Chinese Acupuncture Fights Jet Lag! We are incorporating Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Asian art of considering the Whole Body and Mind! Cannot hold back on this topic! We have written a lot about Jet Lag because it underlines the importance of our Circadian Rhythms that is so essential to the smooth integral running of our overall health in so many respects. Our overall performance can be so drastically affected by travel that it is now important to reflect just how important, and just to what extent the implications of crossing time zones with apparent abandon can mean!
In past have personally business traveled so much. The optimization for one’s work always seems to ultimately come to one denominator. Companies, Countries or Persons, conducting business across time zones, should jet lag implications more seriously than they do! That affected denominator is the actual “capacity” to conduct business at a minimal level of competence! Corporations, Politicians, Representatives of any Entity and often this means even our Nation, for their well being and integrity… set themselves up for extreme negative results because of the invariable limited time restraints for the task.
We just have to go back to first principles…we were never evolved to handle crossing time zones the way we do! If we ever traveled, it was slowly and almost microscopically! Am discussing our forebears…the chances they were born and died in the immediate same area. Migration of humans…and that is ‘oh’ so recent by DNA standards, was really only a factor at all in past 100,000 years, give or take. The general consensus is that we originated from Africa…and there were subsequent migrations the were enabled or not by ice ages. Recently we discuss how humans crossed the North Asia and American continents during the last ice age…let’s take a 15,000 year window for that…and that is ridiculously recent! And they took many many generations to accomplish it! Even the recent advent of train and ship in the last 200 years hardly inroad ed their circadian rhythms! But now jumbo jets do! AND they are accomplishing this ‘en mass’ for an ever growing segment of our populations.
Circadian disruption that we are discussing is so much, that it is such a change in human behavior, as to actually match other major evolutionary events such as the advent of the agricultural age, or the use of fire by humans. Certainly one could separate it out as yet a further category from our recent metabolic crises of the last few decades. We generally seem to envy the amazing worldliness of airline crews, and the multiple travel tales of our friends as they jet across multiple time zones, and inhale the many cultures and geography from the other side of the world. BUT the reality is that jet travel could be more devastating than we imagine!
One segment that is now singularly more aware…and that is athletes. Acclimatization is suddenly part of the agenda. The statistics from the likes of professional hockey teams just cry out lack of optimization for instance from just travelling East somewhat! When preparing for Olympics, teams are trying to force their limited budgets to acclimatize for at least a week or two. Two weeks in subsequent years could be ridiculed! But accountants have little sympathy or empathy, and coaches are yet to understand the real enormity of the problem!.. that jet lag is an all important limiter to performance, and this applies big time not only to athletics but to business and world politics!
Historically have found the European travel routine the toughest, as in fact is born out by the research. But although the opposite of flying West should be easier…when literally traveling all the way to Hong Kong for instance…the whole sequence brings in the reverse counting…after some ten to twelve hours time change going East, we look at the balance of hours to destination time zone as if going West!.. that I have dealt with earlier on this site, and it is so meticulously graphically propounded by Dr. Michael Greger! who really has accomplished the hard leg work for the topic generally.
But caught this video (below), just a shade dated, of Dr. Joseph Mercola interviewing Dr. Lee Cowden; and it is a trick that I believe works, and well worth memorizing as it is quick and easy to accomplish. It is another arrow in the quiver to fight the serious negatives of travel. The irony is that the recording was originally accomplished in 2009..but aside from the technical props then on show, such as camera etc. the essence is applicable today!! What is really happening is the stimulation of acupuncture meridians to help alleviate jet lag. Chinese Acupuncture Fights Jet Lag!
The following is the basic routine…First: watch the video for the actual technique as demonstrated by Dr. Lee Cowden…Second: set watch to destination depending on when traveling, day before or day of flight…Third: At 11 a.m. of the local time at destination, and you may have to do this on plane, if flying over night to London for instance,…11 am London would be about the usual landing time if I remember correctly, and you should be wearing those orange glasses to avoid impact of light outside the plane…However try to remember to optimize a hassle free processing, to take them off for immigration!!! they usually do not warm to the unusual!…Back to the essence here…stroke your heart meridian three times on the left and three times on the right. This starts just to the outer side of the nipple, up through the armpit and down the ulnar aspect, which is the inner side, of your arm and down to the outside of your pinky finger where you then press into the base of the fingernail. This happens to be the heart point in Traditional Chinese Medicine or TCM….Fourth: At 12 midday at destination repeat this procedure…but again, being ‘jest full’, not in front of the Immigration authorities! Chinese Acupuncture Fights Jet Lag!
