Yesterday I was in a whole world of pain. I felt like I was in some horrible out-of-body experience. As if my brain had undergone some lobotomy performed by a drunk surgeon and my empty skull had been roughly stuffed with scratchy wire wool. My eyes felt like they were barely able to open, let alone focus on the world around me, and don’t get me started on the nausea clenching my stomach in aggressive waves.
No, I wasn’t taking part in some bizarre medical trial. This is the story of how jet lag kicked my ass, and won… for 36 hours at least.
I couldn’t tell you how many air miles I’ve clocked up over the years but I’d never flown this far in one long stretch before. The crazy thing is that when I arrived in Sydney after a full 24 hours of travelling, I felt ok. Yes, a little wired but I put that down to the adrenalin and it actually worked in my favour as I wrote this rambling blog post and tried to get my bearings slightly.
I woke up (after only a couple of hours sleep) and caught a flight to Melbourne to meet my friend Laura. I think the excitement of seeing this awesome backpacker (who I’d met on a beach in Goa three years earlier) kept me going and we spent the day catching up, wandering the city, drinking wine and coming third in a hostel quiz. So far so good. How wrong I was.
After stumbling into bed at a fairly reasonable hour I was then up at 5am unable to force my brain to switch off and go back to sleep. I felt like I’d been hit by a bus, my head was too heavy for my aching neck, I was so hungry but the thought of food made me want to race to the nearest toilet. All in all it wasn’t pretty. Ok, so maybe I was being slightly over-dramatic when I was wailing to Laura that I was convinced the end was nigh and that my time was up.
She calmly told me (I swear she was hiding a smile that was trying to break out at how pathetic I was being) that I was just suffering from jet lag, after all I’d hardly taken care of my body and it was apparently staging a sit-in protest, screaming at me to take care of it.
So, that’s what I did. I stocked up on rehydration salts, forced myself to stay awake until it was ‘bedtime’, stayed off the booze, drank camomile tea and had a lazy day where I could rest properly. No blogging, no writing, hardly any sightseeing and just hanging at the hostel getting to know other backpackers and catch up with the lovely Laura. Basically, having a dose of R&R.
And do you know what; it worked! I woke up this morning after a solid eight hours sleep feeling like a new woman. Honestly, I was panicking that I would feel like crap for the rest of my life (told you I can be melodramatic at times) but nope, by listening to my body and just slowing down the pace I now feel SO much better.
Thanks to everyone on Facebook who shared their tips on surviving jet lag, here are my fave pieces of advice:
- Take melatonin tablets two hours before your bedtime for the first couple of days
- Drink apple juice, water or anything with electrolytes in
- Don’t be tempted to go on your phone if you can’t doze off, the light from the screen will mess with your itchy tired eyes
- Allow yourself a day or two to recover so don’t book loads of activities in the first week you arrive if possible
- Avoid alcohol (whoopsie…)
Tomorrow, just to prove how much better I feel, we’re heading off early to watch the sunrise at the 12 Apostles aka I’m going to be behind the wheel in Australia hitting the Great Ocean Road together. Road triiiiiipppp!
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