Dealing with jet lag is fairly easy for those of us who only fly once in a while, perhaps once or twice a year on holiday or for the odd business trip, but for aircrews and regular long-haul fliers, jet lag often brings in its wake a number of health problems that can become effectively permanent.
Long-haul travelers will be more than familiar with the disturbance to their sleep pattern and the insomnia which can be produced by a long trip, in addition to things like changes in mood, irritability, stomach problems and difficulty in dealing with information. However, for very frequent fliers these usually transient symptoms become a part of daily life and are habitually joined by menstrual cycle problems for women and even by short-term psychiatric difficulties for a number of people.
The chief factors which influence the degree of jet lag which you experience, apart from how frequently you travel, are the distances involved, the direction of travel and your age.
If you regularly travel across just one or two world time zones then any affects will probably be very mild. However, as soon as you start to cross more than three world time zones, and particularly when you get up to frequently traveling over six or more time zones, symptoms will start to increase markedly.
The symptoms of jet lag are also more marked when you travel east and tend to affect you less when flying west. For example, if you fly from London to Singapore on vacation you will experience greater jet lag on arrival in Singapore at the beginning of your holiday than you will in London when you return.
In general when traveling east you can expect jet lag to last for a few days and a good guide is approximately two thirds of the number of time zones crossed. For example, if you cross six time zones you can expect jet lag to affect you for about four days. When traveling west jet lag could be expected to last about half of this time.
Another important factor when it comes to jet lag is age and, as you get older, you will find that you are increasingly affected by jet lag.
A true jet lag cure does not exist although there is a great deal that you can do to help to reduce the symptoms of jet lag.
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