Dealing with jet lag
 

I'm flying from ORD to NRT in October. I leave at 1PM Central and land at 4PM Toyko time. The 13 hour flight gives me a lot of time to kill. Is there a best time to sleep on the plane to help with time change? I can do a sleeping pill if it'll help.

My recommendation is to avoid sleeping pills or too much sleeping on the flight. Read, watch movies, walk around the cabin, do anything to keep yourself occupied and limit your sleeping to short, occasional "catnaps." After arriving at 4 pm, you will take up to an hour getting through C&I, getting money, buying tickets into the city, etc. Then, the train into Tokyo is another hour+. That puts you in your hotel in the early evening. Go out for a walk, get some exercise, have a meal, do anything to stay awake and active until a normal bedtime - 10:00 pm or so. Then go to bed and get up at a normal time in the morning. If you have trouble sleeping, then take your sleeping pill but only to help you sleep at a "normal" time.

If you sleep too much before arrival or go to bed immediately after arrival, it will only make it harder to adjust to local time and you will find yourself awake at 3 am and falling asleep at 3 pm.

At any rate, the above is what works for me.

JR

Perfectly put! I agree completely, although this is how I cope with the homeward journey. A good sleep the night before, stay awake on the flight, continue to stay up until 10pm or so and back to work the next day. Only symptom of jetlag I get is being woken up by my bladder, the sole part of my body that won't accept that it isn't day time.

Adjusting to US time on your return is probably the bigger challenge.

Melatonin has worked well for me. It regulates the sleep cycle. I find that it works as a mild sleeping pill that doesn't leave me groggy. Take a couple of pills about half-way into your flight. It takes about 45 minutes or so for the pills to work and you should end up feeling as though someone advanced the hands on the clock to bedtime (ready for bed but not a zombie). It's not strong enough to knock you out if you're engaged in something mentally active (e.g. talking, moving around the cabin or working) but is strong enough to put you to sleep if you're reading or watching a movie. If you get a few hours' sleep on the flight, you should land in Japan in good shape to get through the evening (don't sleep once you get to Japan - don't go to bed until at least 9 pm). Take another couple of melatonin pills when you go to bed, and they should help you stay asleep through the night (or help you go back to sleep quickly if you do wake up). You should end up more or less on Japanese time by the next day (although I often take one pill a night at bed time for another night or two).

The same principle applies on the way home. Take two pills part-way through the flight so that you can get a few hours' sleep, and then stay up until bed time when you get home and take two pills when you're ready to go to sleep. The next night (and probably the next), take one pill. You can buy them in the vitamin section of drugstores in the US.

Thanks, folks. This makes a lot of sense. I wondered if an Asia flight should be treated differently than a Europe trip. I'm glad I asked since it sounds like it is. I don't think I'll have trouble staying up the whole flight. I have a lot of trouble falling asleep anyway.

I'm just not looking forward to killing 13 hours on a plane. I get really antsy after 8 hours so I was hoping to sleep through some of it. At least I'm flying first class. :-)

Any suggestions for what to do my first night? I'm staying at the Conrad and have never been to Japan (or Asia) before.

Melatonin seems to work quite well for some people and not at all for others (like me.) Also, most package directions limit the dosage to 1 tablet, once per day. I'm glad the previous poster has had good luck with such high doses but would not recommend it for someone who is unfamiliar with the product. If you are prone to kidney stones (again, like me) you should avoid melatonin altogether.

I have pretty good luck with Tylenol PM - or even just straight benadryl without the Tylenol.

Agree, although there's a risk that the poor OP :p flying in first class, is likely to have a glass or two of wine with lunch or dinner, and could end up sleeping the last six or more hours of the flight, which would be the worst possible time to sleep. My recommendation would be to stay up the entire night prior to traveling, or at least most of it, and then take a sleeping pill (or just a glass of wine) on takeoff, sleep the first six hours or so waking at around 9:00 a.m. Tokyo time, then stay awake the rest of the flight and on into the evening. I did this last year on a direct YYZ-HKG flight and it worked very well although I was pretty tired when I boarded the plane in YYZ!

As Lap Lap suggested, you are more likely to have trouble adjusting back to your normal time when you return home. That is when I struggle. Even staying awake for the 20-24 hours until my normal bedtime at home only helps to a degree. I just resign myself to a week or so of feeling drowzy in the afternoons until I gradually adjust back. The east-bound trips always seems tougher to adjust than west-bound.

Could not agree more
 

Same here, that and make sure you are hydrated before and during the flight and you will be fine.

When I fly to Japan, I generally try to pretend that I'm having an extremely long afternoon and nap for no more than an hour or two. (It's easier if the $%^&* FAs don't insist on putting the shades down) Since I'm a bit of a night owl anyway, and arriving at NRT or KIX around 4PM local time puts me at only 1AM or 2AM (depending on the time of the year), I'm OK for a while.

I arrive at my hotel just in time for dinner, but I shower first and then look for a place to eat outside the building. Night falls early in Japan, even in summer, since there's no daylight saving time, so by the time I've had my dinner and walked back to the hotel, I'm still in "nighttime" mode, ready to watch TV till about 10PM.

This is 7AM or 8AM Midwestern time, so in effect, I've just pulled an all-nighter. Eight to ten hours of sleep leaves me refreshed to start the day between 6AM and 8AM. After that, I get tired early in the evening for a day or two, sometimes unbearably so, but I have no trouble staying awake during the Japanese day.

Unfortunately, I've never figured out a way to ease the trip home. Once when I was living in Oregon, I arrived at PDX at about 6AM, returned home, and just crashed. A few hours later, I woke up, looked around, and saw that after two weeks of staying mostly in minshuku, I was in a Western-style room. I spent a few seconds trying to figure out what Tokyo hotel it was before I realized that I was in my own bedroom at home. That moment of confusion convinced me that I needed to sleep a few more hours.

The return trip always has me falling asleep or waking up at odd hours for about a week. One weekend, three days after returning from Japan, I decided that I needed a 15-minute nap before lunch. Five hours later...

What I always do when I go to Japan -- I try to take a flight that is closer to the afternoon when it leaves for Tokyo from Vancouver. And I don't sleep on the flight, I just take power naps. Once I land in Tokyo, I press on through C&I like everyone then get to my first hotel/ryokan which will be in the late afternoon/night.

Once I am done checking in, I put down my bags then head off to a good eating spot after exploring Tokyo during its evening splendor. After I eat, I walk for a while more to get my body acclaimized to the new time of day then when I get back to the ryokan, I take a nice warm/hot bath in the deep bath tub in my room and go to bed afterwards.

I just prepare myself knowing I'll wake up at 4:30-6AM in the morning every morning in Japan. :D

Sanosuke!

most important of all: Don't drink caffinated beverages on the flights, they'll knock you and you'll end up wrecking your sleeping schedule.

Nothing to be done going east, eh? I hadn't thought of that. I have to be at a conference the day after I come back from Japan. I'm landing in Miami at 10:45PM local time. That's going to be an interesting day.

Interesting doesn't begin to describe it. Hope you can handle large quantities of caffeine.

I have to sell that day too. Anybody else going to the Gartner Identity Management conference in Orlando?

Seriously, there has to be some way to get through that day. Should I sleep on the flight or do I have to stay up through the whole thing like the flight over?

I'd say go ahead and get some sleep. A few hours nap might help. Then blast yourself to sleep with whatever chemical assistance you have in your hotel after you get to Florida. My experience has been that the first day after getting home isn't as bad as the next several. If you are anything like me, you won't be non-functional - just tired. We've all had those days where we just had to get the job done despite being tired, sick or hung-over. You'll be fine.

JR