Saturday, May 10, 2008


People who are used to traveling frequently, experience jetlag a lot. Sometimes even athletes traveling far and wide to other countries for participating in various tournaments, hold the jetlags responsible for their poor performance. Even businessmen traveling for long find jetlags as affecting their work. Thus we see jetlags affect the entirety of a person.

Basically jetlag is the condition that a human body experiences due to disorientation, after a long travel across one or several time zones. Jetlags happen usually when a person crosses the time zones and his daily schedule receives a sudden jolt. His internal body-clock then finds it difficult to adjust with the new ways and thus gets easily exhausted. Common symptoms are sleeplessness and tiredness, headaches and lack of concentration.

The direction of the travel usually determines the intensity of a jetlag. People say that jetlags are greater when traveling eastward than westward. This is due to the rhythm of the body that is able to catch up to 27 hours of continuous functioning and is also capable of adjusting with the environmental changes.

Also the circadian rhythm is more than 24 hours when somebody travels from west to east. As the time of the day is extended the body gets more time to adjust.

There are no quick remedies for curing jetlags. But there are ways to get over it in a short time:

1. During the day if someone stays out of doors then jetlags can be avoided. This helps the body clock to adjust with the new time schedule. Natural lights help to cope with jetlags. So after you reach your destination, do spend as much time as possible outdoors and in natural light.

2. The severity of jetlags can be avoided by adjusting the bedtime schedules. This ploy works well because the body clock then has enough time to adjust to the changed situation.

3. If the people immediately start to adjust eating, sleeping and doing their activities according to the new local time pattern then jetlags do not affect so badly. It is important to keep this in mind.

4. Athletes and businessmen should make their journey well ahead of time so that their work is not detrimentally affected by the jetlags that are actually unavoidable. Traveling early may give them more time to adjust with the new time and environment.

Thus we see jetlags remain not so much of a disturbance if it is adjusted properly. The tour becomes more enjoyable.

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