The jet lag rules (general)

1. Drink lots of non-fluoridated water, reverse osmosis water, or spring water
    
2. Avoid all alcohol three days before during and three days after your trip.
    
3. Never sit next to a window with an open curtain. You are getting excessive UVA exposure and getting more cosmic radiation, both of which lead to higher Vitamin A levels in the brain, lower Vitamin D levels in the skin and brain, and much high risk of developing skin damage from the excessive UVA. You also risk high cataract exposure if you are a frequent flyer.
    
4. Always sit in the aisle so you can get up and move.
    
5. Always connect your foot to the metal framework in front of you to ground yourself to the plane.
    
6. Always use noise reduction ear plugs.
    
7. Never sit in the emergency row. It has all the avionics of the wings close to it and has higher EMF risks.
    
8. Wear blue blockers during flight to preserve your DHA loss in your eye and skin.
    
9. Always eat a large seafood meal before getting on a flight. Dose yourself with ubiquinol before during and after the flight. Try to fast during the flight and after you land. The following day eat a very large breakfast. I try to make sure it is ketogenic and DHA deep. Being ketogeneic limits lactic acid build up and the seafood omelets replenish the lost DHA. Some people use bicarbonate to limit lactic acid build up but I have not had success with it.
10. 
    If you’re heading east, aim for an evening arrival to minimize the circadian disruption. This all helps 
11. you align with the new time schedule.
     
12. Before your trip, ease your transition to the new time zone by moving your bedtime. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine guidelines suggest shifting your sleep schedule an hour earlier each night, starting three days before you leave on an eastbound trip. For me traveling to medical conferences, this is impractical. Instead, I try to go to bed 15 minutes earlier each night, and get as much early-morning sunlight outside scantily clad as I can.Natural light is the most potent tool for adjusting your body clock: natural light releases cortisol to unzip collagen and allow cells in the brain to swell by altering slow and fast water flows via aquaporin 4 to wake you up naturally. Light is akin to a medication that wakes you up. It does the same thing as modafinil does to your CNS. Aquaporin 4 undergoes elastic deformation during flights and can lead to “gate issues” for water flow in the brain. Some people have used low dose calcium channel blockade drugs when it becomes clear calcium efflux is stimulatory to their brain causing headaches. This can lead to calcium homeostasis in a neuron to cause swelling. This leads to an inability to restore extracellular water levels to maintain water battery after neuronal and glial cell swelling in response to stimulus of light which can act to crash the system. When you generate an irregular function at the AQA4 gates, you create an energy supply problem. This leads to an irregular metabolism in neurons, but specifically their mitochondrial function lessens because it swells. This leads to fluctuating demand for nutrients to maintain mitochondrial mass. When energy balance is off, it leads to fluctuating ability to sense both the internal and external environment. This is why jet lag is often seen with cognitive decline and exacerbates mental illness. When autophagy is lowered, we develop an altered capacity for “pro-survival/intelligent” choices. This is manifest by irregular dopamine cycling which leads to moodiness, cognitive haze and poor decision making. This is why I also map out my jet lag plan on paper before I fly so I won’t go off schedule if I feel bad when I arrive.
     
13. If you’re headed west, expose yourself to natural light at sunset in the evening before you leave 3 days before the flight. I told this to some professional football players many years ago to offset their poor play on the west coast after they fly from the east coast of the US. They were shocked at how well it reversed their recent play as the traveled time zones. This hack can morph your body clock into thinking it’s morning when it is not. Sunshine is ideal, but those sun-mimicking lights designed to counter seasonal affective disorder are a good stand-in. I have also toyed around with red light and with 380 nm light in my hacks and they have been successful in very long flights while going west.
    If you are going eastward a 15 minute brisk walk of a few 40 yd sprints helps. If it is cold, that is even better. Though its effects are much weaker than those of light, exercise (especially when vigorous) has a similar influence and can make you feel more alert. Both of these hacks stimulate autophagy.
     
14. Swimming in cold water is one of the best hacks for long eastward trips. I also use the “Kruse hack” for jet lag going eastward by lying face down on the diving board of the pool and putting my hands and wrists in the cold water while also putting my head face down below the diving board platform before diving in. I do this because my head is then below my heart and it increases blood flow to my brain, increasing CMRO2 which also stimulates autophagy. This offsets the effect of microgravity of the flight. This also offsets the loss of gravity from the flight. Gravity is affected by two main factors – latitude and altitude. Plane flight brings both of these into play for our biology and we forget it. Low latitudes are the latitudes between the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn. Portions of the low latitudes receive direct sunlight year round, therefore there is a constant source of infrared energy to maximally form an Exclusion Zone from water. This is not true at the poles. Water is a repository for electromagnetic energy. Water absorbs energy best in the infrared range. At the poles, there is far more cosmic and solar radiation present. This type of radiation carries way more energy than infrared waves. This is why temperature lowers at the poles to offset the loss of infrared heat. Cold increases electron density in water to offset the energy loss, but is it enough to affect your weight or circadian biology? It actually is, but few know it.
     
15. If you were to stand on one of the two poles on Earth then you would weigh 0.5 per cent more than if you were on the equator. Remember, when you weigh more, it means you are losing energy to the environment for some reason. Flying is a circadian mismatch that causes that loss of energy.