How to recover from a time difference? – words Al Woods
When one is sensitive to time differences, it can quickly lead to bad trips. Once arrived at your final destination, being constantly out of sync can turn your stay into a nightmare. And once you’re back at home, the benefits of these few days of rest can totally disappear. Here are some advice to recover properly from a time difference.
Choose the right flight
The first trick to overcome time differences is to choose the right flight. But what is a good flight? It’s a flight that allows you to sleep properly throughout the journey and lands before noon at your destination. Indeed, if you land after noon, it will become more difficult to recover, as your body won’t understand why you are going to bed that night without having been though a whole day.
The best is to try to live according to your destination’s time as soon as you get into the plane, so that even if you are tired and out of sync when landing, you can still try to remain active during the rest of the day and go to sleep at a decent time that night. After that, a good night of sleep should be enough to put you right back on track. Of course, even if you choose the right flight, it may be delayed for any reason. In this case, note that you can request a flight delay compensation from most airlines. It can come very handful, especially if you run a business while traveling for instance, as a delay can lead to severe losses if you stay unavailable for too long.
Get into good habits
In order to defeat time difference, there are some good habits to get into during your journey. First, as we say, try to live according to your destination’s time as soon as you get into the plane. Airlines do try to help you with this by serving meals according to the destination time.
Then, contrary to popular belief, it’s not advised to try to get as much tired before the flight in order to sleep better during the journey. Indeed, tiredness will amplify, which will only make your synchronization worse.
On the other hand, do not drink much coffee to try to stay awake either. It will only lead to an agitated night and strengthen your fatigue. Also, avoid drinking alcohol during the flight: this lead to dehydration, which worsen tiredness too.
What about the return?
On the return trip, time difference can be even more discomforting as you’ll probably have to go back to work in the following days, leaving you with no time to recover properly. Note that journeys from East to West are usually easier to cope with, as our body’s biological clock accepts more easily a longer daytime than a shorter one.
Finally, last advice, but not the least: always plan a day for resting before getting back to work. This, added to a morning landing and a good night sleep will assure you to recover properly from your flight journey and the time difference it implies. You will then be able to go back to work in perfect conditions.
