Biohacking Travel: 6 Secrets And Routines To Beating Jetlag Forever
Greetings from Tokyo, Japan!
Today we're talking about an amazing topic and I've got a very special guest, my clever boyfriend Leon.
You guys know I'm so into health, I want to be as healthy as possible, but I'm not the expert on this. I actually get most of my information about health from this guy.
He's constantly reading, listening to podcasts and researching about everything health-related, so I have asked him to go into more details about the complexities, the research and the scientific stuff behind it!
Introducing Leon!
“A few years ago I became obsessed with a quote by Aubrey de Grey, who’s one of the world’s leading experts on anti-aging. Speaking at a conference he said “the first human being to live to be a thousand years old, has already been born”, which is a crazy crazy thing to think about.
What he was speaking about is the fact that medical science and science on anti-aging is advancing so fast, that the technology that we now have is going to enable people alive today to live a ridiculously long lifetime, providing of course you’re living a lifestyle that’s conducive to that and you’re taking care of your body.
I’m obsessed with health and I call myself a ‘Biohacker’, which means I try and hack the environment around me so I can live the best life that I can. You know things like light, air, water, sleep, exercise - all stuff that we do on a day to day basis, but we may not take care of ourselves in all of the best ways that we can.
Although I’m not necessarily aiming to live to be a thousand years old, I am aiming to live as long as I possibly can and spend that time on earth in as healthy a position as possible. I don’t want to start degrading as I get older, I’d like to be feeling the way that I do now when I’m 70, 80, 90, 100 and beyond! ”
TOP TIPS TO BIOHACK TRAVEL & JETLAG:
1. Fighting Oxidative Stress:
Flying takes a massive toll on your body. From the circadian rhythms (aka sleep patterns) being disrupted because of the time zone changes, increased cosmic radiation, EMF, which is electromagnetic field and your immune system also working overtime to fight all the bacteria and pathogens that are found on the plane - your body is not very happy when it is flying.
All this stuff causes what's known as ‘oxidative stress’, which is the main cause of your equilibrium and your general health breaking down. To combat this, I give my body an extra boost of antioxidants and other stuff to help me fight this off when I fly.
Right now I'm traveling with only one backpack here in Japan so I'm very limited with what I brought with me to fight off these stresses.
For antioxidant boost I've brought with me grape seed extract with resveratrol.
To fight general oxidative stress I have life Vantage's protandim.
Normally I only take these compounds once a day to fight general oxidative stress, but when I fly I tend to megadose them because of the additional oxidative stress on my body and take them every three to four hours.
2. Massive Hydration
Staying hydrated is important, but never as much as when we fly. Our bodies tend to like humidity somewhere around sort of the 50 to 60% range. Unfortunately for us, the cabin of an aircraft is usually kept somewhere around 10 to 20% humidity, which is much too low for our bodies to function normally.
This super low humidity dries up our eyes our nose our skin and basically everything in our body this is part of the reason you're at an increased risk of getting sick when you fly. This is because the mucous membranes in your nose tend to dry up a lot which means they're unable to do their job properly and catch bacteria and other pathogens when you breathe.
Because of this you need to stay even more hydrated when you fly. An easy rule of thumb for you guys to follow is to just drink a liter of water before you fly and then every hour drink half a liter of water. Yes you're gonna have a little toilet stop on the plane but it's better for you anyway.
If you can, make sure you bring a filtration bottle. It's gonna filter your water even more, making it extra pure.
3. Beating Jet Lag
Jet lag is just a general term for you not feeling so great after a flight. It's caused by a couple of things that we've spoken about, increased stress and dehydration, but the most important factor in getting jet lag under control is getting your circadian rhythms back in check. You've just jumped too many time zones! To do that, it's all about adjusting your body clock to the new time zone as soon as possible or even before you fly.
The way that I do this is from the moment I board the plane, or sometimes before, I start to eat, sleep and work as if I'm already at my destinations timezone, which helps my body clock get in order faster. For example, if I bought a flight at 10 a.m, but at 7 p.m. already at my timezone, I know it's only about 3 to 4 hours before I'd normally go to sleep. Taking this in mind, I might not be tired, but I'll try and get myself to sleep at the same time that I would at my destination.
I’ll pop a melatonin tablet, maybe put some binaural beats or meditate, things that I normally do to get my body winding down and getting to sleep.
Another little thing that helps is just to reset your watch when you board the plane to your destinations time zone, which will help to get that new time zone in your head and start doing things on the plane like eating and sleeping at that time zone.
You guys know we talk about this a lot - the blue light on our devices and airplane screens tells our brains that it is daytime and it's not gonna allow for the release of the sleep hormone of melatonin, which means you are definitely not doing yourself any favors in helping to get your body back in check.
4. Keep Moving:
They say sitting is the new smoking. It is really bad for you to sit for long periods of time, but it's even worse when you're sitting on a plane. The lack of air pressure can cause blood to pull at your feet, causing discomfort in your legs and even the dangerous deep vein thrombosis.
But most of all sitting on an airplane for hours just makes you feel bad. Lucky for you there's a super simple way to combat this and that's just by getting up off your ass and taking a walk around the plane.
5. Know What’s Going To Make You Sick:
You are at a higher risk of getting sick simply because you are stuck in a metal tube with a couple of hundred people.
But most people are actually incorrect about what's going to make them sick when they fly. There's a common misconception that the air on a plane is filled with germs but that's just not true. The air coming out of the vent above you is filtered by some of the most hardcore bacteria filters on the planet, meaning that what you're breathing coming out of the vent is cleaner than the air you breathe in most big cities on the planet - like Tokyo!
What you probably don't know though is that your tray table and seat pocket in front of you are the most likely things to be filled with bacteria, meaning that when you shove your phone around the stuff in there, they're probably getting coated with some nasty stuff.
If there's something you want to disinfect when you get on the plane, disinfect those areas because they're the most likely to make you sick.
6. Ground Yourself On Arrival:
One thing that humanity has become ridiculously bad at over the last century is disconnecting ourselves from Mother Earth, in fact because we all live in a concrete jungle and wear shoes all the time, many of us are completely disconnected from physical contact and the earth for long periods of time (and we're the only species that does this).
This is where ‘grounding’ or ‘earthing’ comes into the picture which will help you to adjust to the new time zones more easily. The theory is that long flights disrupt our body's natural electrical charge and cellular function, which can be rectified by getting into direct contact with the planet.
This is probably the easiest bio hack on this list to do, because of its simplicity. All you've got to do is find a park, take your shoes off, get down on the grass and connect yourself with the earth for about 20 to 30 minutes - not exactly rocket science right?
I will admit, there isn't a lot of scientific evidence to back up the positive effects of grounding - yet, but I can tell you that from personal experience it works for me and a lot of other bio hackers back up the positive effects of grounding yourself after a flight as well.
Even if there are no positive benefits of beating jet lag by grounding yourself after a flight, science does know that being in and around nature does have a bunch of other positive effects like we're reducing cortisol, increasing moods and lowering your brainwaves down to a state similar to what you achieve when you're in meditation.
As you can see Leon knows his stuff and this is by no means an exhaustive list, this is just the beginning. The course that he's created on biohacking is incredible! He has spent so long on it. There is so much information.
Over the last few years I've done some pretty amazing stuff when it comes to biohacking, like tripling my testosterone levels, increasing my brain and memory function, increasing my mood and generally feeling better and having a whole bunch more energy every single day.
To share this knowledge with the world, I've put together a pretty intensive but easy-to-understand course with over 60 bio hacks that you can purchase right now - in fact we're just launching it now with this blog post!
It's called ‘The Alchemists Guide to Bio Hacking’. As I mentioned at the start this whole world of biohacking that we're getting into is getting pretty insane. The things that human beings and science can do with the human body now are incredible and regardless of whether or not you want to live to be a thousand years, if that's even possible, this is just the thing that I've created for people who want to live a better life and feel better every single damn day.
You guys know I'm massive into health so I really really hope you guys jump onboard because I want you guys to feel as good as possible, for as long as possible thank you so much Leon for jumping onboard and sharing all these tips!
Until next time guys, PEACE!