Best Ways to Beat Jet Lag...?

[Watching You]

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I saw this message at the top of my screen and thought to myself now what could I add of interest.

Recently I had to travel to Australia and New Zealand for work for a couple of weeks in August. Because Australia is currently 9 hours ahead of GMT, (if I am still correct) In order to beat jet lag I did, what I have been doing for the last fifteen odd years and calculated that I adjust my body clock to my time zone.

My method is - That I actually read about in a Newspaper Supplement:

If I am going to the east, to 9 hours I allow twelve days beforehand, (one day (24hours) for every hour to adjust) I start waking up approximately 30, 45, 1 hour earlier to reset my body clock. The flip side is that I also have to get to bed earlier each night, which is not that easy. So on the day I was leaving, I went to bed at 6pm and up at 1am. On top of this you need to adjust your eating habits so that you do not eat close to the time you are trying to rest.

It’s boring because you are limited to what you can actually do at 2am, but fortunately this is one of the few times when I can seriously catch a lot of television, and thanks to the V+ box and BBC iplayer I do not miss many of my favourite shows. However, I have to be careful not to wake the whole house, so I watch TV with headphones.

Ideally I would have preferred to have gone to Australia and NZ during their summers, (during our winter) but unfortunately most Australians tend to take their holidays during this time and its quiet then.

However, what I found strange was the amount of people from here (UK) who travel down-under without obviously checking the weather in advance, dressed in shorts, t-shirts and flip flops (honestly). It was 10 degrees when I arrived in Sydney on Sunday 3rd August. After a full day of travelling it feels a lot colder. But I find it strange that people were caught out like this although when I left we just had the two weeks of summer in the UK. Apparently this is a common problem according to someone at my hotel that sees this every year. I wonder if any Aussies travel here dressed the same way in February??

Anyone have any other good tips for beating jet lag??

[Toto]

Yeh, don't travel ;)

Sorry :)

Interesting use of adjusting your sleep patterns though.

[Chris]

I used to do a little international travel on business, but as I'd be in the office right up until the day before travelling it could be a little difficult to do as much body clock prep as you did. The same goes for the return trip, you tend to go from the office to the airport (if coming back from the West) or up very early the morning after your last workday for an early flight (if heading home from the East).

If time constraints are such that you can't prepare your body clock in advance, then the best advice I ever took was to adjust to your destination time zone as soon as you board the plane. Meal service on board probably won't be well timed for this but this is when the face mask and ear plugs become very useful. You also have to get used to looks of sheer incomprehension from the cabin crew when you knock back their offer of champagne on arrival and an a la carte menu (especially if you're in business class, which I was lucky enough to travel in).

[Hom3r]

The best way to beat jet lag (times are roughly what I remember as it was 18 years ago)

A few years back we flew to Florida, we were up at 4:30am for a 7:30am flight, but due to a technical problem we left at 1:30pm, we arrived in Florida at about 6:30pm their time (11:30pm uk) we were knackered but to keep ourselves awake we did a tour of the area to see what was near by, we went to bed at 10pm US / 2am UK some 22 hours awake.

We were up a 7:30am refreshed and rearing to go.

Coming home we where up a 7:00am our flight home was 7:00pm we got home at 7:00am UK (Saturday morning) 2:00am US. we unpacke did the food shopping saw family we stayed up untill 10:00pm UK / 5:00pm US some 34 hours later knackered.

Sunday had a lyin.

The best thing to do is as we were advised is treat the times as if you are at home.
Even if you are tired don't sleep during the day.

[SMHarman]

As said above.
Most of my travel is to / from East Coast US.
Going West (to the US). Set your watch when you get on the plane, take a nap and stay up 'till bedtime when you get there.

Going East (to the UK). Take a late flight, eat before the flight, don't eat on the plane and sleep as much as you can. This is supposed to be your nights sleep and you will be lucky to get 5 hours on these routes. Don't nap during the day when you get back to the UK, Stay up as late as you can on the day you get back. I actually found going to work on the day I got back was good as it made me stay awake / concentrate on something until 5pm then go home, and crash into bed about 8pm.

I found it amazing when we did this with a 6 month old, what they say about a time zone a day for your Circardian Rhythm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm)to adjust is so true. Baby wakes at 3am on day one, 4am on day 2 and so on. That hurts the getting over jet lag.

[Halcyon]

I just got back home from my travels yesterday at 4.00am and had to be wake up for work at 7.00am.
I try to go straight to bed. I only had about 2 hours sleep but it keeps you going.

If you get home and it is the start of the day though, don't try to sleep during normal times when you are normally awake.
There is ap oint where your body seems to say OK, I cant sleep and you are fine again. Stick to it and then build up the tiredness for the evening sleep.