1393: Andrew Herr | Why Travel Leaves You Wrecked (and How to Fix It)

Jordan Harbinger: Coming up next on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Andrew Herr: It turns out that it's not just because you're sitting for a long time. Many Americans sit on their couch for eight hours at a time and they have done these studies and it's the pressure change. They had people sit in a non-pressurized environment and then they took them into an environment that mimicked a plane and the dramatically higher risk of activation of blood clotting if you're in this pressurized, lower pressure environment.

There is one thing you can do and that's primarily on long haul flights and that's fly on a 787. Along with A350s, these are the only two major commercial jets that have better cabin pressure. Because of their composite structure, they pressurize the plane to about 6,000 feet relative altitude, whereas almost every other commercial jet is pressurized to 8,000 feet relative.

So that means you've got a lot more cabin pressure, which means less flight inflammation as well as more humidity and other things. You're not losing as much water, you're not as dehydrated. So flying on a 787 or an A350 can help you feel better from the flight stress and the inflammation.

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Apparently, your ambition isn't the only thing losing cabin pressure. Today, Andrew Herr joins us to unpack why flying can leave you feeling wrecked, and why he thinks there's more going on than just a time zone change. We'll explore how the timing of light, food, and sleep can help sabotage your adjustments, and we'll get into surviving the destination itself, sleeping in a hotel room that smells like a perfume counter exploded, and enjoying local food without spending your vacation reviewing the bathroom tile.

A few small changes could make your next trip considerably less miserable. Here we go with Andrew Herr. It's good to have you on the show because I've talked about FlyKitt on the show a million times, and people always email me like, does it really work?

Does it really work? And I'm thinking like, just try it. It works for me, but it doesn't mean it's going to work for everybody, especially if they don't actually follow it, which is Jen's problem.

I'm just going to take the supplements most of the time, and then never do any of the sleep stuff. And I'm like, I don't think this is how this works.

Andrew Herr: We have designed it to work. As long as you do about 80%, most people feel great. Now, to be fair, people are like, why don't you just tell me to do 80%?

Because I'm like, then you'll do 80% of that, and it won't work. So human psychology being what it will, thankfully, most people do enough things, and we're running 90 plus percent of people feel good. But we have a money back guarantee, so you can just try it, and if it doesn't work for you, we just give your money back.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's always a nice policy. My thing is I can't fall asleep while on a plane. So it's like sleep now for five hours.

I lay there for three hours. I feel like I slept maybe for two hours. I get up, and my aura ring is like 13 minutes of sleep.

And I'm like, I'm supposed to be waking up now and drinking coffee. So I guess I didn't do that right.

Andrew Herr: It turns out that aura and what can't track sleep properly on a plane, that's probably the vibrations. They're actually not tracking it properly.

Jordan Harbinger: Ah, that makes sense. And that's not really like a ding on them. It's probably virtually impossible to sleep track using accelerometers while you're on a flying tin can at 30,000 feet in the air.

Andrew Herr: I've talked to them, and it's a very hard problem. And to be honest, it's not a giant need. It would be nice for us because then we could plug in that data.

But at the end of the day, people are mostly using those at home.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, you'd have to use one of those brainwave things if those even work. Remember the ZEO sleep clock? I do.

Andrew Herr: But the problem is that those are actually extremely sensitive to motion. Oh, never mind then. Planes are a very hard place to do physiologic measurement.

And then, of course, you're breathing 26% less oxygen. We'll get into some of this. But the plane is then shifting your physiology pretty dramatically at the same time.

Jordan Harbinger: I didn't know you were breathing less oxygen. But that completely makes sense because I used to do this. Now I don't even try.

I used to go on the plane and go, I've got eight hours. I'm going to zero inbox. I'm going to go through these notes.

And I get on the plane. And before we are even at cruising altitude, I feel my eyelids getting heavy. And I'm like, you know what?

I'll be lucky to even watch a movie right now. I don't think I'm going to make it through John Wick just because I can't keep my eyes open. And I'll fall asleep on a flight from San Jose to LA, which is probably 55 minutes long.

And I'll fall asleep on that thing. And not well, but just enough where I can't function. I'm that tired.

So that makes sense that we're breathing less oxygen. But I guess the question is, why don't they just pump more oxygen into the fuselage? Because they know that and they're already pumping oxygen in there, correct?

Isn't that how this works?

Andrew Herr: So there's a few different things that are going on. They're making you tired. But to go to the oxygen thing, there actually is the same percentage of oxygen in the air as on the ground.

You're just breathe. There's just 26% less air pressure. So that means every breath has 26% less of everything in it.

Every breath brings in less oxygen. So your body can compensate a little bit by breathing faster. But of course, anyone who's ever done breath work knows that if you breathe faster, it also kind of ramps up your sympathetic nervous system, your fight or flight system.

And what you're experiencing is a combination of potentially a lower blood oxygen level. I've taken pulse oximeters on planes and you can see it drop. For a healthy person, your blood oxygen saturation should be 99 or 100 on the ground.

But it's not hard to get into the low 90s or even the 80s up in a plane. And then two, the work I did with Navy SEALs, what we found was pressure changes can cause inflammation. And so this is actually well known, of course, in the diving community that if you go down and then you come up too quickly, you can get the bends or decompression sickness.

But it turns out that the bends and decompression sickness are actually partially causing inflammation. And that's one of the reasons that they can be so dangerous for your body. It was always thought that it was just these nitrogen bubbles.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I thought it was nitrogen bubbles in your blood and you die from that or you get really injured from that. But it's just the massive inflammation.

Andrew Herr: But that never made a terribly large amount of sense. You've got this giant knee joint and now you're causing immense pain from a little bubble. And now, of course, it's in your blood vessels that can cause things.

But actually, part of what's going on is you're getting an inflammatory response caused by basically, if you come up too quickly, there's gas inside these little microparticles that break off of white blood cells. Then they expand and they basically trigger your immune system to an inflammatory response. And so you can actually take a rat, rapidly decompress it, take some of its blood and inject it into another rat that's just been hanging around and the other rat will get decompression sickness.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, wow. And so basically, your body thinks you've got some sort of massive blood infection when you have.

Andrew Herr: It's basically triggering this immune cascade. And our immune system is really very interesting. It's so powerful.

And when we get sick, a lot of why we feel bad is our immune system. But because it can ramp up so aggressively, but it's an exponential system. So if you trigger the exponential parts of the system, then you can have a massive response from a small initial starting point.

And we also know that, for example, if you climb a mountain too quickly, people tend to get more altitude sickness. So basically taking off in a plane, usually you start, let's say, at sea level. Most planes are pressurized to about 8000 feet relative altitude.

But you're doing that in 15 minutes. So now you've got this like basically a little taste of altitude sickness, a little taste of decompression sickness. And no wonder your brain is scrambled.

A lot of people have gut issues afterwards, like constipation and other things. And if your immune system is then pushed into inflammatory state, then that starts to speak to all these questions of why do people get sick when they're on a plane or after flying? Is it the air on the plane?

Or if there's a lot of HEPA filters going, there's actually some very interesting studies that can inform this question of why do you get sick after you fly? Is it that? Or is it just because your immune system is now distracted and instead, you know, sort of attacking you instead of the viruses and bacteria that are floating around everywhere in the world?

This all makes a lot of sense.

Jordan Harbinger: I want to unpack some of this. I'm curious how bad the air actually is on a plane, because for me, when I hear people coughing or sneezing on a plane, I'm always like, oh, gosh, how far away from that person am I? Three, four seats.

OK, I don't love it, but fine. Better if they're in a different cabin. I heard a sneeze, but I'm pretty sure it was all the way back there.

So I think I'm OK. But when it's the person right behind me, I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm looking around. Is there another seat in this cabin that I can move to?

Because I'm like, was that a dry cough or a wet cough? She's like, I don't know. It seemed kind of wet to me.

I mean, I'm clearly like an airplane germaphobe because I know I'm in front of that person for like eight, nine, ten hours. And if they cough a hundred times during that period of time, I don't know. It seems like I'm guaranteed to get sick.

That said, I'm almost never sick after a flight. Almost never. So it's all psychological for me.

But I am curious, is the airplane air dirtier or is it just that we're close to people and it feels gross for that reason?

Andrew Herr: So there's basically three different things going on with airplane air. So the first one is what you're talking about is just people are coughing and other things. And the good news is that airplanes are, since the 90s, have been running HEPA filters, which are very good at capturing particles.

And viruses and bacteria are particles in that sense, or they're on little water droplets. So those actually get screened out pretty well. Now, of course, if somebody's coughing right next to you, that whole cabin air may be getting changed every 10 to 30 minutes, but they're right next to you.

It turns out that if you're within two rows of somebody, then your risk is much higher. But if you're more than two rows away, then your risk drops by about two thirds at least. And then obviously the further away you get.

So the good news is from viruses and bacteria, unless you're next to somebody or within a few seats of them, it's actually pretty good. But there are several other things that can make the air on a plane really bad. So the first is right when those engines start, you're on the ground.

You often smell this like exhaust fumes come in.

Jordan Harbinger: It smells like I'm just putting my nose up to the exhaust pipe of a diesel semi. And I'm thinking like, what is that smell? And I remember someone's like, oh, it's de-icer.

And I believe that when I was in Michigan. But now I'm in California and I'm like, I don't think it's de-icer. I think I'm smelling jet fuel or something.

And it's just how is it getting sucked into the plane? How have they not figured this out?

Andrew Herr: So there's a couple of things going on. So that is basically jet exhaust from the ground and startup of these engines. Most of the air that comes onto a plane comes in through what's called bleed air.

So they actually are taking air that comes into the engine and then diverting it to you. Now, that should happen before all the combustion happens. But when you're on the ground and you're not flying hundreds of miles an hour forward, it actually can suck in a bunch of exhaust.

And so I have taken air quality sensors onto planes. And I can tell you that VOCs and particulates and everything will spike during that event to what is not surprisingly appreciated as unhealthy levels during that. Now, it comes back down within a few minutes, but that is a big pulse of stuff.

Right when your body, now I'm saying, is more susceptible to inflammation. So this is part of the challenge of sort of the double whammy of flying. So that's one.

The second one is what's called fume events. So because the air is coming in through the engine, if there's any burning of engine oil or other things, then some of that can get sucked into the air. And you might imagine that the oil used in a high bypass gas turbine that flies a tin can through the air at hundreds of miles an hour is not like Crisco.

It is not olive oil. And unfortunately, there are things like organophosphates in that oil, which are in the same class as, for example, nerve agents. Oh, great.

And so these events, there have been events that with enough problems with the engine and smoke gets pulled in. In 2024, a Swiss Air flight attendant died as a result of one of these. What?

So then this started to get more and more attention. And the airline said, it's not a big deal. And then the Wall Street Journal did kind of a deep dive.

And they found that basically they thought it was over 100 events per million flights. Now that's on one hand, not that common, right? 100 over a million is way less than 1%.

But the problem is, there's a lot of flights in the United States every year. And so suddenly, if you multiply it by the 10 plus million flights, that's thousands of flights per year. There's a lot of people on each flight.

So suddenly, tens of thousands of people in the US alone are getting exposed to these fume events. And now not all of them are probably burning the worst stuff, like I mentioned that engine oil that may have organophosphates. But it is a real issue.

And then there was a IATA, the International Air Transit Agency. There was a study, I don't know if it was released or leaked, but their numbers were like eight times higher than even the Wall Street Journal number, which was like four times the FAA. So that's the second thing.

So you can be breathing in pretty toxic stuff. And if you ever see smoke coming in from the air vents, by the way, not condensation. Sometimes when you're flying, it'll just, you know, there'll be condensation.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, when I flew to North Korea, they use these Russian jets. And I don't know why, but they basically blast freezer air through the vents. And so the flight attendants come by and they wipe the rail down under the glove boxes, because otherwise it just starts raining inside the airplane.

Yeah, those are the elution flights.

Andrew Herr: So that's the second thing. And then the third thing is on some routes, they will spray insecticide before or during the flight. What?

So, for example, if you fly from Northern Africa to Europe, you may see somebody, and I have seen this, walk down the aisle with a bug bomb because they don't want fruit flies or whatever the other potential crop pests are to come in and destroy agriculture. But then you're now breathing in this air. And of course, that's not recommended.

Jordan Harbinger: We've all seen Breaking Bad, right? When they fumigate houses, they put the entire thing in a tent so that the poison stays in there and doesn't go to the neighbors or go into the neighborhood. And the tent on the outside is very clear that you will die if you go in there without PPE.

And they're just like, hey, let's fumigate this tube while everyone's inside it. Don't worry, it eventually will all get filtered out by all of y'all's lungs and you'll get a medium dose, enough to kill a bug, but hopefully not enough to do damage to you. During COVID, I'm almost ashamed to admit this.

During COVID, I bought this HEPA filter mask that's like an N95, but it has a tube going into it. And it has this box HEPA filter that runs like on a USB-C charge or something and a filter attached to it. I used it a couple of times and then went, this is ridiculous.

But now I'm like, where is that thing? Maybe I should get that sucker out. Because when the diesel fuel, bleed air and insecticide come into the plane, maybe I won't feel like such a dork having this thing attached to my face.

Andrew Herr: So then the question becomes, what actually will work to screen these out? So the particles, but maybe not the VOCs from those initial startup exhaust. VOCs are volatile organic compounds.

Jordan Harbinger: Are they hard to filter?

Andrew Herr: They're not particle. It's like basically like chemical instead of particle. And so the same filters won't capture them.

Not totally. I don't know if this is the good news or the bad news, but the bleed air and some of the insecticide stuff and also some of that startup stuff, unless you're going to wear an actual like gas mask that's basically ones made for chemicals that have cartridges, you're basically, there's nothing you can do about it. How is that the good news?

You're going to have to qualify that. Unless you're not going to fly, you don't have to worry about it. Or you just don't worry about it because there's nothing you can do.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, okay. That's great news. You're helpless in the face of this.

Andrew Herr: So I know I joked, there's nothing you can do about the risks of bleed air and fume events, since really nothing short of a full face gas mask style respirator will stop those types of chemical fumes. Although you could choose to wear that. But there is one thing you can do and that's primarily on long haul flights.

And that's fly on a 787. That's the only major aircraft where you aren't breathing bleed air. They should have separate compressors outside the engines to bring air into the cabin.

So if you can find a flight on a 787, it does reduce risks from fume events. And 787s have another advantage. Along with A350s, these are the only two major commercial jets that have better cabin pressure.

Because of their composite structure, they pressurize the plane to about 6,000 feet relative altitude, whereas almost every other commercial jet is pressurized to 8,000 feet relative. So that means you've got a lot more cabin pressure, which means less flight inflammation, as well as more humidity and other things. You're not losing as much water, not as dehydrated.

So flying on a 787 or an A350 is a real benefit if you can choose those for a flight. And increasingly, you can even find those coast to coast domestically. So that's a big difference.

And that can help you feel better from the flight stress and the inflammation that can cause, in addition to the supplement workout and other areas we talked about as potentially helping. But then let's talk about even N95s. Those actually will also release some, for example, VOCs and other things.

So if you're going to wear an N95, for the people who do, or if you had it in your bag in case the guy next to you is just coughing up a storm, leave it out for four to six hours in the sun, ideally, and that bakes off a bunch of whatever things. And then we've all now been starting to talk about microplastics. So then the question is, I'm breathing through this plastic thing.

How much plastic am I breathing in? So I also recommend if you're going to use one, and to be fair, I typically would not on a plane, but if you're going to use one, suck some air through it and then blow that air out and then do that a couple times and you'll get the majority of the particles. And I will tell you, if you're paying attention, you could probably tell the difference from the fifth one from the first one.

And that tells me that there's something in there.

Jordan Harbinger: You know what won't promise to clear its inbox at 30,000 feet, then spend six hours drilling through John Wick? The sponsors that support this show. My laptop basically travels as an emotional support rectangle.

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So bake your N95 in the sun or maybe hit it with a light hairdryer to get the nanoplastics out of there. Not too hot though? Not too hot. No, just the air. Just blast through it with the cool air to blast out those nanoplastics into your hotel room where they already are. And we'll get to hotels in a minute because that's the least of your concerns.

Andrew Herr: Obviously, look, planes are a really challenging environment for your body. You've got this oxidative stress issue. You've got inflammatory effects potentially for some people.

And we know this because also, you know, people get blood clots in their legs. It turns out that it's not just because you're sitting for a long time. That never made sense.

Many Americans sit on their couch for eight hours at a time and they have done these studies and it's the pressure change. They had people sit in a non-pressurized environment and then they took them into an environment that mimicked a plane and the dramatically higher risk of activation of blood clotting if you're in this pressurized, lower pressure environment. So that's why a lot of people wear compression socks.

But the good news is it's actually much less likely to happen unless you have a condition called Factor V Leiden. This is a genetic predisposition to clotting. People who've been tested and know they are Factor V Leiden, you should be especially careful on planes.

But it's a fairly common thing. So many people may have this and not know. But again, the pressure change is what's causing this risk of blood clotting.

And so I think, again, that's why we're thinking about compression socks and movement. And then there is very interesting data that supplementation of the right of polyphenol class compounds can actually decrease the risk of blood clots. With FlyKitt, what we've done is put together all of the tools that can protect your body from the strange physiology of flying.

But you've got to do a lot of different things. So you're trying to manage oxidative stress, potentially inflammation, other things. But there are things you can do.

So again, there are supplements that can work. And we can talk more about what those might be. Also, if you have the opportunity to exercise or sauna before the plane.

Now, obviously, you're probably not going to do that right before you get on or right before you leave because you'd be totally sweaty. But even in a few hours before, what those do is they activate stress-responsive genes and physiological pathways. So your body has turned up the protective systems.

So if you can work out, take a shower, clean up, go to the airport, a few hours later, you're probably going to be more protected still from that. And so anything that does hormesis. Hormesis is the idea of stress the body and then it responds to get better.

You know, you lift dumbbells with your arms and they stress your biceps and your biceps get stronger and bigger. The same thing happens to our protective systems in the body. And so anything you can do that activates those.

And some of the supplements actually can activate those systems or sauna and working out would be the other two big ones.

Jordan Harbinger: When you say sauna, what about hot tub? Is that the same thing because it's hot or do you need to have the air?

Andrew Herr: It is probably the case that enough time in a hot enough hot tub will help. But the difference with a sauna, of course, is the very outer tissues are getting hit with extremely hot air. If you're in a sauna, that's 180 degrees.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, yeah.

Andrew Herr: The very outer layers of the skin and the very outer layers that touch of, let's say, the nasal cavity, the sinuses, the lungs. And so there is likely to be a difference. But a hot tub will activate these systems in parts of your body.

So I think it's probably helpful. We have much less data than sauna, though. And from sauna, we can see that people who sauna regularly get a lot less upper respiratory infections.

And this is the sort of hypothesized reason for that.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, geez. People keep offering me like, hey, do you want one of these sauna chambers? And I'm like, I already have a hot tub.

I'm not going to use it. But now you got me thinking, like, maybe I should just use that and then jump in my hot tub after. Although it'll feel cold after getting out of 180 degree sauna.

I don't know. I'll have to doodle on that one.

Andrew Herr: We're off the travel thing. But I will say, when I talk about hotels, I think one of the best hotel amenities actually is a sauna. After stress management, sleep, nutrition, and exercise, sauna is the next best research intervention to improve your health.

I did not realize that.

Jordan Harbinger: I thought that was like cold plungy, where it's like, oh, you've got to do cold plunges, which turned out to be kind of like bros doing stuff that's hard for Instagram so that they can show off.

Andrew Herr: Cold plunge has probably something on the order of one ten thousandth the data of sauna.

Jordan Harbinger: Given how trendy it was, that totally makes sense. It was just people looking for the next big thing to sell on Insta.

Andrew Herr: And look, learning to control your breath in stressful situations, learning to do hard things is really valuable. The physiologic benefits are less clear. The physiologic benefits of sauna are pretty extraordinary.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, the workout is the hard thing for me. I don't need the after the workout thing to also be super hard. I'm good.

I've done the hard part already, in my opinion. All right, cool. I've never used a hotel sauna probably in my life, so maybe I should start doing that.

I do end up feeling really gross at hotels. Plus, since I'm traveling, I'm eating different foods and often it's like, oh, sure, I'll have a couple of whiskeys with my friend who I never see because I'm in his town. And it's like, yeah, I probably should look into that.

Back to the airplane thing. Is the airplane food bad for you? Because it always tastes really salty and it always seems like they can't help themselves.

It's never like, hey, chicken breast and some broccoli. It's like, and macaroni and cheese and bread. And here's some butter.

Also, there's pudding. And by the way, here's a cookie. And it's like, I end up eating not even half of it because most of it is sort of junk foodie, even when you get the healthy option.

Andrew Herr: So there's two things going on. Your taste buds in this lower pressure environment don't sense the flavors as well. And so their big reason they're adding a bunch of salt is most people are like, oh, this doesn't taste like it has enough salt or flavor.

Meanwhile, of course, what they're giving you, we are in this weird moment where everybody's like, I need more electrolytes. But electrolytes are really important if you're sweating a lot, because when you sweat, you lose sodium and potassium, magnesium, calcium. However, if you're losing air through your breath, you're obviously going to be losing a lot less of that.

And so I think it's important to note we don't always need more electrolytes and electrolytes don't always hydrate us. They might keep more water in your body. But if you have a lot more salt in your body, it's also going to move that water to different places.

So in general, eating really salty food when on a plane, which happens to be dehydrating to begin with, because the air is so dry, not only because it's coming from outside, but it's also lower pressure again. And lower pressure will then evaporate water more quickly. Also, then, if you want food to last and be preserved, salt is the best preservative outside of some horrible chemical.

And so airplane food does have more salt. And the reason is this combination of preservation and also taste. But of course, when we eat a bunch of salt and then also a bunch of sugar and we're sitting, that's all the kind of stuff that's going to make you more prone to inflammation.

And now we're getting, especially now if we add the third whammy, which would be alcohol, which tends to ramp up your immune system as well and can also irritate your gut. And obviously, our gut can be a big source of inflammation. So all that to say, I recommend eating less salty food and drinking less on a plane, well, drinking less alcohol, drinking lots of water.

Jordan Harbinger: I typically, if I don't love what the meal is going to be, which it's airplane food, so I just skip it. I can afford to skip a meal, generally speaking. And if I have a protein bar, I'll just eat that instead, especially on a flight with one meal.

I'm like, no, thanks. I'm good. Just I'll just take the bar.

Is that why my feet swell up? Is that something to do with the salt too? I feel like my feet swell up on multi-hour flights, even if I don't eat anything.

Andrew Herr: It's a different reason, but it's tied to all this oxidative stress and inflammation that then signals to or causes your blood vessels to lose a And so then they're leaking out fluid into the spaces outside the blood vessels. And of course, with gravity, if it's in your face, gravity is naturally going to pull that back down towards your heart. But if they're in your feet, then you're working against gravity.

And there's a lot of blood coming through there. So long story short, there's more fluid and potentially your veins aren't going to be returning it as well. So it's actually tends to be the inflammation oxidative stress that caused that swelling in your legs.

And that's another thing we see that. So it's basically edema. It is edema.

100%. Oh, wow. That's disconcerting.

Now you're losing water through your breath and also you're losing water that's available to your body as edema too. So if you look at some people's legs, they're very swollen. So they could be losing half a liter to a liter of fluid into their legs during that flight.

And so again, we can just start to see all the different ways that travel affects your body. And the majority of them are coordinated through this oxidative stress and inflammation. What I've now come to calling flight inflammation as a central coordinating mechanism for these different challenges.

And we also know when you're inflamed, you have more brain fog and other things. So part of the reason you mentioned earlier, a lot of people get on a plane and they're just totally zonked out. They don't want to work.

Is because your brain actually is affected by the inflammation. I have a friend who is not afraid of flying, gets onto the plane. And then after it takes off, starts to get nervous.

First of all, that makes psychologically no sense. Because once you're up there, the hard part is over generally. So psychologically, you should be afraid before you take off.

You could stop it and you could not get on. So what's going on? We know that if experimentally you cause inflammation in people, it actually makes people more anxious.

So his anxiety about flying is actually inflammation. It's not psychological directly. Huh.

Jordan Harbinger: That's fascinating. Luckily, I'm totally fine. Anxiety wise.

Oh, this is something I meant to ask you for a long time. So let's say I get FlyKitt. And FlyKitt for people who don't know, it tells you when to sleep, when to eat, and there's some supplements involved.

I get on the plane and FlyKitt's like, okay, you're going to eat at this time. But usually they're like, we took off and we're going to feed you now. And I'm like, can I eat in two hours?

And they're usually like, no, you can't. And I'm thinking like, oh crap. Okay. So should I eat when they give me food? Or do I just say, what can you give me in two hours? That's still going to be good because they want to feed you and then make you go to sleep.

And I'm like, nope, I'm going to eat in two hours and then go to sleep. And they're usually just, we're not doing that for you, weirdo.

Andrew Herr: Sorry. So the way we structure these FlyKitt programs is all about basically giving your body enough fuel at the right times to keep you awake for the right amount of time. Then letting you sleep for the right amount of time.

If you sleep, we can talk about this more, but one of the big reasons that people get jet lag is they sleep too much on planes on the wrong route at the wrong time. And so we're using food as a fuel and as a timing signal. Everyone knows that if you eat right before you sleep, you don't sleep as well.

Part of that is likely also a circadian component in addition to digestion and other things. So we have given you what tend to be the optimal times. Now, if you don't want to eat and you feel like you can stay awake, then skipping a meal is fine, but we really recommend trying to stick to that plan because everything can shift your circadian rhythm around and affect your energy levels.

And so I would much rather you have a small snack of something you brought on the plane or if they'll do like a little piece of the meal instead of the whole meal. I would recommend that instead of it because what you don't want to do is eat a giant meal that puts you to sleep at the wrong time. Then you can't sleep later when it would be ideal.

And now you can see you're starting to get into a sort of vicious cycle.

Jordan Harbinger: I should probably mention this episode is not actually sponsored by FlyKitt. I just happen to be interested in all this stuff.

Andrew Herr: I'm trying to give you all the information around flying. But of course, what we've tried to do with FlyKitt is design a thing to solve these problems. So yes, it is not sponsored.

Jordan Harbinger: Not sponsored. It just happens to solve the problems that I'm asking about. But that's why I chose you as the guest for this episode, too.

So back to jet lag then. How does jet lag really work? Because I always thought it was just time zone stuff.

You go from Asia to the US and it's night when it's day. And of course, you're unable to sleep really well. But I've flown to Chile and Argentina area before.

Patagonia with Wayfinders where you and I actually met. And then I also had it wasn't quite jet lag where I was up at 2 a.m. and I couldn't sleep, but I still had trouble falling asleep and all this stuff. More than I would if I'd just flown across the US, for example, even though I had the same time difference.

Andrew Herr: 100%. And actually, it's a great example because it helps show exactly what's going on. So there are two elements to jet lag.

The first is the flight inflammation we've been talking about. When you're inflamed, you do not sleep as well. REM sleeping particularly is affected.

Your body's on sort of high alert so it can prevent you from falling asleep. And your whole system is discombobulated. And then the time component, the time change component is also, of course, real.

But what's going on with jet lag is a lot of why you feel bad is the brain fog and the joint creakiness and the dehydration from swelling and all of these physiologic effects of inflammation. And then it causes a second problem, which is it makes it harder to reset your circadian rhythm.

And so when your body is totally discombobulated, when you're really sick, you get a virus or something. Of course, your body's inflamed. That's a good time for your immune system to be activated. And I think we all know like we don't sleep at normal times. You wake up at weird times. You fall asleep at weird times when you're sick. And so the same thing's happening to you.

And it blocks the circadian shift. So what we figured out is you actually have to solve both of these and you have to solve the flight inflammation piece. And then you can flip someone's circadian rhythm much faster.

And one of the reasons that if somebody will say take melatonin, melatonin can absolutely help with jet lag, but it's not enough. If you want to switch 10 time zones overnight, you need to use all the tools. But the cool thing is there's light meal timing, sleep timing, enough sleep, not enough sleep.

And then there's supplements like methylcobalamin, which is the methylated form of vitamin B12 that pushes your circadian rhythm forward. There are supplements like melatonin that can shift it backwards. There are supplements like magnesium forms like glycinate that can actually calm your nervous system.

So the neat thing is it's these two factors together. And so you weren't getting a huge time change going down to South America, but you were getting a heavy dose of the flight inflammation because the flight is so long. And it was making that three-hour time change harder.

And then now imagine 14 hours to Asia. So that time change plus the flight inflammation or the trip to Europe is really tricky because there's actually not a lot of time to sleep on that flight over. Because if you leave at 8 p.m., you might have a hard time falling asleep then. And the flight lands six, seven hours later, which is 7 a.m. in London or Paris, wherever you're going. So Asia, Europe, Australia, all of them have different components that can make them challenging for jet lag.

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Now, back to Andrew Herr. I probably should have asked this earlier, but there's people listening who don't know what circadian rhythm is, either because they haven't heard of it or they're foreign. And that word is not something you hear every day.

So what exactly is that? It's the time that you go to bed and wake up. But what am I missing from that definition?

Andrew Herr: So in our brain, we have a center of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the SCN. And that part of our brain is responsible for governing our sleep-wake cycle. And so we can imagine humans need a way to wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night naturally.

And so light is the primary signaling mechanism day to day for affecting our circadian rhythm. People talk about getting light in the morning and that's to signal to your brain, it's morning. So yes, you've woken up at the right time and let's keep waking up at this time.

If you don't get light, then your brain may try to wake you up later and later because it thinks it's not yet morning. But we also have circadian rhythms. These clocks within each cell, within our gut, our hormones respond on a 24-hour roughly cycle.

And so we actually have to think about how to manage this 24, or it tends to average to be actually a little bit longer than 24-hour cycle if you don't keep it trained with light. But we have in our brain, we have it then peripherally in our body too. And peripherally in our body, things like insulin, which is affected by when you eat, are very big components of what governs your circadian rhythm.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, thanks for that. The other question I should have asked earlier is, what exactly is inflammation? Because when I think of it, it's swelling, but we're not really talking about like my stomach or whatever, my lungs aren't swelling up.

It's just happening on like a cellular level. What exactly is it?

Andrew Herr: So inflammation just means activation of the immune system. Now, we traditionally associate it with, you know, if you like bang your leg on the coffee table, it swells, it gets warm and it gets red.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's what I thought inflammation was. So I'm like, how can it happen throughout your whole body without you exploding, literally?

Andrew Herr: So the answer is, those are traditional signs of inflammation that are observable. But we can have all kinds of systemic inflammation without necessarily like obvious swelling. Your gut may actually swell a little bit, but your gut can have more immune activity.

And then that can do all kinds of things from making it more irritated to weakening the tight junctions that basically these are what prevent like proteins and bacteria that shouldn't get through the gut lining.

Jordan Harbinger: Is that what leaky gut is? What causes that again? Diverticulitis or something?

I don't even remember. There was, I remember learning about this.

Andrew Herr: So yes, that would be like leaky gut, which is, you know, if you have some sort of inflammation, your gut could be from infection, could be from eating food additives that disrupt gut function. There can be a number of reasons. And then everyone knows what it feels like to be inflamed from being, just think of when you have a cold.

Probably 90% of the reason you feel bad when you're sick with a cold has nothing to do directly with the virus at all to do, you're feeling your body's immune reaction.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's the stuffy nose, the throat, the phlegm. For me, it's always the amount of phlegm that's annoying as hell and the headache.

Andrew Herr: So again, there is some swelling. One of the reasons your nose is stuffy is partially because you're producing more mucus and partially because the membranes that line your nose are swollen and you crowd the passages down. So you can have swelling, but you don't have to.

And so we can have inflammation in different parts of our body. Arthritis, which would be, you know, pain in the joint. That's a type of inflammation, for example.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. Okay, I want to switch to hotels because they're always so gross. Even nice hotels, I'm like, hey, I literally say this at check-in.

I go, and this is a lie. I say, I'm allergic to a lot of different kinds of cleaning products. And I put that in my profile on Marriott or whatever, because I just hate walking into a hotel room and it smells like a casino carpet.

And then I go to open the window and it's locked because they don't want you to, I don't know, throw something out of a Manhattan skyscraper like yourself or something hard to kill someone. I feel like I'm trapped in the perfume aisle at Macy's, except it's a small box. And then I'm expected to sleep in there.

It's just the worst. So how do you handle cleaning product? Don't worry, we made all your pillows smell good and the bathroom and there's detergent and there's air quality issues in the rooms.

What do we do about that besides lie through your teeth about allergies?

Andrew Herr: So the first thing is, I actually don't think you're lying. I think you are sensitive and those things are affecting your brain and body. So I think the first thing is, is actually probably true.

Before I started FlyKitt and during this time, I have coached hundreds of executives and professional athletes and others to optimize performance. And we find that there are more people than you think who are sensitive to synthetic fragrances. And when I say sensitive, I mean, think about when somebody says they're sensitive to like gluten, they're not formally allergic to it, but their gut doesn't feel good and they have less energy.

You can get the same thing in your upper respiratory tract from fragrances.

Jordan Harbinger: I've got headaches if there's an intense smell. Usually any intense smell is something I don't like, any sort of fake or cheap perfume. Or like I said, it's usually something I sprinkle on the carpet because I don't know, somebody barfed in there last week and they're like, we're not actually going to clean it.

We're just going to get the stuff up and then make it smell better. And they just dump this stuff on there every time they clean the room, which is what every day. So it's really vile.

And yeah, and they're using fabric softener on the sheets. So what's weird is certain nice hotels that I'll stay at in LA because I have points or whatever. They're the worst offenders.

Andrew Herr: Marriott properties tend to pump a ton of fragrance into their lobby. It's a corporate wide thing. You can find the thing if you look around.

Jordan Harbinger: You can find the machine that sprays aerosols, I don't know, essential oils or whatever the hell it is in every Marriott.

Andrew Herr: They're not essential oils. They're synthetic fragrances. So, okay, but what can we do? There's a few different things you can do. Some hotels, actually, if you ask them, will clean it with fragrance-free products or they'll just clean it with water.

And there's a balance there between cleaning it from the last person who was there and whether you want their germs. But in general, I would rather have it cleaned without fragrance products and I'll wipe down the counter myself. So that's the first thing is you can request it ahead of time.

And there are increasingly hotels that are better and better about it. Shout out to the Ritz-Carlton and Merino del Rey. They have a whole program where they'll do this for you if you ask.

Jordan Harbinger: There's something with other Marriott properties where you can, I think it's called feathered or something. And it's like, you can say, oh, it's I need a hypoallergenic room. And they try to charge you more.

And usually they will if you book online. But if you call them and you have, I don't know, a credit card or you stay at a lot of hotels, they'll just give it to you because they don't want you, surprise, surprise, they don't want you to feel like shit when you stay at their properties. And so they'll just upgrade you, if you can call it that, to a room that hasn't been cleaned with crap.

Andrew Herr: Yeah. So second thing you can do, some hotels will have air purifiers. Now, that's only going to do so much. And we already talked about the fact that chemicals may not well be taken out of the air by air purifiers.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm worried that thing is just blowing out other people's skin cells from the last year because they haven't changed the filter. That's what I'm worried about.

Andrew Herr: Well, if they haven't changed the filter, then it's not going to do much. So that would be a second thing. The third thing you can do, I will take an extra T-shirt and put it over the pillow. So at least my head is not actually on the fabric softeners and other things. And what is amazing is if you do that and you bring that T-shirt home, if you smell it compared to another T-shirt after you wash it, it still smells like that hotel room, which tells you how powerful those fragrances are.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's actually a really good idea. I never thought to cover the pillows in the hotel, but they probably do collect a lot of... Oh God, I don't want to think about that. That's so gross.

Andrew Herr: And so then the last thing you can do is, okay, let's say there's only so much I can do to control on the room side. What can I do to make my body react less to it? And that's why I already mentioned this once, but I think sauna is going to be the most effective thing at helping those tissues that are most affected by fragrances, the nasal passages, the lungs.

So I think sauna is the best healthy hotel amenity, short of rooms that are cleaned without horrible toxins. So if you can find a hotel with a sauna, and if not, even if not, then working out also is just going to make your body less sensitive overall to inflammation and to these compounds because it causes your body, as I mentioned before, to turn on these protective factors. So those are all a series of things that you can do in hotels that can help.

And the other thing I'll say is, some rooms were cleaned 10 minutes before you walk in, and some rooms were cleaned yesterday, and there could be a big difference. And if you tell the hotel, hey, look, I'm really sensitive, almost every time they will let you switch rooms.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I've never had a problem switching rooms, but usually they switch you to another room that smells like crap. That's the problem I've had.

Andrew Herr: You just have to be willing to be like, that one wasn't great either. And if you're nice about it, they will usually walk you to different rooms. And I've tried three, four, five rooms in a hotel, and sometimes you get a better one. Sometimes you strike out and you just say like, okay, I need to go to sleep now.

Jordan Harbinger: So yeah, that's happened to me plenty of times. One thing that I've done at some hotels, there's a hotel in LA I always stay at, I've switched rooms a bunch of times, and then finally the manager goes, what's the problem actually? And I was like, I'm sensitive to these smells, the carpet cleaner, and I can't open the windows.

And he goes, oh, let me give you a room that has a terrace that opens to a central courtyard, and you can just leave the door open if you're comfortable with that. Nobody can go in there. It's just windows and the rooms with terraces and they're fenced off. And I was like, oh, no problem.

So now when I stay there, I just email that manager and they're like, oh yeah, yeah, he gets to stay in this, which is great because normally they charge you for that. But I was like, look, I either get a migraine every time I sleep at your property and I have to find another property even though I love your hotel, or you give me this room and they're like, well, it literally doesn't cost us anything unless somebody else has paid for that upgrade on every single terrace courtyard room, which is unlikely.

So I just do that. I get in there, I open that thing up and I leave that open until I go to sleep because no one can get in there except for the staff anyways. So who cares? And I just leave that open.

And then I come back and I'm like, oh, at least now it only smells like Hollywood, which is also disgusting, but it doesn't smell like carpet cleaner and Hollywood. So I got that going for me.

Andrew Herr: This is a pitch to everyone. Yeah. To check the cleaning products you use at home also. They've done studies and people who clean houses professionally have lungs that look 20 years older than they are.

And so switching to less toxic cleaning products in your home is a really good idea. And I have met people who it's their kids allergy problems have gone away. I've met people whose brain fog has gone away.

I know for myself, I've fragrances, cutting them out has dramatically improved my mental focus and acuity. So I am always trying to get people to consider that maybe that these are one of the challenges.

Jordan Harbinger: That's horrifying. I don't know what we use to clean the house. Jen's careful about it. So hopefully it's not too terrible, but that's scary.

In a hotel room, what temperature is it supposed to be in there for me to go to sleep? Because every time I walk into a room, it's either way too hot because they're trying to save money. And that's usually not in the United States.

Or if it's in the US, it is an actual refrigerator and I have to turn it from 55 degrees to I don't know, whatever, 72, because I'm in Vegas. And I'm like, who slept in here last night? Were they keeping ice cream on the Davenport? Like, why is it so damn cold in here?

So what temperature am I supposed to sleep in? I don't actually know.

Andrew Herr: So it's going to be a range for different people, but optimal sleep temperature tends to be around 67 degrees for most people. Especially if you're under covers, you want it to be really cool. But if you're waking up at night and shivering, obviously too cold and not good for your sleep.

But you want it to be colder in the room than most people. And the effects of sleeping in a cold room, maybe directly, but mostly through better sleep quality, you can see people's insulin sensitivity get better. You can see inflammatory markers get better.

So temperature is a major regulator of sleep quality. And part of the reason is it's actually a signal to your brain to go to sleep when temperature drops rapidly. Why? Well, because at night, temperature typically drops rapidly.

You're not moving as much. And so one of the reasons, there's a bunch of studies showing that warming yourself or taking a shower at night can help sleep. And one of the reasons is when you get out of a warm shower, your body temperature drops rapidly because you no longer have hot water on you. And can dramatically improve sleep quality for people.

So the flip side of that is you don't want to get into a cold bed if you're cold, because your body then will be like, wait, I don't want to fall asleep until I know I'm safe and not going to freeze to death overnight. But you want to be warm and then get into a cold bed, let that drop your body temperature even more, have the air be cold. And that for most people, and again, some people it's going to be 62, some people it's going to be 72.

But if you want an average in studies, 67 to 69 is probably the range that most people sleep comfortably in, depending on the weight of the covers.

Jordan Harbinger: So what's the rule of thumb? What's the heuristic here? Like as cold as you can without waking up cold. Is that the rule?

Andrew Herr: Yeah, as cold as you can. And then if you've got an aura or whoop, maybe you can test it, but basically essentially as cold as you can without it making you wake up and be like, oh, I'm too cold right now. I see.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And if you've got a whoop band or an aura ring, you can see if it helped your sleep score. I know temperature for me, lower temperature helps me with deep sleep because I've got the mattress that cools or whatever from a sponsor and from Chili Sleep. And then I've got my aura ring.

And I know that when I'm hot in bed, my deep sleep scores are terrible. And when it cools down in the middle of the night, like it does automatically, it's way better, way, way, way better. Can't travel with that mattress, but I guess in a hotel room, you just make it nice and cool and then throw the comfort over it. Yeah.

Andrew Herr: You just crank it down. And the other thing you want to do for sleep at home, some people don't have great blackout setups, but most hotel rooms have pretty good blackout curtains at this point. But there's always that problem where they never quite come together in the middle. So there's this big pillar of light.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. So irritating. My God, I hate that. Tell me how to fix that.

Andrew Herr: Take the hangers that are meant for clipping, clipping skirts and things like that and use those clips to clip the curtains together.

Jordan Harbinger: Genius. And no light will get through the middle. I can't believe I did not think of that myself of years of complaining about those curtains not closing.

I noticed that a lot of rooms now, they'll overlap them so that they don't do that. They don't have that problem. In Asia, the curtains overlapped. And I was like, finally, someone's paying attention to this.

Yeah, it didn't occur to me to go in the closet, find the ones that have the little pants clips or whatever those are for, and just clip the curtains shut. Wow. I think for a lot of people, that tip alone makes this whole episode worth the time investment.

My problem is the blackout curtains can be too good. And in the morning, I'm like, oh God, I just do not want to get up. Oh, it's 9.30. Okay.

And then I just reluctantly opened the curtains and Jen is like, I hate you right now. And the light streams in your eyes. Yeah. Absolutely not ready. Absolutely awful feeling.

And then you feel fine 15 minutes later. So what do you do? Set an alarm, wake up, even though you really don't freaking want to and open the curtains. Is that the plan?

Andrew Herr: At least you'll be getting better sleep quality. So it should be a little easier to wake up. Short of having some kind of motorized blinds or having a butler, there's nothing you can do other than roll out of bed.

And of course, now you're cold in the morning because the air is cold and you have to open it. But at least if you open it, you can jump back in bed for a few minutes and reset.

Jordan Harbinger: My usual move is open the curtains or if you're in a fancy place, they've got the button that lets you open it from bed. That's my favorite, right? You open it from bed and then you just lay there until the light annoys you slightly bit by bit enough to wake up.

Or if you can keep the curtains open, fine. But in Shanghai, that's not exactly a great idea because then you've got like an Apple ad. There's gonna be 10,000 megawatts of neon signs keeping you awake.

I've got a BYD electric vehicle car ad flickering in my window the entire night. No, thank you.

Andrew Herr: There's one other major thing that can help for sleep when you travel also. Some people don't sleep well their first night in a hotel room and then nights two and three, they sleep fine. And I've worked with clients through this.

And what we finally figured out was they're just in a new place and their nervous system is just a little bit more alert. And so I have found that people who have, where it's not jet lag, let's say maybe you just fly from LA to San Francisco or something short, but you don't sleep as well in the hotel room, but you sleep well other nights. So it's not the hotel room that's causing it.

What we found is a little bit of calming breath work or meditation in the hour before bed can actually calm your nervous system. And that allows those people to sleep much better when they travel.

Jordan Harbinger: Andrew made it through the street food in India then got violently sick at a fancy hotel restaurant. Apparently food poisoning has a premium tier. Same diarrhea, but somebody pulls out your chair first.

We'll be right back. Once again, thanks to our sponsors. They're all on the deals page at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Now for the rest of my conversation with Andrew Herr.

It sort of hit or miss with me. Either I sleep totally fine in the hotel or I'm absolutely miserable and I can't sleep all night. It has to do with what I'm doing the next day.

If I've got like a speaking gig at 8.30 AM the next day, my sleep is going to be trash. But if I'm just in LA doing podcasts, I usually sleep like a rock because I don't have a kid kicking me in the face every few minutes rolling around in the bed with me or any pets or anything like that. So it's usually a nice break.

One thing I meant to ask earlier was do supplements like zinc or emergency or what? I can't remember all these other ones, but they're the ones that they're like, oh yeah, just throw this in a cup of water on the plane and you won't get a cold. And for me, I never really believed it, but I like the psychosomatic effect of being like, I am now bulletproof from the guy coughing behind me because I took this, I don't know, Alka-Seltzer flight thing.

But truth be told, I think it's probably nonsense. What do you think?

Andrew Herr: So there's all these supplements out there that claim to be immune boosters. And the reason they're legally allowed to say this is because if you are zinc deficient, your immune system is in a really bad place. And if you take zinc, it will improve your immune system.

Most people, however, are not deficient in zinc. There is one other factor for certain types of viruses only. Taking zinc does decrease the length of the virus.

However, you've got to be taking zinc lozenges, probably not even zinc pills. They've got to be like, basically like you're drinking and it's like coating your throat as it goes down. So for most people, look, if you're deficient in zinc, that's a bad thing.

You want to get that remedied. But for most people, zinc is not going to really boost your immune system. Then you have the category that's more like emergency, which emergency was originally really about vitamin C. Now there might be like 20 different ingredients in it. There's zinc in there too, I checked, yeah. Undoubtedly.

So similarly, if you are deficient in vitamin C, which is essentially, I've seen labs on a lot of people and vitamin C would be very rare to be deficient in, thankfully in America today. Scurvy is not particularly common. Only pirates have to worry about this, generally speaking.

I mean, in other parts of the world, you might still have it, but in America, it is very rare. So in that sense, it's not going to typically boost your immune system, but emergency actually might help you some on a plane because vitamin C is one of the supplements that can help manage this flight, oxidative stress and inflammation. So they might have a little bit of help, right for the wrong reason, if you will, in that one.

But what you've got to be careful with now, these supplements that just add more and more and more now, vitamin B12, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, depending on the form, can make your circadian rhythm shift around. And so if you're taking these things at night, it can actually push your circadian rhythm the wrong direction. So I think one of the things we've got to be careful about is almost every supplement now is about more, more, more, like this supplement has 100 ingredients, but no, we've got 104 ingredients now.

One, you might not actually, not only not need some of those, they might actually react poorly with your body. So even if some are helping, some may be hurting. But I think in terms of the immune boosting supplements, what you really want to do for a plane is use things that either prevent this flight inflammation or generally calm your immune system.

And so that's why we use omega-3 fatty acids. These are precursors your body uses to calm down inflammation. So we're basically giving your body the fuel to turn down inflammation.

And we're using polyphenols, the compounds from fruit and vegetables they call antioxidants. Turns out they don't work that way. The whole antioxidant story was basically wrong because these compounds work in a test tube as an antioxidant, but in your body, they don't soak up free radicals any more likely than the rest of the proteins in your cell. And you have 10,000 times more proteins in your cell than you have these compounds you get from fruits and vegetables.

But what they do do is I mentioned before that things like sauna and exercise can turn up the protective systems in your cells. These compounds called polyphenols actually activate the cellular pathways that increase protective enzymes and other things. So basically what we're doing is we're causing your immune system to turn up the protection.

We're blocking some of the oxidative stress. We're giving you these precursors that allow you to tamp down inflammation. And that's the kind of stuff that does help.

Whereas if you're taking zinc pills, probably going to do nothing unless you're deficient.

Jordan Harbinger: Polyphenol, I feel like I've heard of it. Is that in green tea? I feel like they're always bragging about these in green tea.

Andrew Herr: Yes. So there are polyphenols like EGCG you may have heard of in green tea. Now, you don't want to take too many green tea polyphenols because they're the one that occasionally somebody gets sick from.

Why would you get sick from it? It's very rare, but unlike most supplements that have no reported health issues, there's a rare reported liver damage caused by too much green tea extract.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God. Okay. There's other ways to get this.

Andrew Herr: So that's why I typically recommend people go light or stay away from the green tea extract because there's also plenty of others. You may have things like tart cherries and pomegranate extracts, blackcurrant. You may have heard of anthocyanins.

All the fruits and vegetables have different versions of them, but they can be very helpful. They can help prime your immune system to protect your body more. And so that's the supplementation approach that works better than this idea of immune boosting because it turns out most Americans have too much inflammation.

So you actually want to calm the immune system and have it be ready to respond if there's a bacteria or virus. Yeah, that totally makes sense to me.

Jordan Harbinger: All right. I want to switch gears a little bit because I'm curious why this always happens to me. I'll go on a trip to New York or Europe or Asia or something like that. Right.

And I will eat a ton of food and I will drink a ton and I'm not paying attention. I have a whiskey and then I come back and I'm like, oh God, I've got to weigh myself and I weigh myself and I've lost three pounds. What the hell is going on? How is this possible?

I had Italian food four nights a week. I had breakfast, but I had rolls and pastries and way more than I normally eat, which is like a protein shake. I went out to lunch. I'm drinking a little bit of alcohol.

How is it possible that I lose weight doing that? Is it because I'm walking? I'm not walking that much more where I'm offsetting thousands and thousands of calories that I'm consuming.

So what's going on? Is it European food is healthier? I don't believe that necessarily either.

Andrew Herr: So I've been working this topic because it is a phenomenon we see all the time. People come back and they're like, I lost seven pounds on my one week European trip and I ate like a ton of steak and other things. And so I've set up experiments with clients who I know what they eat when they're in the US.

And so I know with excellent certainty that they ate more calories when they were in Europe. So this particular couple went to Croatia and I saw the photos like huge slabs of meat on the grill and bread and olive oil. So they were eating plenty of calories. And they did walk more. Their average daily walking went from about 6,000 to about 8,000 steps. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: But come on, that's like an extra 150 calories or something. I mean, it's one cookie worth of walking.

Andrew Herr: Exactly. So the amount of weight you might lose from walking an extra 2,000 steps a day for a week or even two weeks is going to be a fraction of a pound. That tells me we've now been able to narrow it down to two potential causes.

And by the way, if you come home and gain that weight back very quickly, it's also not possible to gain seven pounds in three days. The only way you can gain that weight is through inflammation. So we talked earlier, you're like inflammation, I think of swelling, your body will retain more water or even parts of it will swell up when you have inflammation in your gut and other things.

If you ask somebody when they are inflamed, they're probably the skin around their gut is a little looser, feels a little fuller. And that's probably because there's some water being stored there. So what are the two potential causes? Either the meme that food in America is poison is true and the food is actually safer in Europe.

And what would we mean by safer? There could be additives that are causing issues. Is it pesticides we use? Nobody knows for sure.

There's a bunch of hypotheses. Or the second one is stress. And so most people, when they go to Europe, if it's for fun, are a lot less stressed and they might be sleeping more and they're enjoying, they're going to the beach, they're with friends.

So when we have less stress, it tends to cause our immune system to calm down. And that actually means we have less inflammation. So almost certainly the weight change is because of inflammation.

And the two most likely candidates are either it truly is that the food here in America is really bad for us. And I think that's part of the problem. But I also think the stress factor is another piece of it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that makes way more sense. Because if I go to Asia and I'm hanging out with my wife and my cousin, shopping and taking walking tours, even though I'm walking an extra 7,000 steps a day, I checked my email zero times when I was in Hong Kong recently.

I did not do any actual work. I did 10 or 15 maybe minutes of work on the second day that I was there because I needed to record a commercial or two and send it to my producer. That was the entirety of all of the work that I did while I was over there.

So yeah, that makes sense. That's why I lost all that weight. I came back and weighed myself and I was like, I lost four pounds and all I did was eat and do a couple tours. It wasn't sweltering hot. I wasn't sweating it out over there really.

Andrew Herr: But also people are stressed in America. And also there are ways to manage that too. I mentioned breathwork and meditation earlier.

That's a whole rabbit hole to go down. We can talk about it. But calming your nervous system is a really important thing to do in day-to-day life.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Last but not least, I'm so curious. What if I go to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or any place like that and I want to eat street food or do I look for spicy food? Is that safer?

Or do I look for food with a ton of garlic in it? Does that kill germs at all? Or do I just make sure they cook it?

Or is it just a total lost cause? Because I've seen those street food videos of the dudes, no gloves and there's flies all over it. He just waves them off, pours sugar in it.

It gets the water from a bucket that a dog is drinking out of. I mean, I see these videos and I'm like, how does anyone eat that? I don't think I would eat those particular stands.

I think those are exceptions. I see people get hospitalized because of that. But I'd like to go and experience stuff. I don't want to avoid food.

Is there any way to make food on the ground? Not necessarily street food, I guess, but just food in a new place. Safer. What am I looking for?

Andrew Herr: So there's a few things. So the first question is the food. And then the second question is what else could we do around it to mitigate the risk of getting sick?

So the only two things, it turns out that spicy food, bacteria don't care. Basically, capsaicin activates one of the heat receptors, a nerve that senses heat in us. And so that's why we sense it. Bacteria don't have that receptor.

They could care less about it. So that's not going to work. Garlic doesn't work. Salt does work.

So salt to your food, salt at higher concentrations inhibits bacterial growth. So that can be a factor. That's why it preserves food, right?

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, that makes sense.

Andrew Herr: So if you salt beef jerky, it doesn't decompose and bacteria don't grow. And then heat, cooking food, boiling it is really valuable. But of course, if it comes out of the pot, and then the guy puts it into a bowl that was just washed in water that has the local bacteria in it, then we needed something else to protect us.

So there are studies that show that certain types of probiotics actually can help. So taking probiotics while you travel actually can be useful.

Jordan Harbinger: What kind though? Because I see these probiotics and it's like, they seem generic. Or you get the kind that are in the refrigerator at the health food store that are super expensive.

But I'm not traveling with a refrigerator. So don't they just die after a while?

Andrew Herr: So some probiotics are shelf stable. And they actually, the bacteria can kind of be dormant. And some of them aren't.

But you can get shelf stable. So you don't actually have to take the ones that are cold and try and keep it cold chains. That's going to be okay. But one that in particular has studies for it is called Saccharomyces boulardii, B-O-U-L-A-R-D-I-I.

And that one, first of all, start a week before your trip. Because in case you don't feel good with those, then you'll know to stop them. And a new concept that we're working on is there are some plant compounds that are naturally antibacterial that are also good for you.

And if you take them, unfortunately, they're never going to get in your blood at high enough concentration to be an antibiotic. But if you took them while you eat, we think that things like turmeric might actually, if you take it while you eat, you might actually then be able to manage some of the bacteria. Because there's suddenly a very high concentration of it in your stomach with the bacteria. Okay.

That's good to know. Again, the turmeric one is more of a hypothesis, but there is data on these things like Saccharomyces boulardii. Otherwise, you're looking for cooked food and saltier food. And otherwise, the other question you ask is, why do the locals not get sick?

Jordan Harbinger: That was my follow-up question. Why are the locals not getting sick all the time if they're eating the same food? And people are like, Jordan, you dummy. They've been eating it since they were babies.

Okay. But your body still needs to expel like cyclosporidium or whatever thing that was on the lettuce. You can't just get so used to that you let it live in you. You would die from an overload of parasites, right?

I mean, you can't just have it all the time or can you?

Andrew Herr: So the answer is, first of all, kids in developing countries tend to get sick a lot because they don't have resistance. And actually, this is one of these risks of infant mortality is because if you get a lot of diarrhea, babies can get dehydrated and other things. So kids do tend to actually get sick a lot more.

But by the time you become an adult, you actually do have exposure built up. So your immune system can learn to tolerate some of these things and keep them at bay. Either they live in you but don't cause an obvious infection or your immune system can learn their signature.

And then once it knows what it is, it can produce antibodies and other things to kill them more effectively.

Jordan Harbinger: It attacks it right away instead of letting it sit there for three days. And then it's like, oh man, this is going to be really bad.

Andrew Herr: But in studies, when you get people who move from third world countries to first world countries and then go back, they tend to get sick more. They lose that over time. Their body forgets, basically.

Jordan Harbinger: I am curious to hear from listeners who live in countries that have those different food standards if they live in Canada now. Like, do they get sick whenever they go back and visit their family? I'm so curious about this.

I don't need details or photographs, though, people. Just one or two sentences is fine. Yeah, I'm dying to know about that because I would love to visit some of these places. But I hear from everybody, oh man, I got so sick when I was in Sri Lanka or India or Pakistan or Bangladesh or a lot of these countries.

And I just I would love to go there. But I'm just kind of afraid to get super sick because, of course, the influencers on Instagram are like, I'm in the hospital.

Andrew Herr: And it's like, I don't want to. I will tell you, look, this is end of one and absolutely should not be taken as a research study or as data. But I took the supplements and the probiotics and stuff for India.

And I was like, I'm eating street food. Let's see how it goes. Now, I did not seek out stands intentionally. I sought out stands that looked delicious. So I was not trying to get sick.

But I will say I did not get sick until the last night when I ate at a fancy restaurant in the W Hotel and everyone in our group got violently ill. And then we had to fly home the next day. So I will say these things probably help, but nobody's bulletproof. And it's a tradeoff.

Jordan Harbinger: Man, Andrew, thank you for coming on the show, man. It's kind of a funny slash somewhat gross, but super useful conversation. I appreciate it, man.

Andrew Herr: My pleasure. Thanks for having me on. I hope people can use this to feel healthier when they travel and enjoy their trips more and come home and be more engaged for their families when they get back.

Jordan Harbinger: You're about to hear a preview of The Jordan Harbinger: Show with a top sleep expert about why we dream, what happens when we sleep, and why chronic lack of sleep and driving while tired is more dangerous than driving under the influence of alcohol.

Matthew Walker: Sleep is not an optional lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a non-negotiable biological necessity. Sleep is a life support system. It is mother nature's best effort yet at immortality.

And the decimation of sleep throughout industrialized nations is now having a catastrophic impact on our health, our wellness, as well as the safety and the education of our children. It is a silent sleep loss epidemic. And I would contend that it is fast becoming the greatest public health challenge that we now face in the 21st century.

The evidence is very clear that when we delay school start times, academic grades increase, behavioral problems decrease, truancy rates decrease, psychological and psychiatric issues decrease. But what we also found, which we didn't expect in those studies, is the life expectancy of students increased. So if our goal as educators truly is to educate and not risk lives in the process, then we are failing our children in the most spectacular manner with this incessant model of early school start times.

And by the way, 7.30 a.m. for a teenager is the equivalent for an adult waking up at 4.30 or 3.30 in the morning. If you're trying to survive or regularly getting five hours of sleep or less, you have a 65% risk of dying at any moment in time. When you wake up the next day, you have a revised mind-wide web of associations.

A new associative network, a rebooted iOS, that is capable of divining remarkable insights into previously impenetrable problems. And it is the reason that you have never been told to stay awake on a problem. Instead, you're told to sleep on a problem.

Jordan Harbinger: For more on sleep, including why we dream and how we can increase the quality of our sleep, check out episode 126 with Dr. Matthew Walker on The Jordan Harbinger: Show. My biggest takeaway from this conversation is to plan for how you want to feel when you arrive instead of just how you're going to get there. We'll spend hours comparing flights and hotels, and then leave our actual ability to enjoy the trip up to whatever happens after the second airport whiskey.

Give your recovery a little space in the itinerary. The point of traveling is to experience the place, not spend the first three days horizontal while your family checks periodically to see if you're still alive. All things Andrew Herr will be in the show notes on the website.

Advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about Six Minute Networking as well over at sixminutenetworking.com.

I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show is created in association with PodcastOne.

My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tadas Sidlauskas, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting.

In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. So if you know somebody who travels a lot, especially international, share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.

And we'll see you next time.