Traveling May Not Be As Bad For Sleep As We Thought, According To New Research

Traveling allows us to explore new places, meet new people, experience new cultures, and so much more. Of all the ways traveling can affect us, its effect on sleep is likely something you've never considered—but according to new research published in the journal Nature Human Behavior1, it's worth taking a closer look. Here's what they found.

To study this, they took advantage of the latest sleep technology available today, namely electronic sleep tracking devices. Gathering data from 20,000 traveling participants (from 121 countries) who wore sleep trackers, the team was able to look at the sleeping patterns of those participants while they were exploring new places.

Both underslept and overslept participants tended to lose sleep when switching time zones, however, so they missed out on these balancing benefits of sleep.

There's no doubt traveling affects our sleep in a myriad of ways. And when it comes to being over- or underslept, traveling within your time zone may be just what your body needs to get back into a groove of sufficient and high-quality sleep. Other ways to support your snooze on the road include bringing along a sleep mask to block out bedroom light, doing a calming meditation before snoozing, and packing a sleep-supporting supplement (mindbodygreen's gets rave reviews from travelers).*