Melatonin & Jetlag?
 

Do you guys use melatonin to battle jetlag? Does it work? What is your typical regimine when traveling east? Should I start before I leave?
Thanks a bunch,
Jaas

I take melatonin to go to sleep at night. I would be afraid that I would sleep and then have that hangover effect upon waking up. Some people swear by it though. Have you thought about buying some No Jet Lag?

What is No Jet Lag?

Also......

If you don't use Melatonin, do you have any other tricks that work for you? I'm going on a vacation in Europe and jetlag can almost ruin my trip. It gets me pretty hard.
Thanks again.

No jet lag is a homeopathic remedy that can be purchased at Magellan's.

http://www.magellans.com/?Partner_ID...0&SID=overture

It so funny you ask because I was just reading Woman's World magazine and they have some tips for jet-lag.

Flying East- Re-orient your body clock. Go to bed, eat meals and wake up an hour or two earlier than normal. Start this a few days before you fly.

Take A Walk- A University of Toronto study suggests that exercising when you reach your destination can reduce the effects of jet-lag.

Help With Sleeping- if you take .5 to 3mg of melatonin, every night for a few days at bedtime once you get where you are going, might help to reduce jet-lag.

Melatonin seems to helps me -- I take 3mg every night for (time zone change hours)/2 evenings, just before bedtime. But it doesn't work for everyone, it seems to have no effect at all for either of my two kids (who are in their 20s).

Melatonin gives me the "vivid dreams" (i.e., "what-the-hell-was-THAT-all-about dreams") side-effect, but really doesn't help me with jet lag. A couple times a year I fly from the east coast US to Thailand, which is a night-is-day day-is-night time difference, I sleep very little on the flights over (not by choice).

When I get to Thailand I just stay up until the local time for sleep is appropriate, then pop a 5mg Ambien. I do the same thing for the next 3 or 4 nights, and after that I'm pretty much adjusted to local time. On the return, I may take a pill the first night I get back to the US, but after that I adjust quite quickly when I have my own bed and shower. I used to not take any medicinal aids on principle - and spent many nights sleepless nights. I finally decided the hell with it and made Ambien my travel buddy.

I heard recently that it takes one day for every one hour difference in time. I always wondered why it took me so long to adjust to Hawaii time. That's a six hour difference!

I have previously sung the praise for Ambien, but at $2/tablet on my prescription health plan, I generally restrict its use for sleeping on airplanes. Once I reach my destination, I use a 3mg Melatonin tablet to reduce jet lag and help me adjust to the local time zone.

I am generally skeptical about unproven remedies, but after a particularly bad episode of time lag during a business trip back east (3-hour time difference), a friend recommended Melatonin to me. I tried it during my next business trip to the East Coast, and I was amazed how much better I felt during my workdays there.

My last flyertalk.com order came with a sample of No Jet Lag, but I have not tried it yet. It seems to be something you have to start to use during the flight, and I am usually too occupied (with movie/in-flight meal/wine) to try it out.

Popping a 3mg melatonin pill when boarding a transatlantic overnight flight works for me. At least from the standpoint of me being able to get some sleep as opposed to zero sleep. This, in turn, helps me get through the first day of my trip. From the second day forward, I'm fine.

I use both Melatonin and Modafinal. Modafinal is the most amazing stuff. And over the past 20 years I have tried just about every jet lag program from Dr. Ehret's complicated program to adjusting my bed/wake-up times gradually over a couple of days.

Ask your doctor about Modafinal and/or google it.

I've used both Melatonin and Ambien. On the shorter adjustments, melatonin helps me to adjust better to the new time zone. On anything over about 5 hours though, I use the ambien because melatonin doesn't quite pack the power I need. For some reason I also find east-to-west easier than west-to-east.

I could pop a bottle of melatonin to no effect. On long haul I use Lorazepam and can nod off, or not, as needed. It has been perfect for me so far. I used to swear by Halcyon but it was too much just on or off for me.

Modafinal sounds very interesting though. . .

Ambien = Melatonin
 

I cannot find the reference now, but there was a university clinical trial published earlier this year which compared ambien with melatonin in a double-blind crossover trial in adults. The results were that $2-per-pill ambien and $3-per-90-pill-bottle of melatonin both yielded an average of 30 minutes more sleep. That this was done in a crossover trial is important. Such a study has half the people take each drug for a while, then they switch. So in the same people, melatonin was equivalent to ambien. Won't see that in an ambien ad, but likely will see it soon in insurance companies refusing to waste their customers' money on ambien, except for the rare cases of people who don't respond to cheaper treatments.

I'm following this because my child... well, details would be too much information ... but suffice to say that my little one has made astounding progress since the neurologist recommended melatonin 1 hour before bedtime. The neurologist said to try that before we talked about ritalin. We were never going to talk about ritalin, anyway, so it's a good thing the melatonin works. $2.97 per bottle, Rite-Aid brand on drugstore.com for AAdvantage miles, to boot.

Ah, but you could save even more money by using PLACEBO:

Bandolier

;)


Sorry, edited to add, after reading your post properly:
I meant for jet lag, not for your youngster.

Melatonin works for me. I take it either when the dinner service starts (if I want to eat and then sleep) or about half an hour before I board (if I want to sleep right away). It seems to take about 45 minutes for it to work - I don't feel groggy or doped at all. It just feels as though the hands on the clock have been advanced and I'm sleepy like its 11:30 pm instead of whatever time it actually is. If I have to wake up and change planes, I don't feel groggy or disoriented at all, even if I've only been sleeping for a few hours. I also take Melatonin for a few days after my flight, to help me sleep through the night.

If you ask your doctor, s/he should tell you that it is a psychostimulant drug, with all the potential side effects. History shows a poor track record for all similar drugs (amphetamines, cocaine, phentermine, fenfluramine etc)

It is licensed for narcolepsy, obstructive sleep apnoea and shiftwork sleep disorder by the FDA in the US.

dito here: this is exactly how i do it.
3mg, that is.

Thanks for the insight everyone.
Jaas

I have not had any meds/pills (prescription or otherwise) to help me deal w/jet lag flying east.

However for what it's worth: If I'm flying to Europe, it's usually a late afternoon/early evening/late evening flight, which takes you to your destination in the early morning local time. In this case I tend to start my day a bit earlier than usual (4/4:30a or even earlier), go abt my regular day, and make sure that by the time I'm seated in the a/c I'm pretty much done w/my day - the logic being - the more I tire myself out during the day, the easier it would be for me to sleep on the plane - and hence wake up fresh across the pond.

As for as flying to Asia is concerned....I'm yet to figure out a fool-proof way to deal w/jet lag, but I've found *not* sleeping on the first long leg flight (to Europe) and *sleeping* on the flight to your Asian destination *usually* helps....but not quite, since flights to Asia reach in the middle of the night(at least mine anyway) and I end up staying up all night to catch a domestic flight....but I'm still able to pull of the next day as a regular day and maybe sleep a bit earlier in the evening.........after that, no jet-lag :)

Just my experience. Not sure if it's even related to your post, since you were specifically asking abt pills.

I have the exact same pattern except that I supplement the melatonin with several drinks at the airport bar before I board. ;)

When I get to my destination I stay up until the sun sets and if possible walk around until the sun sets.

Right on the bottle it says not to mix with alcohol. If you drink before taking Melatonin, you may be playing with fire.

Not on my bottle :cool:

In our bodies, melatonin is produced by our pineal glands - so would that mean that we should never consume alcohol?

(but on a serious note, I'm not a doc so follow all directions on the bottle and not advice on FT)

It does not work for me at all. Sometimes I use Tylenol PM.

monafanil (Provigil)
 

From what I've read here over the last few years, there's a tremendous variance among interventions that are successful.

I'd definitely say try them at home first.

How monfanil affects one likely depends on the individual. I find it wonderful for 6 - 12 hour time zone changes. I take a small dose for the first and second day and do not have amphetamine-like reactions at all - I don't even feel as jangled as I do after a cup of tea - I just feel alert, a tiny bit more outgoing and talkative if I am with others, but not at all "hyper" if I am by myself.

For sleep I find Lunesta gives me no hang-over, no drugged feeling.

Sylvia

Re: OP. I tried the stuff back when that first overhyped Conde Nast Traveler story came out years ago that started all this. Bottles of the stuff cost $20 or so back then. All it did was give me a headache.