Question About Jet Lag

Try to get a flight that gets you there in the daylight. Stay up all day, and go to sleep at regular time at night, or at least close to it. I usually try for bed between 9 and 10 PM. If I give in to a nap before bed time, it will take me 3 days to adjust. If I do the above, I will adjust in 1 day.

Thank you. The good news is we actually arrive in London. Spend the night and leave for Paris the next day. We arrive in the afternoon and I have a floodlit tour scheduled to see the city. So I will be on my 3rd day for the first site seeing expedition.

Hi Lisa - Most flights from the West Coast leave here in the morning (usually very early) arrive in Europe the following morning. We have arrived anywhere from 8:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. We always stay active, try to walk around, etc. Our first trip we were meeting with family we hadn't seen for a long time and were up until midnight. We usually have dinner and try to get to bed by 9:00 or so. Next morning we are good to go! I do sleep as much as possible on the plane, so that helps.

There's a lot written about this on this forum, you might want to search for it.

Jet lag is very real and not the same thing as lack of sleep. It affects people to different degrees.

I have had very good experiences managing jet lag with diet, timed exposure to light, and melatonin, but I would not generalize from that.

I do think it is possible to mitigate jet lag, but it takes work to do so. Worth it from my point of view, at least going out.

Lisa,

I've found that jet lag affects me a bit differently on each trip. I always resolve to sleep as much as possible on the flight, but that never seems to happen. There's usually so much going on, people to talk to, meals to eat and movies to watch (as well as the excitement of going to Europe), that I can only manage a few short naps. I'm a bit "cheap" so I figure if I'm paying for the meals, I'm darn well not going to sleep through them!

I've tried a natural product called No Jet Lag and it seems to help somewhat, but not enough that I could actually say it "works" to any degree.

Even though the airlines usually provide a snack just before landing, I'm usually hungry by the time I get to the Hotel so have to stop for something. Coffee seems to help also.

I'm also somewhat of a "west coast night owl". My flights usually arrive in early afternoon which is good as it's easier to stay awake until 21:00 or so and then go to bed early. I've resorted to a "power nap" on a couple of occasions after getting to the the Hotel, and while that helps in the short term it seems to prolong the adjustment for a day or so.

I've found that the adjustment is often worse after the trip home (not sure why that is?).

For your first trip, you'll probably receive countless personal anecdotes and more than a little conflicting information. Take it all with a grain of salt because everyone experiences things a little different. Some lucky few never experience jet lag at all, others feel it to a certain degree but minimize it's effects through combintations of sleep-cycle managment, pharmacology and carefully planned activities, and some people just get completely wiped out by jet lag. It's impossible to predict how a given individual will respond. But general advice would be not to plan a late night or a long day of driving on your first day.

I especially like Tom's reply, to this often-discussed subject, IMO his deserves a careful second reading. A person's reaction to, and remedies for, jet lag are highly personal--what works for me probably won't work for you, etc.

But, you said you wanted personal anecdotes--here's a link that takes you to where you can browse the last several hundred posts we've had here on every one's ideas on jet lag click here for several hundred personal jet lag anecdotes.

I usually arrive in Europe early in the morning from the West Coast. Even if I have been able to sleep on the plane, I seek a room with a bed in it. The day is spent resting, snoozing, wandering around, shopping, reading, snacking, and going to bed soon after dark. In the days when I first traveled to Europe and couldn't sleep on the plane, I would usually fall asleep in the afternoon any time I sat down.

I'm on the West Coast as well and through trial and error over the last 25 years the only solution I've found is:

about 2-3 weeks before a trip I start getting up progressively earlier. Start with trying to get up at 5am then 4am then 3am about 3-4 days before your trip. That will put you pretty close to most western Europe time zones.

It has to be a consistent build up though. Works for both my wife and myself. We still find it hard to get up before 9am local time however especially in Ireland. Something about the air makes us sleep in.

Thanks to everyone for all the tips. I know that this has been discussed numerous times. Each person is so different. I really appreciate your time answering and was truly interested in personal experience if you found yourself waking up super early or waking up look at the clock and panic because it is 12:00 noon and you have slept half your day away in Paris!!