Jet Lag-Worse Coming Or Going?

Coming home, with 9 hour time difference, is the worst for us. After 6 weeks in Europe this fall, it took me 7 nights before I could sleep 8 hours even if I was in bed by 8pm. Many nights sleeping 8pm to 2 or 3am. It took fully two weeks until I could sleep until 6am if I went to bed at 9pm. The pain of reentry is one of the reasons we stay a long time when we go.

Well, it depends on many factors, including which direction you're going. Personally, I find jetlag generally worse on me when I travel westbound (so, outbound to Asia, or returning home from Europe). Also depends on what kind of shape I was in when I got on the plane, how long the string of flights, what kind of a seat I'm in (thank god for lay-flat beds in business class...), etc.

You know, there's nothing wrong with getting up early. It's a good time to get stuff done without interruptions...

It depends on what you mean my worse. When I go over there, I want to sleep until 4 PM and then stay up until 8 AM, but that doesn't fit with what I want to do over there, so I am forced to follow their schedule. For a couple of days I'm walking around like a zombie and feel like I have the flue. But in a few days I get over it and I'm fine.

Then when I come back, like you observe, I want to go to sleep at 4 PM and walk up at midnight. I really can't do that so I do adjust a little and sleep from 8 PM to 4 AM. Nobody seems to care if I do this, so nothing forces me to adapt to my new schedule, and I stay in the old one for a week or more.

So what's worse, adapting quickly to the new schedule but feeling sick, or it's relatively painless but lasts for a long time. For me, I find going over worse.

I think part of it will depend on whether you are a "day person" or a "night person". Also, I'm finding the the transition is easier the more times I go over (I don't know why), or maybe it's easier as I get older.

I confess that we fly in business class with flatbed seats both ways. Going eastbound, to Europe from Seattle, we haveca short night, but we sleep. We feel pretty good on arrival and are able to function that day until bedtime. Next day we feel great, with no ill effects,

Coming home, westbound, is a daytime flight that makes for a looooong bday. Even though I sleep on the plan, it takes ne days to recover and adjust to the time change. Must have something to do with daylight and adjustment of the body clock.

By far and away for us it’s coming home to the west coast that really affects our sleep patterns when we come home. Sometimes I’m still waking up at 4:30 for two weeks after coming home. Thankfully I’m no longer working.

We’ve found two odd things that “help”. One year we had to take a quick trip to the east coast after coming home and this slight adjustment seemed to force us to quickly adjust. This year we took a trip to see friends in our same time zone but sleeping in someone else’s house, where there was nothing to do if I did wake up at 4:30 helped me start to sleep a little later.

I’m not sure what to expect this winter for our first trip to NZ and AU.

I have very little trouble going to Europe. I usually plan an early morning activity for the first couple of days since I know I'll be awake anyway.

Coming back from this trip, I've had a week or two of waking up at 5am. But I don't mind that. In fact, with the clocks about to fall back, I wish I could continue waking up early to get the benefit of the morning sunlight!

The worst jet lag I have had was flying from the UK to Hong Kong. It wiped me out for days. It always takes me a week to get back to normal sleep patterns when I return from the USA, particularly the west coast. Jet lag isn’t as much of a problem for me going to America.

Always worse coming home from Europe, but we have fun blaming jetlag for every stupid or clumsy thing we do for about six months. Actually, we are fine after a week or 10 days.

It seems to me that when we arrive in Europe (usually Italy), adrenaline from the excitement of just being there helps us combat jetlag. Coming home, there is not that level of novelty and excitement. Mostly just doing laundry and stuff like that.

Also, since I cannot sleep at all on airplanes, I've been putting myself on an anti-jetlag schedule before the trip: gradually rescheduling my nighttime and, very importantly, my meals to get me about halfway onto Italy time. This has worked well for me the last four trips.

However, most people either can't do this (jobs! kids! etc!) or wouldn't want to bother. My husband says that moving even two hours onto Italy time helps him. We have never tried to do it in reverse, but we do try to stay up later and later before our trip home.

For me jet lag is worse flying from the USA to Europe.

This is why I love living with only a 4 (UK) to 5 (Europe) hr time difference most of the year (except for after when the clocks change). I think for us coming home is worse (awake at 5am), but we are generally over it by morning 3. I think going over we just force ourselves to stay awake into the evening. I feel for people in the west with such a big time difference...

I suffer both directions in different ways.
Some say it is worse coming home because we don't have the excitement of the trip to buoy our energy....and at home we are recouperating from travel fatigue and 'disappointment'.
Going East (which is my typical travel), I get into the sleeping pattern easy enough by my days are draggy. Arrival day, I allow myself a short nap to be at all functional. Often on Day 3 (because I have pushed through the first 2 days) I am quite physically 'off'. Coming home, I am at work within hours, so though I am functional, I am not 100%.

I actually put 'jet lag' down to any long travel now. From Ottawa, I always have to connect somewhere so days are long. I also often start traveling at the end of the week at the end of a work day...so self inflicted challenges. Even heading south with only one time zone difference, if travel day and flights are over 6 hours, I am suffering 2-3 days to some degree.
The worst was one week visiting a friend in San Francisco. 3 hour time difference and she is a night owl to my 'morning sparrow' self. So, it quickly became a 6 hour time difference from my at home life. 3 day acclimation in SF, and then 4 days later, 1 week reacclimation to home. I was not amused....
Rule of thumb is that it takes 1 day for every hour time difference to reacclimate, so Tammy, you may have another 4 days to go...

I have a harder time going west (eg to Hawaii) than to Europe. I find in Europe, I’m tired in the mornings but that’s OK because I’m not a morning person and I expect to be tired in the morning. However in Hawaii or Alaska, I hate waking up at the crack of dawn every day and no restaurants are open and then you’re exhausted by like 5 PM.

It's supposed to be worse when you travel east. It's easier to extend your day by a few hours, then get a full night's sleep, than to sleep well when the sun goes down earlier.

I do notice coming home is usually no big deal. On the way home I watch movies on the flight, rather than doze, then go to bed at my normal time. I get up and go to work at my normal time the next morning (to save money, I generally fly on weekdays). I don't notice any jet lag.

Fortunately, travel to Europe is always energizing. Once I get to the airport, I try to think only in local time at my destination. I set my watch at the departure gate and forget about what time it is at home, until I'm on my way back. I schedule flights to arrive early in the morning and do my best to get four, or more, hours of sleep on the flight. I make sure I stay active the first day and don't go to bed until a decent bed time (at least 9 if not later). Usually after that I'm pretty good.

I've been using melatonin recently. I prefer it to the Excedrin PM I used to take on the flight because I don't get an grogginess. A couple days before the flight, to make my bed time an hour or two earlier. On the flight, to help me get to sleep. Then the first one or two nights of the trip. It seems to help make me feel sleepy. It doesn't do much for waking up in the middle of the night (I won't take more).

I'm with Mona and Laurel. It doesn't matter which direction we're flying to on our trip, when we arrive there is no jetlag. Coming home, there are several days of waking up at 3am, then 4am. It takes at least two weeks to get back to normal. I must say that it's getting worse as we get older. I thought it would be the opposite when we went to Asia but it was the same. In all directions we hit the ground running when we arrive but suffer jetlag when we get home.

Going to sleep at 8:30 and getting up at 5:30 actually fits our schedule at home quite well. I've been to Europe three times in the last 5 months (yes it was both weird and wonderful-no idea that was going to happen last year this time) and am finding that my sleep times are less disrupted after my most recent trip-maybe because I was only in Italy for 5 days. I haven't tried it, but have you tried melatonin?

I’ve made 18 trips in 18 years, sometimes in business class, often in steerage with no extra leg room, usually getting 3-4 hours sleep from Miami to wherever. I don’t bother acclimating to new time zones beforehand. Maybe it’s an adrenaline rush, but I never seem to have jet lag on arrival. On the other hand, returning home is something I despise for two reasons. First is that my trip is over. Second is that it takes my body clock at least a week to readjust.

For us it seems to depend on the length of the flight as much as the direction. For flights under 8 hours, going east is definitely easier. Going west usually requires several days to get over the jet lag. But once the flights get to 12 hours or longer, it doesn't seem to make any difference what direction we were going. Our internal clocks are so messed up it takes a couple of weeks to feel normal again. Business class didn't help much - yes, the trip was oh so much more comfortable, but it didn't ameliorate the jet lag.

No problem at all when I arrive in Europe--stay active til around 8-9 pm and wake up good as new. Coming home I seem to arrive around 2 pm and end up totally wiped out by 8 pm, that continues for 3 or 4 days until I inch up to my normal bedtime of 10:00-ish. I have taken to returning to work the next day and thus being awake really early is just fine.

On arrival in Europe we usually grab something to eat and then catch a 2 hour afternoon nap and we have no problems the rest of the trip. Coming home....we're messed up for 2 weeks before getting back to a normal schedule.

For me if I'm going EAST (Atlanta to see my sister, Virgin Gorda or Europe) from the PNW going is worse takes me a day and 1/2 to get my bearings but I recover pretty well when I'm back home one night and I'm good.
For my hubby would just turned 67 it's getting bad no matter which way we travel coming home it takes him many nights to get back to normal. He used to bounce back better but as he gets older he needs more time. Heck last trip to Europe I think it took him two weeks.

Now our NZ trip - I never felt jet-lagged going or returning nor do I when we travel to Hawaii.

I live in the US eastern time zone and find going WEST harder. So for Europe - coming back home is a tough time adjustment. I’m exhausted at 7PM and ready to go at 4AM. Takes close to a week or more to adjust back!

Going to Europe I sleep in on day 1 (until 9AM or so) then am perfectly normal the rest of the trip.

If I go to California (3 hour difference) it takes me a day to adjust but no big deal. The 2 times I’ve been to Hawaii (6 hour difference) were tough, similar to coming home from Europe. But I got in some great sunrise hikes!

I think part of it is your own circadian rhythms. I’m a morning person and naturally like to go to bed early and get up early. So going west that’s exacerbated while going East I’m just staying up later and sleeping in like a normal person.

Tammy: There's 9 hours difference between our time zone and Europe. When we returned this past September, it seemed to take "forever" to acclimate to our regular schedule, that is staying up past 8:00 p.m. and not waking at 4:30 a.m. I felt better when a neighbor gave me what he "heard," as far as returning to a normal sleep/wake pattern: "For every hour time difference, add a day. For example, it would take us 9 days to return to normal. And it took about that long.
Also, we were gone almost 6 weeks, on a very busy schedule logging minimum of 10,000 steps a day; often 15,000-20,000 steps, and getting less sleep than normal, so I think we just needed to recoup.

Much worse coming West to home from Europe.
Feeling overwhelmingly sleepy at 6pm, and trying to stay up till at least 9pm.
It does take me one day for every time zone crossed to feel normal again; so about 8-10 days depending where I've been.

For me, it is worse on the return from Europe.

Hi, Tammy (aka diveloonie) for me it's definitely coming home. I am not entirely sure whether or not it's the time change, the sun being up the entire way home or the fact that I really would rather have just stayed in Europe. I am very lucky as even heading home, jet lag doesn't affect me very much and I don't need much time to recover. But I am retired and try hard to not plan to have much on my calendar for a few days after I get home. When I was working and traveling and returning home to teaching, I was usually so excited to see my kids and my team again, it didn't bother me too much.

Am I the only one that doesn't get jet lag? I can go and come back and feel fine. A little disoriented about what time is it but that's why I rather travel with my wrist watch. What I do is to put my watch at the hour "there" and sleep during the flight. That helps a lot.

I think the only time I felt exhausted was coming back from Japan. The next day after I landed I felt like a zombie, but then the day after I was OK again.

It seems unanimous that it is worse on the return, with a few lucky individuals that don’t seem to experience problems either way. Today, day 8, I was finally able to stay awake till 9pm. Slowly, but surely.

Honestly, I think it’s easier wherever you’re going on vacation. When most of you fly to Europe, you’re excited, relaxed, can sleep in, etc. Great for you! When I fly to Europe, I’m coming off of a vacation in the US, where I’ve been pampered by family. I come back to Europe needing to do laundry, cleaning and getting up at what my body thinks is midnight to go to work. Much worse going to Europe (heading East) for me.

I think Emily's thoughts match mine. When we fly from the US East Coast to France, the first day is hell, but by the next day I'm pretty well adjusted to the time. On the other hand, when we return, it takes me about a week to recover from the time change. But it's probably not just the time change; it's coming home after an enjoyable vacation and having to deal with work and things that accumulated in our absence.

@ Geraldine....Like you I don't get jet lag at all, came back from a trip recently, flew into and out of Frankfurt from SFO, didn't feel anything different on arrival day...basically no problems. Both flights were non-stop, close to 11 hours or a bit over, ie the return trip.

Definitely no jet lag going over, which is more important to me than when coming back. Admittedly, I didn't get quite as much sleep this time going over as I usually do but still the amount of sleep was sufficient; I certainly did not feel spaced out, zoned out, groggy, etc upon landing at 10 AM at FRA on 10/5/19. I do not take any sort of pills, OTC or prescription, to induce sleep or to counter the jet lag.

West coaster here. Like Lola, I have no problem when flying out, especially taking the overnight BA flights through LHR. Get a bit of sleep on the plane, and I am good to go. No jet lag at all. Coming home it is a very long day. So, it takes a few days to sleep through the night, and a few more to be back in my own time zone.

Another West coaster. For example we usually fly out of SeaTac early afternoon, get intermittent sleep and arrive early afternoon. Take a walk upon arrival, have an early dinner and crash about 9 pm. By the next morning we feel refreshed and ready to take a 4 hour walking tour. Coming home (the worst) we like to leave mid morning if possible, arrive home early afternoon. It takes about 2 weeks to get back on schedule. We tend to wake up at 4 am. I'm an early riser anyway, so it isn't a terrible transition.

The rule of thumb for the return from wherever is one day per hour of time change. Going out is always the easy one as long as you accept the time change and don't allow yourself to dwell upon the time you left behind. If you are one of the folks that focuses upon thinking about eating breakfast when you should be eating dinner, you'll have trouble. Embrace the suck and just jump into the routine where you are as best you can. I used to travel all over the world for work and I always was able to hit the ground running both coming and going because I did not allow myself to agonize over time differences. The only time I ever had trouble was if I went from the US to Europe and then on to India and India to Asia. That always seemed to twist me around.
Coming home....drink a few beers or a bottle of wine before you get on the plane. On the plane, have a couple bourbons before switching over to water. That always helps me sleep and get the first part of the flight out of the way.

For me, going over causes the worse jet lag of the two options. With that said, I had a little giggle to myself because the bedtime and wake times you mentioned are pretty close to my regular sleep time (9pm to 6am), and my husband's actual sleep times (I just caught him snoring a bit but the kids woke him up!).
Edit: Maybe what I'm feeling going over is more a lack of sleep than jet lag (most likely a little bit of both). Flying over east to Europe, I cannot sleep for the most part, so I feel pretty exhausted and nauseous that first day, and then I'm good. Coming home is a breeze: unpack, eat dinner, and go to bed, and things seem to settle into a routine rather quickly. I have not flown farther than the west coast of US going west, so no point of comparison for that.