My body is notoriously terrible at dealing with jet lag. There was a girls’ vacation after high school where I called my mom from Paris, asking if I should be worried about dying from only being able to sleep an hour or two for four nights straight. (She patiently promised that, no, I wasn’t going to die.) More recently, I took a redeye to New York City and dealt with one of the worst breakouts I’ve had in a while, desperately covering up my acne for the entire trip. I often joke that my body’s a finely tuned machine, but whenever I’m traveling, that quip solidifies into fact.
So when I recently headed to Amsterdam from San Francisco for a 72-hour trip, you can bet I was extremely nervous about how my body would handle it all. I planned to take a 9.5-hour flight leaving SF in the afternoon and arriving in the Dutch capital the following morning; I knew if I were too jet-lagged on that initial day, it would be all over. Given that I wanted to make the most of the limited time I had in the beautiful city, I was willing to try just about anything to try to get my body on board.
I was being hosted by the very hip Yotel Amsterdam, which has recently partnered with Fount to offer travelers the FlyKitt Rescue Kit – a supplement regimen aimed at helping the body recover from jet lag – as well as skin-saving products from beauty brand Urban Jungle.
But could products really help the wear and tear of international travel? I put the respective rescue kits to the test to see how my body and skin felt during the whirlwind trip, plus talked to experts about what you should know about supplements and skin-care products that purport to help with jet lag.
Experts Featured in This Article
Raj Dasgupta MD, FACP, FCCP, FAASM, is chief medical advisor for Sleepopolis.
Michelle Henry, MD, FAAD, is a board-certified dermatologist and owner of Skin & Aesthetic Surgery of Manhattan. She is a TODAY Show contributor and a world-renowned dermatologist.
My Experience Using Fount’s FlyKitt Rescue Kit
There are expert-backed recommendations for beating jet lag, including staying hydrated on your flight; spending time in the sun; and staying awake during daytime flights and sleeping on nighttime ones. As sleep expert Raj Dasgupta, MD, recently told me, these can all be helpful approaches to mitigating its effects. First and foremost, he said, it’s important to drink lots of water on flights and avoid alcohol and caffeine. It can also help to adjust your sleep schedule a few days before your trip to match the time zone of your destination. And finally, he said, “Once you arrive, getting sunlight, especially in the morning, can help reset your circadian rhythm.”
While I didn’t adjust my sleeping schedule according to the entire nine-hour difference ahead of my trip, I did make sure to try to sleep on my flight from California to the Netherlands, mimicking getting some sleep during what was nighttime in Amsterdam. And when I arrived in the canal-laden city in the morning the following day, maybe it was the excitement, but I felt ready to take on a full day of sightseeing.
Upon arriving at Yotel Amsterdam, I also received seven pre-packaged packets of pills from Fount to start taking the day I landed and through the following day. The pouches were extremely easy to follow, indicating which travel day to take them and at what time during the day (e.g. first thing in the morning, at lunch, right before bed). Fount also offers a full FlyKitt ($99) replete with four custom supplement packs and blue-light glasses. It’s important to note that you should not take any supplement without consulting your doctor first, and the research on the efficacy of dietary supplements is mixed.
Fount says its jet-lag pills include vitamins B12 and B6 for resetting your circadian rhythms; omega-3 fatty acids, ascorbic acid, and a high-polyphenol extract to help with inflammation from flights; and melatonin and magnesium glycinate for right before bed, to help with sleep. According to Dr. Dasgupta, all of these supplements can indeed help with their purported benefits. “Using these supplements, staying hydrated, managing your sleep, and getting plenty of exposure to natural light can help you adjust to a new time zone better and feel less tired after traveling,” he told me.
And I will say – this was the trip my body most easily adjusted to jet lag after such a long journey. Of course, there were several factors at play; for example, I was able to stay up the entire first day until about 9:30 p.m., which allowed me to follow a similar schedule for the rest of my trip, going to bed relatively early and waking up early. Had I taken a nap or gone out later in Amsterdam – which the city is well-known for – it’s possible my schedule would’ve been thrown off and I would’ve had a harder time feeling alert during the day.
Overall, I didn’t feel any negative effects after taking each of the seven packets of supplements, and I was relatively well-adjusted and alert for the entirety of my trip.
My Experience Using Urban Jungle’s Jet Lag Kit
I have the most annoying type of combination skin when it comes to travel: it’ll get super dried out initially on the plane, then turn oily and prone to breakouts when I try to remedy the dryness. That means that by the time I land, I’m trying to play catch-up with skin that’s freaking out. According to board-certified dermatologist Michelle Henry, MD, combination skin like mine is generally prone to dryness on planes. She recommends hydrating by drinking lots of water and using a hydrating lotion ahead of a flight (non-comedogenic products can help avoid clogging pores), and then using something targeted for acne-prone areas, like a salicylic or glycolic acid in my T-zone area.
Once I landed and was greeted with Urban Jungle’s recovery kit, the first thing I noticed about the brand’s Plump Fiction Face Oil ($46) and Dust It Off Exfoliating Powder ($38) was their packaging – very millennial-friendly and aesthetically pleasing, just the way I like to display my beauty products, traveling or otherwise.
The exfoliator only recommends using it once a week, so, given my short trip, I used it just once on my first day there. The formula was interesting in that it comes as a powder, allowing you to mix it with a gentle cleanser (which is what I did) or just water. I appreciated the subtle exfoliation and fresh scent, and its combination of yellow clay, papaya extract, and allantoin should all work to get rid of excess oil, gently exfoliate, brighten, and soothe the skin, according to Dr. Henry.
I’m a sucker for serums, and the face oil did feel lovely on my face – very hydrating, which I was only slightly nervous about vis-a-vis my sometimes oily travel skin. Thankfully, I did not suffer a big breakout on this trip, save for a tiny pimple along my hairline. Dr. Henry did warn that the product’s inclusion of sweet almond oil may be too heavy for combination skin, but that she appreciated the formula’s inclusion of vitamin E, which has antioxidant properties that make it “a great ingredient to incorporate into your skin-care routine while flying.”
All in all, it felt like a miracle, really, that a total of nearly 30 hours of travel and a nine-hour time difference in a four-day span didn’t wreak havoc on my skin – or my sleep schedule. It meant I could maximize my time traversing Amsterdam like a local.
Lena Felton is the senior director of features and special content at PS, where she oversees feature stories, special projects, and our identity content. Previously, she was an editor at The Washington Post, where she led a team covering issues of gender and identity.
