A Long Island entrepreneur with a lifetime of travel behind him is trying to take the misery out of jet lag — and his NASA-inspired technology has already attracted a high-profile following, including World Cup squads such as England and France looking to keep players alert and energized.
Mickey Beyer-Clausen, the son of a flight attendant, created the Timeshifter app for frequent travelers like himself. Users enter their sleep habits and travel details, and the app maps out when they should stay awake, rest, seek or avoid light, and even use caffeine as they adjust to a new time zone.
“The whole body is struggling and misaligned,” the Southampton resident said, describing what happens when travelers rapidly cross time zones.
“Food, special diets, exercise, hydration — much of the advice that we hear out there simply does not work.”
Beyer-Clausen, 51, who was born in a fishing village north of Copenhagen, Denmark, said one of the biggest misconceptions is that jet lag can simply be cured by sleeping it off.
“It has no scientific evidence behind it,” he said of that commonly repeated remedy.
Launched in 2018, Timeshifter was co-founded with Dr. Steven Lockley, a Harvard Medical School scientist with ties to NASA. The app draws on technology used to help astronauts maintain healthy sleep patterns aboard the International Space Station.
At the heart of the app — now the most popular of its kind, with nearly 2 million subscribers — is guidance on when travelers should expose themselves to bright light or darkness, and for how long, so their internal clocks can realign with their normal routines.
“That is the most powerful signal we can send to the body to manipulate, shift, and control adjusting quicker to the new time zone,” he said.
Beyer-Clausen said dark sunglasses are the “No. 1” carry-on item so travelers always have a way to simulate dark environments when needed — even if it means wearing them on a bright plane or indoors.
Timeshifter also hand-tailors its guidance based on an individual’s sleep preferences and peak energy times, a pattern known as a person’s chronotype, including by changing slumber patterns in the days leading up to a trip.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to beating jet lag, as each person’s chronotype greatly varies, but early birds typically do better while traveling east and night owls west, Beyer-Clausen said.
Lufthansa embraced the value in Timeshifter when more than 150 of its employees downloaded the app, leading to a partnership between the two.
Nike recently also rolled out a collaboration offering it to its sponsored athletes on the World Cup teams from France, England, Brazil, Norway, the Netherlands and even Team USA playing on home turf.
Some top tennis players and Formula 1 racers, along with MLB and NBA teams, have also taken great interest in Timeshifter’s technology for sports science purposes, he said.
“When we work with a team, they’re curious what games are problematic for them,” Beyer-Clausen said.
“We can just outline them and say, ‘Here you have a 74% chance of losing or winning based on circadian rhythm.”
Timeshifter, which will be used again by Nike for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, is poised to make much more noise — and big bucks — in the sports scene as reliable data continues to emerge.
“I can tell you that the revenue I budgeted for 2026 in terms of the concierge services we do for athletes — I reached that on the 15th of January this year,” Beyer-Clausen said.
