What's it like to have jet lag?

I've never really had jet lag traveling between those places. but everyone is different.

I had wicked jet lag between the east coast U.S. and Russia. Waking up at weird times, and being UP, though I'd gone to bed a few hours before, that sort of thing. It just throws you off. Going back the other way didn't affect me as much as the trip was actually longer, with longer legs, so I think it turned into decent time, like how if you fly to England or France from the eastern U.S.arriving in the daytime and you just stay up til evening you're usually (in my experience) fine.

Well, London and eastern Canada are only 4 time zones apart, 3 if it's Halifax. If we're talking Vancouver it's enough for significant jet lag. For me a big part of it is just being tired, because airplanes make you tired, even if you were just to fly in a circle and end up where you started. But a secondary part, depending on direction, is your day lasts too long. You feel like it's not time for bed, but you've been up too many hours. It's a lot like how you feel when you pull an all-nighter. Going the other direction, you have been awake too few hours, and don't feel like going to sleep even though it's night, making it hard to wake up in the morning. A bit like daylight savings time but times ten.

I mean, it depends on the timing and what you do. Do you sleep on the plane and is it the right time to sleep? I can't sleep on planes so mostly I am just tired and grumpy until the next bed time comes around. If it is long enough I get spacey and a little euphoric.

East or west coast Canada? Does he cross any timezones going from Canada to the States?

I've done transatlantic flights a few times. I usually feel out-of sync for a day or two going westwards, up to three days going eastwards. I want to sleep and eat and the "wrong" times of the day -- for example, I might leave half my dinner behind and then feel ravenous at midnight. My usual tactic is to drink lots of caffeine when I'm "supposed" to be awake and to try to get as much daylight as possible.

I agree that it depends completely on the person (character)'s actions and habits. I spent ten days in Germany this summer (I live in the US in the eastern time zone). We left New York in the late evening and arrived in Germany in their early morning hours. Made ourselves stay up the whole day (which really wasn't a problem) and then just immediately settled into that time zone with no problems. Coming back to the US was a completely different story. I couldn't keep my eyes open past 8 p.m. most evenings and then I would be awake from around midnight to 3-4 am before getting back up for work. This lasted for at least two weeks until I was finally able to make myself stay up past ten.

Lol so I used to live in the UK and visited my family for the December holidays in California before flying back to the UK after two weeks. Flying back to California wasn't a problem to get acclimated, maybe because of all the holiday cheer, but it only really hit me when I got back to the UK, I was out of it, dead tired by 4 pm, wide awake at 5 am, and fell into this sleep cycle of 8 pm bedtime to wake up at 5-6 am the next day, which worked out for me to work on my thesis.

Oh yes and that early to bed and early to rise routine lasted for two weeks until I had to start my classes again.

Jet lag for me is usually just a general sleepiness and waking, falling asleep at odd hours for the local time zone. I combat that by doing the following:

When flying west - just stay awake until the next time it's time for bed - it's rough for the first day, but thereafter, I fall into the local time zone very easily.

When flying east - I take a melatonin about an hour before the usual bedtime for the new time zone, then a hot shower. The melatonin, and the rapidly cooling body temp knocks me out early (for the local time), and then I wake up 8 hours later acclimated to the new time zone.

Ta Da!

On occasion, I have forgotten to do the above when flying east, and the resulting rest of the week in London was really crappy. I was tired all the time, and never really acclimated before coming back home. Of course, by then my body was finally adjusting to GMT-0 and I was screwed for another week thereafter. LOL

I bounce between California and Southeast Asia on a regular basis. Cathay Pacific leaves SFO around midnight. I get hammered in the lounge, sleep through most of the flight, and when I get to my destination it's mid morning, and I'm set to the new time zone in a day or two. Going back East, that is truly a mutha, and regardless of what I do, I'm messed up for about two weeks.

It's always the return trip that affects me the most. Tired, grumpy, and a skewed sense of what time of day it is. Usually it resolves itself after a week or so.

Stupid biorhythms and Circadian cycles - LOL

It's not much different for me than the usual brain/reality mismatch: can't fall asleep when you need to, and hitting the snooze button a dozen times in the morning until I end up late for an appointment.

But I had an interesting experience in Fiji. We got to the hotel, I think we were tired enough we went to bed early, I don't recall what time it was. Then we woke up all refreshed. There was lots of noise and activity outside. In countries like Fiji, cheap hotel walls are thin and you can hear people outside the building, lots of talking, vehicle noises, domestic animals and whatnot, neighborhoods are noisy, nothing like they are in the US.

So we got dressed, went out to see the place and found out it was 3 am! It felt like it should have been at least 8 or 9 am.

I've done a lot of Sydney to Europe flights and back. Jetlag is pretty awful on those ones (it's a bit more than 24 hours because of airports and stuff). It's not just the tiredness - it gets a bit out-of-body, particularly if you're flying East, and it can take a few days to recover. Quite a few days. I tend to cry or get grumpy.

I don't know anything that compares to it in terms of benign self-induced awfulness. It's just - a singularity of miserable.

ETA: My daughter also does a fair bit of flying and uses valium and alcohol to deal with it. She's not much of a drinker IRL, and she hates pills, so that sort of says how awful it is.

Imagine a mild cold. You’re not quite yourself - mildly headachy, tired, grouchy, and generally drained. It took me about a week to acclimate when I first started traveling, now I kinda have a system where I adjust my sleep patterns in advance and crash out whenever I need it and I can recover in a day or two. It helps that I can sleep anywhere, although the flight from the Midwest back to the UK isn’t long enough to get proper rest (even in business class the most you’ll get is about 5 hours on a 7 hour flight, which is not enough for me).

I’m unusual in that I get worse jet lag traveling west - most people suffer more traveling east.

McCardey is right about the out-of-body thing. You get past a certain threshold of tired and things just seem to happen around you. It’s all a bit surreal.

Echoing cornflake's, "Everyone is different."

Mr. BF doesn't get jetlag. We can land after a long-haul flight, and he'll be back at work the next morning at 7a.m., same as always, no dramas.

But for the same flight, it'll take me a good week minimum to recover. Best way I can describe it is everything feels heavy. My brain, my body, my eyelids ... everything feels sluggish and out of sync.

These days, we try to schedule our flights to land in the late afternoon -- just enough time to get to our hotel (or home on return), walk around, have some dinner, then go straight to bed to reset everything. Worst possible move is to land in the morning and have to force yourself to stay awake when your body's screaming to have dinner at midday and be asleep by 3p.m.

be frank said:

Worst possible move is to land in the morning and have to force yourself to stay awake when your body's screaming to have dinner at midday and be asleep by 3p.m.

Click to expand...

Except it is the only way to minimise jetlag - unless you're my daughter. You need to stay awake for a sunset after you land. And turn your phone off and then just pray for death.

ETA: I'm talking long-hail flights here. Across hemispheres. Never mind your timezones.

I never used to get jetlag, but now I'm , it's terrible.

Last month, I flew east across the IDL. Had an overnight break in Santiago (14hr difference) and that was tiring, but okay-ish. But coming back across the Pacific and the IDL, with no breaks was absolutely awful. I can't sleep on planes.

It took me about a week to get back to whatever normal is. I had sleep disruptions and problems with concentration. And I was grumpy as hell, although that's not terribly unusual.

mccardey said:

You need to stay awake for a sunset after you land.

Click to expand...

Ha, yes ... that's why we always schedule flights that land at ~ 5:00-6:00p.m. whenever possible! Land, food, sleep.

- - - Updated - - -

Helix said:

I can't sleep on planes.

Click to expand...

Me either.

be frank said:

Ha, yes ... that's why we always schedule flights that land at ~ 5:00-6:00p.m. whenever possible! Land, food, sleep.

- - - Updated - - -



Me either.

Click to expand...

Me either. And once I turned I decided that a flight to Rome had to factor in an overnight in Singapore (Pan Pac, high-floor + upgrade) or I just wasn't going. It was either that or drink and take pills.

For me I have to be careful or the white noise of the engines puts me to sleep on flights almost instantly.

A flight attendant told me once on a puddle jumper flight from Albany to Boston in a twin engine prop that I was the only one who slept through an apparently very bumpy flight.

Jason said:

For me I have to be careful or the white noise of the engines puts me to sleep on flights almost instantly.

A flight attendant told me once on a puddle jumper flight from Albany to Boston in a twin engine prop that I was the only one who slept through an apparently very bumpy flight.

Click to expand...

Oh, sleeping on small planes is a doddle, as long as I've got earplugs because the engine noise is pretty loud. (Most of the twin engine planes I fly on are 8-seaters and not at all fancy.)

Although one of the ones I travelled on recently had to fly less than 20 m above the water to keep below the cloud, so I was quite attentive for the whole flight.

Jason said:

Albany to Boston

Click to expand...

Albany WA? I am so impressed. I want some of whatever you took.

Jason said:

For me I have to be careful or the white noise of the engines puts me to sleep on flights almost instantly.

A flight attendant told me once on a puddle jumper flight from Albany to Boston in a twin engine prop that I was the only one who slept through an apparently very bumpy flight.

Click to expand...

I don't think I've ever slept on a flight; people are always like 'oh, if you fly long enough....' nope, not so far.

I've flown many times between California and the UK, and every time it was much worse for me going west-to-east.

On the east-west trip (usually about a 10-11 hour direct flight) it meant arriving local time in California only a few hours after departing London. I found it so much easier to acclimatize that way, even though technically you've gained a bunch of hours and should feel more tired. It was so much easier to get into the schedule, you're arriving in daylight (actually the entire journey was usually in daylight, since you're traveling with the sun) which also helps, and I never even felt slightly sluggish the next day. I'd go to bed at the usual time the night I arrived, and just get right back into routine.

West-east... Ugh. Just ugh. The same 10-11 hour journey covers almost 24 hours between the two local times, a lot of it's in the dark, and generally it feels like you've been awake for about six years even though it was the only leg of the trip where I could actually nap on the plane. I definitely felt like I'd lost a day. It'd take me a good week just to get my schedule back on track.

(Strangely, I get the same effect from Daylight Savings Time changes, although to a much lesser extent!)