Vacationing somewhere far from home is always fun — but traveling there via plane can be a real lesson in self-discipline. Hours upon hours in a cramped, confined space with low air pressure and low humidity can bring on discomforts ranging from headache to dehydration.
No surprises there.
But even after stepping off the plane, your troubles may be only beginning. While the symptoms of travel fatigue fade fairly quickly, the icky feelings that accompany jet lag — irritability, indigestion, sleepiness during the day and insomnia at night — can last for days or even weeks if you don’t play your cards right.
For frequent flyers like pilots and flight attendants, jet lag can even become a chronic problem. In the long term, it’s associated with increased risk of things like cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.
“Before the airplane was invented and international flight was introduced last century,” says Greg Roach, a professor at the Appleton Institute for Behavioural Science in South Australia, “there [was] no need for our circadian systems to immediately adapt to rapid time zone changes.”
