Asia - advice on adjusting back to US time zone after 17 day asia visit

my topic says it all.

I need to tricks to readjusting back to central time zone. I was pretty much 14 hrs difference for 17 days. My body is really wacked right now.

Thanks

Dave

This is something I live through far too often, and I don't know any good tricks. Some survival techniques depend on how flexible your work/social schedule is. If you can last through the day, and then go to bed at 5 or 6 p.m. and sleep through 3 a.m. or so for a couple of days, the transition to a more normal schedule is much easier to take.

If you are forced to drag yourself around till late, and then wake up feeling ready to go at 3 a.m., you can take a sleeping pill for a few nights--no more. But you'll still be dragging by the afternoon of the 2nd day. 20-minute cat naps are a big help for me. Drinking coffee throughout the day is *not* a help, because it just messes up your natural sleep patterns further.

Too late for you, but if flight schedules allow for this, I try to adjust to some extent before flying already for trips of at least one week duration.

So, for a trip from Europe to the US, I'll try to go to bed late and sleep as long as possible in the morning for a few days before departure - on the return I try not to have long sleep-ins in the morning in the few days before departure, and try to go to bed early.

Of course this is not always possible, but it does shave off some days of adjustment quite easily.

By the way - what do you mean with 14 hours difference? This is really 10 hours difference, right?

SmilingBoy.

well i was in tokyo and the current time there now is 752 PM. It's 552 AM here now. Ok 10 hrs, but they are a day ahead so i guess you could say 14 if you count forward :)

I have been crashing in the afternoons. Today is my day to stay up all day :)

Wirelessly posted (Blackberry 7290: BlackBerry7290/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/120)

Try your best not to sleep in the afternoons - if at all, then only a maximum 30 minutes nap. Just tough it out and you'll be fine in a few days.

SmilingBoy.

I'm a veteran of ORD-ICN runs, so I feel your pain. My best strategy is to work on the staying awake end of the problem by keeping active, trying not to think about what time my body thinks it is, and (occasionally) slow release caffiene. It makes that first day rough, particularly if you have an early morning arrival, but I find that I recover much quicker that way.

That said, nothing sucks worse than being subjected to all-day meetings the first day back in the home office. It's a struggle to stay conscious.

luckily i work from home and my company has the week off.

i have not did a good job tues/wed on not napping for 4-5 hrs :)

Today is the day i stay up

That sounds fine to me. If you don't have to be at work, extensive 'napping' at strange hours is a good way to catch up on needed sleep and *eventually* adjust back to normal time. As a matter of fact, the awful feelings we call jetlag are not simply due to the body clock getting out of kilter, but also due to the strains of long-distance flying and lack of sleep (you usually don't sleep that well before a transpac flight, especially if it's leaving early in the morning, and you virtually never sleep well if at all on the flight itself). So you have to make up sleep, in addition to readjusting your body clock owing to jetlag.

On the flight back, try to nap during "night" at your destination.

Moderate your booze intake on the flight back, drink as much water as you can (this really does make a difference for me).

When you arrive, try to get outside into some natural light during the day. I find that if I exercise durig the day that I arrive, it makes me feel better and helps me to stay awake longer.

Stay awake as late into the evening as you can stand - I try not to go to bed before 9:00 PM.

By the 2nd or 3rd evening, I am usually well on my way to resyncing timezones.

I'm in a similar situation, but my problem is chronic! I travel to and from Asia several times a year for about 2 weeks. I always do fine in my adjustment going west to Asia. But each time coming back to Mountain Time it takes like 3 weeks to be able to sleep at night without waking up at 3am, or just staying awake all night. Even after 2 or 3 weeks, I'm dragging in the afternoons like a zombie, and not sleeping at night. I don't let myself take naps and avoid taking stimulants or sleep aids. I think I do most everything you've all listed--it works in Asia but not when I come home again. Any perspective on why it is that I can adjust easily one direction and find it so hard the other? Am I just meant to live in Asia? Thanks!

Westbound is way easier than eastbound for jetlag, it's even been documented through research, as I understand it.

My solution for jetlag: Ambien.

The only time I truly am able to adjust back to the U.S. Central Time after a trip to Asia is when I have returned to DFW via a more easterly transit point (RTW ticket basically). After concluding a business trip to Hong Kong or Singapur, I used to return to DFW either via Karachi, where my late Grandfather lived, or via London, where my late Mother lived, stoping off for a day or two. I have never had a problem w/ sleep traveling east but traveling west always screws up my internal clock.

This technique might work better with a more equidistant stop off point like Istanbul, Athens or Cairo than the cities I used to travel through.

For me it takes about a week to adjust back to Central time from HKG or BKK. Genreally, I would recommend getting back on the weekend and stay awake til at least 9:00PM local time. You should then settle into a sleep cycle where you are up around 5:30 or so and adjust as needed from there.

If your schedule allows, take the long naps. You will suffer much more from lack of sleep than you will from being off schedule for an extra day or two.

I split my time between LA and SE Asia, usually staying at least a month at a time in each place so I get well and truly into the new schedule.

I generally start with the four hour nap on the first day or two, and that gradually works it's way down to nothing. I use Ambien at night for the first couple of nights and try to get as much sleep as I can then too. I figure that sleeping 10 hours a day for a few days is better for me than forcing myself to stay awake and only getting a few hours of sleep a night.

Don't they say, 1 day for every 1 time zone? So if it is a fourteen hour time difference, it will naturally take 2 weeks for your body to competely adjust.

As previous posters mentioned, sleep as much as possible on the plane. Drink LOTS of fluids (not booze) and try to stay awake until a reasonable time.

You body does adjust faster.