Water

Did you know that dehydration not only makes jet lag aftereffects worse but also makes it hard to recover? You always need to drink plenty of water while traveling, especially if you’re on a plane. That’s because planes have low humidity and moisture levels, making your throat and nose very itchy and dry.

Don’t be like other people who avoid drinking water to avoid using the lavatories. Dealing with cramped lavatories for a day is far better than suffering a couple of days with jet lag!

Conclusion

Jet lag is annoying but is thankfully manageable as long as you do the right preparations and practice proper sleeping habits. To help you get rid of any sleeping problems, we highly recommend you go for the best mattress money can buy by visiting Mattress Sale Liquidators in San Diego at our website here!