A well-traveled Lengthy Island man is on a mission to make jet lag a factor of the previous — and his NASA-used know-how is so widespread that even World Cup groups resembling England and France have relied on the app to remain energized.
Mickey Beyer-Clausen, the son of a flight attendant, constructed his Timeshifter app for vacationers resembling himself to enter their sleep preferences simply, then obtain a readout of when to remain awake, snooze and even eat caffeine for vitality whereas adapting to a time zone.
“The entire physique is struggling and misaligned, the Southampton resident mentioned of the switch-over to totally different time zones.
“Meals, particular diets, train, hydration — a lot of the recommendation that we hear on the market merely doesn’t work.”
For one factor, jet lag can’t simply be slept off, mentioned Beyer-Clausen, 51, who was born in a fishing village north of Copenhagen, Denmark.
“It has no scientific proof behind it,” he mentioned of the favored supposed treatment.
His 2018-launched app was co-founded by NASA-tied Harvard Medical Faculty scientist Dr. Steven Lockley — and based mostly on know-how that helped astronauts sleep correctly onboard the Worldwide Area Station.
A core a part of the app — the preferred of its type with practically 2 million subscribers — is guiding vacationers on the precise period of time and which hours of the day they need to spend in shiny or darkish environments to maintain up with their typical routine.
“That’s the strongest sign we are able to ship to the physique to control, shift, and management adjusting faster to the brand new time zone,” he mentioned.
Beyer-Clausen mentioned darkish sun shades are the “No. 1” carry-on merchandise so vacationers all the time have a method to simulate darkish environments when wanted — even when it means carrying them on a shiny airplane or indoors.
Timeshifter additionally hand-tailors its steerage based mostly on a person’s sleep preferences and peak vitality occasions, a sample generally known as an individual’s chronotype, together with by altering slumber patterns within the days main as much as a visit.
There isn’t any one-size-fits-all method to beating jet lag, as every individual’s chronotype enormously varies, however early birds usually do higher whereas touring east and night time owls west, Beyer-Clausen mentioned.
Lufthansa embraced the worth in Timeshifter when greater than 150 of its workers downloaded the app, resulting in a partnership between the 2.
Nike just lately additionally rolled out a collaboration providing it to its sponsored athletes on the World Cup groups from France, England, Brazil, Norway, the Netherlands and even Staff USA taking part in on residence turf.
Some high tennis gamers and Components 1 racers, together with MLB and NBA groups, have additionally taken nice curiosity in Timeshifter’s know-how for sports activities science functions, he mentioned.
“After we work with a workforce, they’re curious what video games are problematic for them,” Beyer-Clausen mentioned.
“We will simply define them and say, ‘Right here you could have a 74% probability of shedding or successful based mostly on circadian rhythm.”
Timeshifter, which shall be used once more by Nike for the 2028 Olympic Video games in Los Angeles, is poised to make way more noise — and massive bucks — within the sports activities scene as dependable information continues to emerge.
“I can inform you that the income I budgeted for 2026 by way of the concierge providers we do for athletes — I reached that on the fifteenth of January this yr,” Beyer-Clausen mentioned.
