05/19/2026
Sharing for people who travel often, have disrupted sleep due to their career, their little ones or their stressors.
We have access to the science and you are not alone.
I landed back in New Zealand last week after a month in the US and it’s wonderful to be home, to be back with my family, and to be catching up on sleep. Well, almost. While my body is physically here, my body clock is still somewhere over the Pacific.
Jet lag is one of those things that sneaks up on you. Your sleep is disrupted with multiple awakenings and you wake up earlier than usual, tired but wired, thinking you’ll be fine to power through the day. And then at 3 p.m., ouch, you hit a wall that feels like your body is ready for a full system shutdown. Welcome back!
Having done a few years of multiple NZ-US long-haul trips, I've been through this enough times to know the drill. And I've also spent enough time in the research to know that what I experience coming home from my time in the US isn't just fatigue—it's a genuine physiological disruption, one that hits women differently than it hits men. So this week, instead of powering through it, I thought I'd talk about it.
Your circadian rhythm is roughly a 24-hour internal clock that governs almost everything: when you feel alert, when you feel sleepy, when your core body temperature rises and falls, and when hormones like cortisol and melatonin are released. It's deeply tied to light and darkness, which is why flying across multiple time zones throws it into chaos. Your body's clock says one thing; the sky outside says another.
For most people, that mismatch produces the familiar symptoms: fatigue, disrupted sleep, foggy thinking, digestive issues, and that strange feeling of not quite being present in your own body. While it usually resolves in a few days, for women, it can be more complicated....
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