Peak performance is typically achieved through dedication, precision, and planning. Elite athletes understand that every variable matters—from maintaining sleep routines to nutrition to keeping inflammation at a minimum for recovery and injury prevention.
Travel represents a deceptively significant disruption to human performance. Routines are thrown off, and access to a person’s preferred exercise and nutrition resources are going to vary depending on the location. But the real disruption comes with negative impacts to the body itself, which are usually lumped under the term “jet lag.” Most jet lag management approaches tend to focus on travelers’ comfort and basic recovery from sleep difficulties.
Recent research into jet lag has come up with a new way of approaching travel and how to prevent declines in physical performance. Traditional approaches to travel wellness miss the underlying mechanism that can negatively impact how your body functions, which is inflammation. Systemic inflammation isn’t a simple byproduct of sleep disruption, as you might assume. Instead, it’s caused by the environmental factors of flight and travel themselves.
The Physiology of Flight Inflammation
Atmospheric Pressure and Stress Response
If you’re in a commercial airplane, the cabin pressure is at a range equivalent to 6,000-8,000 feet above sea level. Discomfort isn’t just a matter of close quarters with strangers or popping ears; the elevation and pressure creates physical stress throughout your whole body. Your body actually experiences a certain level of hypoxia, or low oxygen, and this can set off a series of metabolic changes that directly impact performance.
A low oxygen environment activates cellular proteins that control genes and metabolism. These are called hypoxia-inducible factors. Within minutes of takeoff, your cells begin producing elevated levels of reactive oxygen species. Doing so can put your body in a state of oxidative stress that can continue for days after your flight.
This stress response isn’t a matter of slight fatigue that can be quickly eliminated by landing and getting on your new timezone’s sleep schedule; it impacts whether your body can perform at peak capacity on a fundamental level. It does this by compromising the function of your mitochondria, the cellular powerhouses responsible for producing energy.
Inflammatory Cascade and Performance Systems
Flight inflammation affects three critical performance systems simultaneously. Cognitive performance suffers as inflammatory cytokines cross the blood-brain barrier. This can present itself in various ways, from decreased reaction time to poor decision-making to compromised working memory. These symptoms can persist for three to five days without taking steps to address them.
Physical performance can suffer a decline as well. Inflammation increases a person’s perceived exertion—which can feel like muscle weakness or shortness of breath—and compromises how your body recovers from exertion. People often see a decline in their endurance and inability to recover from exertion as quickly as usual. For someone who might be traveling to a destination marathon event or even just a vacation with high walking requirements, the effects are noticeable.
Metabolic efficiency becomes a factor as well since travel-induced inflammation can cause your blood sugar to swing, making you experience unusual dips and spikes in hunger and energy and your brain to use energy less efficiently. This metabolic instability has an effect on how much energy you have available at any time and how your body burns through fuel during high exertion.
The Research Behind Performance-Optimized Travel
Military and Elite Athletic Research Foundation
Flykitt’s system for flight inflammation management was created with seven years of research involving peak performers, as in individuals who absolutely couldn’t afford to see decline in their performance. Working alongside individuals in high intensity careers such as Navy SEALs, fighter pilots, and elite athletes, founder Andrew Herr went beyond sleep management to find out why other jet lag solutions didn’t work. Simply put, those standard remedies fail because they try—and often fail—to cover up symptoms of flight inflammation rather than addressing what triggers inflammation and the inflammation in the first place.
“Working with Navy SEALs and fighter pilots, I saw that pressure changes and low-oxygen environments could cause inflammation in the body. Years later, working with top executives who needed to perform after trips to Asia and Europe, I realized that these same mechanisms were the key causes behind jet lag and why we feel bad even on shorter flights, what we now call Flight Inflammation,’” said Herr. “When I developed a protocol to manage the inflammation and coupled that with tools to rapidly shift the circadian rhythm, suddenly I was getting emails from clients saying they slept eight hours their first night and felt great their whole trip in Seoul, London, Sydney, and beyond. We’ve now refined that initial protocol into the Flykitt system with customized kits for international and domestic trips, so no one has to live with jet lag or flight inflammation.”
The Flykitt System: Precise Supplementation and Convenient Technology
Anti-Inflammatory Support
The Protect supplement uses Vitamin C and organic pomegranate extract to activate cellular antioxidant systems and keep inflammation levels low. This supplement is taken preemptively to prevent oxidative damage from happening rather than attempting to repair it after cellular stress occurs.
The Sustain supplement delivers concentrated omega-3 fatty acids, which most Americans are woefully deficient in. The body uses these to make natural anti-inflammatory compounds and suppress inflammation. Not only does this allow the body to prevent certain symptoms entirely, but it also primes the body for faster recovery time from unforeseen stressors.
Circadian Rhythm and Sleep Optimization
The Advance supplement includes activated vitamin B6 and B12 to support energy levels and optimal focus. It also keeps internal energy production high—even if circadian rhythms are disrupted—and resets melatonin levels to your destination time zone. This helps users maintain normal cognitive performance and alertness without relying on stimulants, which can create stress and high/low energy cycles in the body.
Rather than relying solely on high doses of melatonin in an attempt to force an unnatural sleep, the Mellow supplement combines magnesium glycinate with low-dose melatonin to support GABA receptor function and give the brain the proper signal for when to sleep. The blend also promotes natural melatonin production in the body. This approach makes it easier for users to fall asleep without powerful and addictive sleep aids and maintain quality, restful sleep in new time zones.
Customization Based On Individual Variables
The Flykitt app uses advanced travel and sleep programs to create customized plans and protocols based on each user’s trip schedule, including location and number of timezone changes, and their body. The app also takes into account a person’s usual sleep patterns and schedules, how often they travel, and what their performance demands might be at their destination. Once this information is input into the app, notifications are sent throughout the trip to encourage key tasks to occur at optimal times. This maximizes the physical benefits to the user while keeping mental stress and indecision to an absolute minimum.
Beyond Supplementation: Integrated Performance Support
Elite performance requires addressing all components of a potential health stressor. Flykitt’s approach extends beyond supplementation and app usage to address the complete spectrum of travel-related health factors.
The Flykitt system also optimizes blue light management through the use of blue light blocking glasses along with instructions on when to use them. Blocking blue light can encourage the body to begin creating natural melatonin, whereas allowing your eyes to be exposed to screen lights or natural sunlight tends to inhibit sleep.
When traveling, most people don’t have easy access to a kitchen. Keeping up a healthy, high performance diet isn’t easy when you’re limited to restaurants or fast food options. Flykitt also offers the Foodie app, which offers users a directory of dining options within the local radius with meals that fit individual needs. Filters can be adjusted for high-protein meals, low-carb, plant based, various allergies, preferred proteins, or caloric needs.
Measurable Performance Outcomes
The 93% Performance SSet featured imagetandard
Users report that Flykitt enables them to maintain high functioning mental and physical performance during global travel, with 93% experiencing little to no negative impacts. These feelings of well-being have been studied and analyzed, resulting in measurable outcomes in areas of brain function, physical performance, and metabolic efficiency.
Elite users report that Flykitt allows them to:
- Sustain energy levels and metabolic function
- Maintain reaction times and decision-making capacity
- Preserve power output and endurance performance
- Achieve optimal sleep quality and recovery metrics
Redefining Travel Performance Standards
Peak performance during travel isn’t about managing discomfort—it’s about preventing systemic disruption in the first place. By addressing the entire cycle of flight inflammation through nutrition, precise timing algorithms, and environmental management, Flykitt enables users to continue performing at the highest levels regardless of their destination.
For elite athletes, military personnel, business leaders, and anyone who demands peak performance, travel doesn’t need to be a disruption of your abilities to function at a high level. The future of travel isn’t about suffering through and recovering from the symptoms of jet lag. It’s about continuing to maintain and improve peak performance without disruption, anywhere in the world.
M&F and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.
