remedy
for some reason, when flying to asia i don't get serious jetlag. i'm sort of tired for a few days, but my circadian rhythms don't go all 'error number 011-.' flying back to north america is a different story. usually it takes a couple of weeks to get adjusted, and involves several days of groggily sleepwalking through daylight and several nights of lying wide awake in bed staring at the ceiling for hours, yearning for sleep to conk me on the consciousness with its sweet anvil.
whenever i go home to my parents' house, i devour all the issues of national geographic that've been published since i last visited. over the last holidays, i pored through one of their recent issues which had in it an article about the human love of caffeine. because i, too, love caffeine - o how i love it. for lots and lots of reasons it was an absorbing read, but the most practical bit of data i saved to my memory bank was this caffeine-assisted, jetlag-reducing strategy. WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?
it's my second day in california and i am ambulating around in the daytime and sleeping at nighttime already. i think the strategy is working (knock on blue desk), so i share it now with you: what you do, see, a few days before you board that transpacific flight, is quit drinking so much vietnamese coffee already! this is the hard part, because you love coffee so much, and the coffee there is the black viscosity of motor oil and tastes so bitterly delicious, and sometimes you just need to crouch on a tiny plastic sidewalk stool to recover from insane traffic and drink a 15-cent cup of the stuff. but you can quit anytime, right? then, after you've survived a few days caffeine-free and traveled through your time zones and arrived at your destination, you're supposed to dose yourself with small amounts of caffeine throughout the day. hooray!
yesterday i got to SF at 8:30am after four days without caffeine and three days of involuntary (but probably helpful) sleep deprivation. had a cup of coffee in the late morning and a soy mocha in the evening, and then went out to hear some music and drink some stella at the hotel utah (and get a parking ticket! welcome back to SF!), and then went to sleep at 2am and woke at the shockingly reasonable hour of 9:30am.
i'll keep you posted, but i think this might change my life.
whenever i go home to my parents' house, i devour all the issues of national geographic that've been published since i last visited. over the last holidays, i pored through one of their recent issues which had in it an article about the human love of caffeine. because i, too, love caffeine - o how i love it. for lots and lots of reasons it was an absorbing read, but the most practical bit of data i saved to my memory bank was this caffeine-assisted, jetlag-reducing strategy. WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?
it's my second day in california and i am ambulating around in the daytime and sleeping at nighttime already. i think the strategy is working (knock on blue desk), so i share it now with you: what you do, see, a few days before you board that transpacific flight, is quit drinking so much vietnamese coffee already! this is the hard part, because you love coffee so much, and the coffee there is the black viscosity of motor oil and tastes so bitterly delicious, and sometimes you just need to crouch on a tiny plastic sidewalk stool to recover from insane traffic and drink a 15-cent cup of the stuff. but you can quit anytime, right? then, after you've survived a few days caffeine-free and traveled through your time zones and arrived at your destination, you're supposed to dose yourself with small amounts of caffeine throughout the day. hooray!
yesterday i got to SF at 8:30am after four days without caffeine and three days of involuntary (but probably helpful) sleep deprivation. had a cup of coffee in the late morning and a soy mocha in the evening, and then went out to hear some music and drink some stella at the hotel utah (and get a parking ticket! welcome back to SF!), and then went to sleep at 2am and woke at the shockingly reasonable hour of 9:30am.
i'll keep you posted, but i think this might change my life.
posted by a wandering eye at 8:39 PM
2 Comments:
hmmm...
please pardon my skepticism. i also read that national geographic piece but i'm thinking that there is more to realigning the body's clock than dashing the palate with occasional gulps of java between the rising and the setting of the sun. it's too easy. too delicious. but my experience agrees with yours and others who claim that the trip to asia seems like little more than an extended day. a timely late afternoon or early evening arrival allows one to fall into the bunk and to arise 12 hours later with little more required to get started than a nice long shower and a solid breakfast...
coming back here is, yes, something else. for some reason, the body -- and perhaps the mind as well -- does not deal well with the notion that we arrive not only on the same day we left -- but earlier the same day to boot. the first day back is just a matter of being tired from the journey. second day is ok but the weird hours of rest and activity begin to emerge. then there are the thoughts that, well, if i were still in asia, i would be doing this or that at this moment. on the third to fifth day waking hours are spent alone, driving can be lethal, patience within oneself does not exist and that of others is sorely tried, not much is remembered, cognitive endurance becomes a joke, drooping conversations are punctuated by snorts and snoring. the return is slow and unremarkably gradual until one day one realizes that the lag, at long last, might be over...
j got back from bangkok on monday. and so i can relate to your story. not as much as j can, though...
j brought back a half dozen bags of thai highlands coffee (lannacafe.org/ -- not a great site but...). i have never had vietnamese coffee but i have had thai coffee before. wasn't impressed by it for a long time. i even hauled peet's over there a couple of times, thinking it might be the beans. in fact, i thought it was awful for the longest time until i found myself walking one day along side a fetid klong in bangkok and realized that it was the crappy water i was using to brew it. actually, this coffee that j brought back is fairly good. different than what i am used to but, nevertheless, fairly good...
but a tonic for jetlag? well...
{grin}
welcome back to the neighborhood...
i always appreciate skepticism, and yours is well-founded. i'm sure that my messed-up sleeping patterns during my caffeine wean had a lot to do with how quickly i adjusted to this time zone. that said, i have really had an easy time of it and am definitely feeling the effects of caffeine after drinking it (which is not something i feel normally, as addicted as i am).
maybe the remedy won't work next time, or maybe it won't work for you – but you can bet i'm gonna do it again. it's six days since i've returned and the body clock's still ticking on time. which reminds me, it's about time i picked up a steaming cup of chai...
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