Spring break will find many of us waiting in crowded airports, toting luggage around and eagerly boarding planes bound for destinations a world away from the Hilltop. Whether you plan to visit California, the Caribbean, or Cannes, your body will need to readjust. While you may feel completely at home in your new environment, your body likely will not. It has been carefully programmed to function on a Washington, D.C. time schedule. You may thrive on spontaneity and adventure, but your body thrives on routine. Drop your body off in the middle of Paris, and it’s likely to be confused. It’s nighttime in Paris when it’s noon in D.C., and your body expects the sun to be shining.
As it turns out, our biological clocks are particularly sensitive to light and dark cues. The body has learned a certain pattern of sunlight and darkness, and expects that pattern to be followed. The body’s natural cycle, its Circadian rhythm, is triggered and maintained by exposure to sunlight. Our brains receive light-dark signals directly from the eyes, governing our daily activity and energy output based on those cues. Once that pattern has been disturbed, and a new pattern has been put in place, it takes a while for your body to catch on.
Generally, your body needs one day to readjust for each time zone that you cross. Sorry, jetsetters, but this means that you will probably be feeling the effects of a flight from D.C. to Paris for nearly a week. By that time, you are probably ready to board a plane back to campus, shifting the pattern all over again.
Since Spring Break only lasts a precious ten days, you will want to make the most of it. So, how do you spend your time partying in Paris or surfing in the California sun instead of sleeping in your hotel room? The answer is food. Our bodies operate on several cycles, and our eating cycle is almost as powerful as our sleeping cycle. The stomach—as any hungry student in the midst of midterms will tell you—can outsmart the brain.
The best way to get back in sync is to avoid eating before and during your flight. Once you arrive at your destination, you are free to eat. But if you eat breakfast at 7:30 a.m. in D.C., remember to eat again when it is 7:30 a.m. in your destination city. If your meal schedule continues to revolve around D.C. time, so will you and your body. While this won’t immediately dispel all of the symptoms of jet lag, it will help your body to adjust more quickly than it normally would.
After all, our daily activity is not governed solely by sunlight exposure. (This seems like it would be especially true after spending an entire week holed up in Lauinger, entirely deprived of all natural light while studying for midterms.) Daylight schedules often give way to eating regiments. We divide up the day according to meal times and vary our energy output accordingly. Eating cycles are tightly linked to our sleep cycles in any case. We eat during the waking hours, and don’t eat during the sleeping hours. This is why altering our food intake can have such an influence on when we feel tired or when we feel active.
So if you are a picky eater and never liked the plane food anyway, you are in luck. Otherwise, try your best to pass on the little bags of pretzels, and those enticing preheated meal trays. The airline crew might be slightly offended by your persistent refusal of food, but your body will be thanking you and rewarding you for the rest of your trip.
Before takeoff, be sure to put Sadaf’s seatback and tray table in their upright and locked positions at squreshi@georgetownvoice.com
