A week ago I came back from Switzerland, which is six hours ahead of my home in New York, and soon I’ll be heading to the UK, which is five hours ahead of New York. I’m smack dab in the middle of a travel schedule designed to throw off my body’s internal clock, with all the fatigue, nausea, and weird stomach problems that come along with it.

I’ve taken somewhere between 90 and 100 flights since the Covid lockdowns ended, and along the way I’ve honed a working plan for fighting jet lag. These tips work no matter how far of a leap in time zones you’re taking, going either east of west. I’ve used them successfully on trips to Tanzania and Southeast Asia where the time differences were eight and 11 hours, respectively.

get shut eye, even when it’s bright

True blackout curtains in a hotel room are rare. If you do end up trying to maintain your original sleep schedule in sync with your home time zone rather than the local one—a workable routine that I’ve found best for trips of three days or less—then you could end up snoozing when it’s bright outside.

I dig the Alaska Bear Silk Eye Mask. I own one myself, and it has padded eye cups on the inside that prop the mask away from your eyeballs while blocking out light around them. Much comfier than typical sleep masks that always have a bit of uncomfortable pressure on my eyeballs. They’re pitch dark inside, even in bright sunlight, and the silk is ultra smooth.

I’ve cycled through a few types of ear plugs over the years, and even though I’ve been using the Loop Experience 2 Reusable Ear Plugs for the past year primarily for motorcycle riding, they’re comfy enough to wear while sleeping, even for a side-sleeper like me. They don’t protrude outside the ear, so they don’t jab me when I lie down on a pillow. Plus, they snuff out a lot of noise that’d otherwise keep you from sleeping when you really need it. If you’d rather have disposable ones, you can get 60 pairs of Honeywell Foam Ear Plugs for $14.

trick your body to wake up

Sunrise alarms work by tricking your body into thinking that the sun is rising, which triggers wake-up hormones that wake you much more gently than a blaring alarm clock. Our bodies are programmed to respond to gradually brightening light that begins warm and yellowy and grows more blue-white. Sunrise alarms mimic that by using a built-in lamp to start brightening at your scheduled time.

The Hatch Restore 3 can do the reverse, creating a fake “sunset” that cues your body to begin feeling sleepy before your programmed bedtime, no matter what time it actually is. And it has sleep noises built into it so that you can cover up the loud hustle and bustle of hotel hallways.

coffee up, baby

Caffeine has a bit of a dirty rep, but you can use it to keep yourself awake long enough to sync to your destination’s time. Out of all my trips, I’ve learned to stay up until nightfall rather than grabbing a nap as soon as I land because I end up adjusting to the local time zone more quickly and I feel less dizzy and nauseated. To keep going, I turn to caffeine.

The AeroPress Go is a smaller version of the venerated AeroPress, small enough to pack in a carry-on. I never use the Mr. Coffee in motel rooms, and rarely do I touch the Keurig or Nespresso machines. More often than not, I find they’re not cleaned out enough. Bring the AeroPress Go so that you can have good coffee in a clean machine whenever you need it as you fight your jet lag-induced fatigue.

I kind of loathe instant coffee. I require coffee to function every morning, though, so when I’m off climbing or hiking in the wilderness I’ve often brought instant coffee because it’s easy to have on hand, as long as you can get your paws on hot water. That same convenience works for traveling when you don’t want to deal with finding coffee grounds for an AeroPress Go.

I’ve guzzled down a bunch of Starbucks VIA, and for instant it’s not bad. Pack a few single-serving packets in your carry-on so that you can have access to a caffeinated pick-me-up even when the local coffee shops are closed.

bend bedtime to your will

Our cannabis expert Maha Haq sums up her recommendation of the Batch Nighttime Gummies best: “Instead of relying on THC or melatonin, it leans on a heavier CBD + CBN dose with L-theanine and passion flower to help quiet things down and carry the effect throughout the night.” You can read more about her thoughts on using weed gummies to fall asleep in her guide The Best THC and CBD Gummies for Sleep.

Last but not least, check out the Timeshifter app (iOS, Android). It helps you come up with a schedule by which you can slowly adjust your bedtimes and wake-up times before a flight across time zones to lessen the impact of jet lag. I gave it a try a few months ago on a round trip between New York and Amsterdam, and with a few days’ commitment before my trip, I noticed it did take the edge off the jet lag, even if it didn’t eliminate it.