Jet lag
Jet lag is a form of disorientation and fatigue caused by abruptly switching to a different sleeping/waking schedule and different daylight hours. It is caused by rapid travel across time zones.
Understand
Some people are affected more than others, but it tends to happen when crossing two or more time zones in a single flight (which first became commonplace with the development of commercial jet air travel, hence the term).
While flying itself does not cause jet lag, it can be compounded by the fact that long hours spent on a plane can cause you to sleep too much, or not enough, possibly at the wrong time of day relative to where you departed from. The fatigue from travelling, plus the mismatch with local time, can leave you ready to fall asleep just after lunch, or being wide awake in the middle of the night, knowing that dawn is still several hours away. The length of the flight per se doesn't cause jet lag, only the difference in time zones does. A flight from Paris to Johannesburg, while it might take you about 11 hours, wouldn't leave you very jet lagged because there's only 1 hour time difference. On the other hand, a flight from Paris to New York will take just about 8.5 hours, but the time difference is 6 hours so there's a good chance for experiencing jet lag.
Flights from east to west, where you gain a few hours, are usually a bit easier, as most people find it easier to stay up a little later than to go to bed earlier. Also medical publications seem to agree on this. But this varies from person to person; if you normally wake up and go to bed early, you might not have much problems when traveling east but feel awful when going the same number of time zones west. It doesn't always follow that the greater the time difference between your origin and destination, the greater the jet lag. Often a short 4–5 hour difference that causes you to wake at 2AM at local time (or to need to get up at 2AM of your home time) can be more fatiguing, and take longer to overcome than a complete reversal of day and night.
The maximum possible jet lag between two points is 12 hours; e.g. between Helsinki and Honolulu in either direction. If you travel across the International Date Line, subtract the time zone difference from 24 to get the correct time difference. For example, an "18-hour time difference" would equal 6 hours of jet lag. Finally it is possible to get a 1 hour difference jetlag — if you live somewhere daylight saving time is observed and have problems adjusting to the change, you've experienced this.
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Jet lag vs. travel fatigue
Traveling is often tiring even if you don't move at jet speeds and don't cross any timezones. That long flight across the entire length of Africa is going to leave you tired from being in a crowded, dry, uncomfortable space with hundreds of strangers for most of a day. Travel fatigue is a real problem – just not the same problem as jet lag. The traveller with jet lag usually has both of these problems. |
If you have yet to choose your destination, you can minimize jetlag by looking within the same or a nearby time zone. This limitation will not trap you on one continent; for instance, travel between Europe and Africa rarely changes the clock more than one hour. Slower methods of long-distance travel, such as by train or boat entirely eliminate jet lag or at least greatly reduces it, but at the cost of more time spent in transit for any given (large) distance.
Nominal time zones set aside, countries can have very different customary schedule for work, dining and store openings. While office workers in countries such as China are used to start the day early as 8 AM, people in Spain and other parts of southern Europe have a justified reputation for late-night dining.
Also, knowing sunrise and sunset times in your destination time can help in figuring out when to seek daylight and darkness to aid in the transition process. Sunrise and sunset times can occur at significantly different times in different parts of the time zone, depending on time of year and your location within the timezone. A Coruña in north-western Spain is in the same timezone as Białystok in Poland, although their longitudes are 32° apart, which "should" correspond to a 2¼-hr difference – being the same time zone, sunrise and sunset is over 2 hours later in western Spain than in eastern Poland. Meanwhile, in areas such as Alaska or in northern Norway, you may have no night at all, or night all day, depending on season. As such, the destination's day/night cycle can be a shock from the day/night cycle you're used to back home. The long or short daylight hours are mostly an issue for visitors to Northern Europe and Alaska, where there are common travel destinations at high latitudes, i.e. with very long days during summer (even sunshine around the clock) and correspondingly little daylight during winter.
Prepare
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New and humid: Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350
The latest generation of long-haul passenger airplanes like the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 are built from corrosion-resistant composite materials that tolerate higher humidity, meaning you're noticably less dried out at the end of a long flight. Enhanced air filtration systems and specialized ambient lighting also help. |
You can't avoid jet lag completely, but you can make things easier on yourself by not fighting it. As soon as you can, forget your origin timezone and live by the destination time. If you should be sleeping during your flight to arrive in the morning, then ignore time zones, movies and entertainment, and just sleep whenever you can. If you will arrive in the evening and should stay awake while traveling, make sure you have activities, entertainment, caffeine, etc., to keep yourself awake during the flight.
Schedule around it
| Origin | Destination | What to expect in the first days |
|---|---|---|
| Americas | to Europe and Africa |  sleep in, stay up late |
| to Asia |  early to bed and early to rise | |
| Asia | to Americas | sleep in, stay up late |
| to Europe and Africa | early to bed and early to rise | |
| Europe and Africa | to Americas | early to bed and early to rise |
| to Asia | sleep in, stay up late |
With large time differences (particularly if you're traveling west), you will probably wake up extremely early after your first night — possibly as early as 3AM! You should do your best to go back to sleep, at least for a few hours, but since you're going to wake up early anyway, you might as well take advantage of it. Plan activities for your first morning or two that take advantage of being up early. For example, American travelers can check out the Toyosu Market in Tokyo and get a sushi breakfast, or hike up Diamond Head in Hawaii to watch the sunrise, while someone from Europe can enjoy the sunrise somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. For a business trip, if you're traveling this direction, try scheduling meetings in the mornings. You might be able to gently suggest to your would-be hosts that a power breakfast might be preferable to an evening on the town, at least for the first few days.
On the other hand, if you're traveling east, you might find it difficult to fall asleep before it's already morning. This can be turned to your advantage if you enjoy late-night partying. Nevertheless, during the first few days at the new destination it's not a smart idea to drink too much alcohol — your head will already be messed up by the time difference! If it's a business trip, try scheduling key meetings for the afternoon, rather than first thing in the morning.
Don't assume that your first day is how the next few will be. Especially if you've slept badly during the overnight flight, or if your trip was particularly long or awful, it's possible that you'll fall asleep at the local bedtime the very first night, but might have problems during the following ones. Many people find the second day (or night) worst.
Other tips
If you know that you'll be getting up earlier or later, try making part of that change before your departure. Can you go to sleep an hour earlier (or sleep in an hour later) every night for the week just before your flight? Thick curtains and a sleep mask can help in getting sleep when it is still (or already) light outside.
Some scientific research suggests that fasting (not eating) can help to overcome jet lag by resetting the body's circadian rhythm (biological clock). Not eating 24 or more hours prior to arriving at your destination contributes to feeling less tired once arrived. The light/dark cycles of the earth affect our circadian rhythms, but so do our eating patterns. Rebooting our feeding cycles can mitigate the time warp.
Cope
Try to get some sunshine, ideally in the local morning or as close to it as you can manage, even if the weather is poor, even if the scenery where you're sleeping isn't postcard-worthy, even if you don't feel like it, because even fifteen minutes can make a huge difference in your body's ability to adjust.
If you are on the night owl schedule, try to eat meals a little earlier than you might feel like. Practice good sleep hygiene, especially turning off the glowing screens. Some travelers take drugs such as melatonin, Benadryl, or Ambien to help them fall asleep. You may want to arrange curtains to allow a little light into the bedroom when the sun comes up, or to use a "sunrise" light clock to gently signal the morning.
Melatonin is a hormone made in the brain that produces feelings of sleepiness. In the United States, melatonin tablets are widely sold over-the-counter in drug stores, right next to vitamins and minerals. Many countries require a doctor's prescription, however. Dosages vary wildly from 0.5 to 10 milligrams, but studies show that melatonin is most effective at the lowest doses, around 0.3–0.5 mg. Melatonin has a relatively short shelf life, so if the bottle has been sitting around long enough to gather dust, check the expiration date and consider getting a fresh one. People who find melatonin helpful in adjusting to an earlier timezone usually take a tablet shortly before their new, awkwardly early bedtime. The quick-dissolving pills can take effect in as little as 20 minutes; pills that you swallow whole usually take more than an hour to reach full effect. More than a few seconds of light (especially the blue light from computer screens) neutralizes melatonin, so be ready to turn off the room lights, close the curtains, put away your smartphone, and turn off electronic displays for the night soon after taking it.
If you are up before the birds, do the opposite: Keep quiet during the earliest hours, and see if you can doze off again. Postpone meals, and try to keep yourself awake until sunset.
If you are traveling with young children, don't expect the kids' schedule to match yours. Most babies and toddlers are better at taking naps and sleeping on planes than teenagers and adults, and they won't push themselves to adapt. Consequently, you might be faced with a child who is taking an eight-hour "afternoon nap" and then spends half the night bouncing on the hotel bed while you desperately need to sleep. Consider trying to sleep when the baby does, even if this means it takes a few more days to get on the local schedule.
Recover
- See also: Returning home
Recovering from jet lag is a process that, well, takes time. A rule of thumb is that you recover about 1 hour difference per day. You may find that on your way out, you are fine after just a couple of days, but you will really notice the recovery period on your way home, particularly if you didn't stay long enough to fully adjust to the original time difference. At that point your body clock will be really confused and it will take a while for it to sort things out.
You can aid the process a bit by helping to reset your body clock. Sunlight plays a big factor in this and it helps that the sun is out on your first day. Try to operate on your new local time as early as possible. If you're going to land early in the day, try to sleep on the plane so you arrive refreshed and ready for a full day of activity. Conversely, if you're going to arrive near the evening, try to stay awake on the plane so that you'll be tired when you arrive and can get a lengthy sleep. As much as possible, spend the daylight hours first few days in your new time zone outdoors.
Attempt to have a normal day in terms of the time zone you've flown into. If you land at 7AM, for example, you will probably have been served breakfast on your flight, so head to your accommodation (ask if they can mind your luggage if you aren't travelling light), and go and see some of the sights, making sure to get daylight and fresh air. You'll feel tired, particularly by the mid-afternoon, but keep pushing on until an early dinnertime. Eat dinner and then go to bed. You should be tired enough for a good night's sleep.
Alternatively, if you don't sleep well on planes and arrive at your destination early in the morning, consider getting a "day use" hotel room in order to sleep for just a few hours and shower before continuing on the rest of the day. Having only slept a few hours, you will still be tired by evening, so you will have adjusted to the local time by the next day.
It is a lot easier to reset your day/night circle if you eat immediately after getting up. Therefore skipping breakfast is not a healthy option the first couple of days after you arrive in a new timezone.
See also
| Flying topics: Planning your flight → At the airport → On the plane → Arriving by plane |