'I usually take an Ambien and listen to one of my own speeches on my iPod,' Kerry said. | REUTERS John Kerry's cures for jet lag

If the next secretary of state, Sen. John Kerry, is anything like the current one, he can expect to rack up some major frequent-flier miles. Which means he’ll need to master the art of avoiding jet lag.

Kerry offers his tips in the latest issue of Men’s Health magazine.


“I can’t say my past experiments with jet lag remedies have been very scientific,” said Kerry. “When I’m flying, I usually take an Ambien and listen to one of my own speeches on my iPod. I’m out in seconds. But it doesn’t always work, and sometimes you’ll have some funny moments from being overtired. There was an incident in New Orleans, at Mardi Gras, in 1997. But the video has been destroyed and I gave the beads back.”

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Other politicos offered their advice as well.

Tom Brokaw said the best way to avoid jet lag was to go straight to work upon landing.

“One of the advantages of my line of work was that whenever I reached a distant destination, I had to run off the plane and get to work immediately. Generally I was going on the air a few hours later, often in the middle of the night from a remote airfield in Iraq, or a backstreet in Kabul, or some hellhole such as Mogadishu. What I quickly learned is that adrenaline is the best drug for jet lag.”

CNN’s John King said, “I’m a big believer in the power nap. I even took a nap in the backseat of a Humvee during a convoy in Iraq — at a time when every third or fourth convoy was getting hit by an IED. We had 20 minutes before it got dicey, so I set an alarm for 15 minutes. That morning, I found out that the convoy behind us was attacked.”