Sept 6: How to tame a jetlag

Any overseas traveler understands the pain of jetlag. Shanghai has a 12-hour time difference from Ottawa. I always joke with my mom that if I drill a hole from my house through the center of the earth, I will pop up in their apartment in Shanghai! All kidding aside, what this means is that day and night are completely switched between the two cities.

According to a scientific research I read, it takes 1 day to adjust for every hour of time difference. Thus, theoretically it takes 12 days for me to become normal again when I go home. From my personal experience, this estimate is only slightly overstated. It usually takes me about a week to fully adapt to the local time. This is a real drag because holidays are generally too short in length. My trip to Shanghai never exceeds 3 weeks. I hate to sacrifice an entire week just for the jetlag.

Then I read an article on how to tame a jetlag. The trick is to switch to the other time zone days before the travel. I decided to give it a try.

5 days before my departure, I started to stay up later and later each night, until I got to 2 AM. I would also get up late in the morning. This was easy to do because I no longer had a job at that time. When possible, I sneaked in a nap here and there to simulate sleeping during night time in Shanghai. During my 28-hour transit, I operated on Shanghai time - sleeping during the day and staying up at night. Of course, this would be harder to do with an economic fare. The advantage of an overseas flight is that the crew usually shut all the windows, completely obliterating the distinction between day and night. Whenever I woke up and felt I couldn't sleep any more (because my body is still trying to operate in Ottawa time), I would take a Melatonin to coax some sleepiness from the pineal gland. It worked quite well.

Although I did not get a continuous block of 8-hour sleep, when I arrived in Shanghai at 10:20 AM, I had accummulated about 7 hours of sleep time. I managed to get through the entire day without much fatigue - thanks to a cup of Starbucks in the afternoon. It has been a week since I left Ottawa and I had almost no jetlag this time.

I am happy and proud to report - jetlag could be tamed indeed! All it takes is a bit of planning and perseverance.