App spells end for jet lag
JET lag is the scourge of all travellers.
While travel can be glamorous, there is nothing glamorous about falling asleep in a meeting or waking up ravenous at 2am as you attempt to recover from a trip.
Depending on which time zones and hemispheres you are travelling to and from, it can take more than a week to overcome jet lag. And with school holidays almost upon us and families travelling far and wide in the next couple of months, who has time for that?
Enter the Timeshifter app. Timeshifter combines the only elements shown to significantly reset the circadian clock (light exposure and melatonin), with proven methods (caffeine and napping) to alleviate the symptoms of jet lag.
Designers claim the app can help you beat jet lag based on just three pieces of information: your sleep pattern, your itinerary, and whether you’re a morning or a night person. It then uses these metrics to generate your very own jet lag plan.
The app has been developed by scientists using the latest sleep and circadian neuroscience, and astronauts and elite athletes are among the supporters.
The designers claim that in addition to managed exposure to light and the right type and dose of melatonin at the right time, it can help you shift faster and sleep better.
Sounds like a load of scientific claptrap doesn’t it? So, I decided it to test it out.
My fiancee and I had a whirlwind four-day trip from Brisbane to Los Angeles last month. Our itinerary was relentless (two days in LA, two in San Diego), we had things arranged every hour of every day and we had outlet malls to hit for Christmas shopping.
This would be a true survival of the fittest. There would be no time for jet lag.
So, we signed up for Timeshifter.
Based on our departure time it created a unique pretravel adjustment plan. It told us when to be exposed to extreme light, when to have subdued lighting, when to go to bed, when to have caffeine and when to sleep.
We followed our pre-travel adjustment plan to the letter and some of it felt a bit unnatural — like going to bed at 7pm on one of the nights, having a nap in the middle of the day one day, and not consuming caffeine after 11am some days.
It was full-on but Timeshifter does say that if you can’t do all the steps, just tackle the ones you can.
On the morning of our departure it had us waking at 4am and being exposed to bright light (not hard in Queensland in summer with no daylight savings) before getting on the flight at 8.30pm that night and sleeping for five hours before waking up again.
It sounds like a lot but the app sends reminders and push notifications to you while your personalised schedule provides great visibility of what your day will look like.
So, we followed all the steps religiously. We left Australia at 8.30pm and landed in LA at 3.20pm. And we felt good. We went out for dinner, wandered around and stayed up until about 10pm before giving in to sleep.
But the next day my fiancee and I felt amazing.
We smashed through a whole day of sightseeing, went to a concert with a very late finish, burned the candle at both ends ... with zero jet lag.
Surely it would hit us coming home then? But it didn’t.
The late-night LA departure, the Queensland sunshine that greeted us on arrival and suggested hints from the app combined to keep us wide awake and energetic until bedtime.
The pre-planning may not be for everyone but I’m keen to keep using this app on my travels so I can really make the most of my time when I’m on the ground — and up in the air.
Download the Timeshifter app. Your first flight is free, after that it’s $9.99 per trip or an annual subscription of US$24.99.