Jet Lag: What Actually Helps

The mechanics

Your internal clock shifts about an hour a day on its own. Flying east is harder than flying west because it asks you to sleep earlier than your body wants. Light is the strongest signal: morning light advances the clock, evening light delays it.

What works

• Set your watch to local time when you board and eat and sleep by it.
• Daylight: after flying east, get outside in the morning; after flying west, in the late afternoon.
• Water, not alcohol, on the plane and after.
• Move on arrival — a walk, a swim, the gym.
• Naps of twenty minutes, not two hours.
• Caffeine before noon local time only.

Where the spa fits

Massage lowers stress hormones and heart rate, which is exactly what a body needs to fall asleep at an unfamiliar hour; the heat of the hammam and hot stones restores circulation after the cabin; a scalp massage and an eye mask take the tiredness out of the head and face. That is the logic of the Jet Lag Recovery package — aromatherapy massage, scalp massage, eye mask — timed for the afternoon after an eastbound flight or the morning after a westbound one.