Fighting jetlag: A fight I always lose

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I’m sure Australia is a really great country. I wouldn’t know because when I’m there I’m in a foul mood and my bloodshot eyes don’t judge kindly. I’m tired, cranky and fighting an internal battle I can’t win. Out of all the trips I do, the ones down under are the hardest on my body.

The Aussie flight schedules depart Dubai around 10 am and arrive Australia around 6 am local time. The next day after our arrival into the country we have a 4:50 am wake up call that starts the next leg of our journey to New Zealand. This means if we sleep all day we wont sleep that night. But if you try to stay awake and go to bed in the evening you always wake up around 2 to 3 am. My body clock always plays this same game and it knows the rules and I don’t. It cheats!!!! Each crew member has their own way of playing the game. Some fight sleep, some sleep right away and others just drink until they’re no longer allowed by flight laws. I just sleep when I can sleep and I don’t even try to fight my body and this keeps me fit to fly most of the time. On the 5th day of the trip when we are heading back home to Dubai our body clock finally adjusts to the local time but it’s of no use. I’m set to Australia time just in time to arrive back home in Dubai. Then I have to fight my body clock again to reset to home time. It’s hard to do when I have an early morning flight following my Australia duties. Lucky this week my next departure is two days away and departs for London in the late afternoon.

There are all kinds of tonics and potions that claim to help with the side effects of air travel. I’ve never really tried them until now. On my flight from Auckland to Melbourne I met the founder of 1 Above, the world’s first Aerotonic Flight Beverage.

He sold me on trying the product so I picked up a bottle at the Melbourne Airport. I did feel pretty good this morning after my arrival and adjusted pretty fast to home time the next night. I still need to give it a couple more tries to see if the claims that the drink helps the “body adjust to being at altitude so you have a better flying experience and you arrive to your destination ready to go,” are true. One of my fellow crew members on this last trip swears by the product and has been drinking it for months now. I will keep you updated on my market research.

Now it’s nearly 2 am and I need to get to the task of resetting my body clock. At my Auckland hotel they had this door hanger…

This is what I’m going to do now 🙂

  • Fly Guy

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