Proper diet helps fliers get the (jet) lag out

Last week when my husband arrived at his hotel room in Athens, Greece, he put his hat in a drawer and hung his socks in the closet.

He wasn't returning from a night of drinking ouzo. He had just arrived from an all-night flight from New York and his brain was still somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.

In other words, he was suffering from classic jet lag.

It could have been worse.

Pam Parsons flew to London on a business trip and had to give a speech at a luncheon meeting immediately following her arrival. When the host called on her, Pam was fast asleep with a spoon resting on her sleeve. She grabbed the spoon and for a brief moment thought it was the microphone. It took her several minutes to even remember the topic of her talk.

According to the experts, jet lag occurs when you force your body through several time zones before it's ready to go. When you land after an eight-hour flight, your internal clock says it's bedtime and wants you to hit the snooze button. But your brain says it's daytime and wants you to hit the road. While your body battles it out, you feel dizzy, disoriented, sick to your stomach and mentally challenged.

One chronic sufferer said it's like playing a 78 rpm record on a 33 rpm player. You can't get up to speed.

While everyone is petty much in agreement over what causes jet lag, curing it is another story. Passengers have tried all kinds of remedies. Some are quite involved.

One popular diet plan involves slowly adjusting to the new time zone before you leave the country. This might work for a one-time trip, but it could put the frequent traveler in a tailspin.

Other travelers find homeopathic medicines, such as melatonin and No-Jet-Lag tablets, help.

A few years ago, a jet-lag watch landed on the Internet. The user programmed the estimated arrival time and the flight time into the watch. Then the timepiece automatically adjusted to the changing time zones. The hands of the watch moved forward or backward depending on whether you were flying east or west. The idea was by periodically glancing at your watch, psychologically, you would adjust as well.

Apparently, it was behind the eight ball. It died an untimely death.

In 2002, a group of scientists in Australia shed some light on the subject. They believed bright lights applied for several days before a flight and several times during a flight would rewind the internal clock. So they devised a pair of sunglasses equipped with battery-powered lights that flicked on and off. That, too, was a flash in the pan.

But that doesn't mean you're forced to arrive in a stupor after an all-night flight. There are some old standard ways to reset your internal clock that help.

• Watch what you drink. At 35,000 feet, cabin air sucks the moisture out of you. Stay away from dehydrating liquids such as coffee and alcohol. Before you board the aircraft, purchase a liter of water and drink an eight-ounce glass every hour of the flight. It might cause you to visit the lavatory more often. But the exercise increases circulation, which helps with jet lag and might help you avoid deep-vein thrombosis, a serious blood-clotting condition.

• Watch what you eat. If there is any food onboard, you can bet it's loaded with salt. Bring your own meal. Some foods, such as turkey, actually help you sleep. Carry on a turkey sandwich, a salad and a piece of fruit and you'll be well fed and possibly snoring before the beverage cart makes it down the aisle.

• Watch what you bring. When travel agent Judy Barr flies to London, she curls up with a micro-fiber blanket and pillow. She doesn't surface until the wheels touch down at Heathrow. Judy says the blanket keeps the fuzzies at bay. She never leaves home without it.

Gail Todd, a free-lance writer,worked as a flight attendant for more than 30years. She can be reached via e-mail at gailtodd@aol.com.