Ancien Maestro

Get up.. go to the washroom just to walk around.. everytime you have a piece of garbage, get up and throw it out.. and ask for water by getting up..

Point is get up if you get whenever you can, unless you're sleeping, and the 8 hours will pass by.

Paint Horse

Do a search. There have been several discussions on this. Some quite lengthy.

My method is to set my mind to the time of the destination as soon as I board, then act that way for the entire flight.

mlbcard

One thing that worked really well for me was taking the day flight and getting to my destination late at night and going straight to bed. I wake up in the morning completely reset to local time (did this with ORD-LHR recently and it worked great).

BearX220

The day you hit the ground in Kenya, no afternoon nap for you. No matter how zoned-out you feel, force yourself to stay up until at least 1000pm local. Then go to bed. The next day you'll be fine. The only trick to beating jet lag flying eastbound is powering through nap-free on day one.

rjw242

I've found that making myself go to bed and wake up extra early (9pm-4am or something like that) for a couple days before my trip also helps with eastbound jetlag.

QueenOfCoach

There are as many jetlag strategies as there are people. Everyone reacts in a different manner to a change in time zones. Some sleep on the plane, others stay awake, some take medicine, others avoid it. Everyone's biology is different. The best thing to do is educate yourself on anti-jet lag strategies, then follow whatever works for you.

Personally, I never have a problem with jet lag, and I travel between Los Angeles where I live and Germany. What's my secret? I have an inborn inability to sleep when it's daylight outside. When I was a baby, my mother could never get me to nap during the day, although I would sleep just great all night.

When the sun comes up, my eyes open and stay open until it's dark. For all the 56 years of my life it's been that way.

Thus, when I travel to a new time zone, my body automatically adjusts with the change in sunlight. That said, I have a few other things going for me. I never drink alcohol nor caffeine, so I don't have the artificial stimulants and depressants going through my system. That's just the way I am. My biology, my body. YMMV.

Justruss

My time difference when I travel to Asia is 13 hours. Temazepam for a few nights does a fine job.

RussianTexan

Why no alcohol, if I may ask? Is it about dehydration problems that will keep you awake?

I will be up all night prior to my trip to Germany (involuntarily) and will sleep the whole flight through, I imagine.

QueenOfCoach

Alcohol is dehydrating. The body uses water to detoxify the alcohol in your system and eliminate it through the kidneys. That water has to come from somewhere, and it goes right into the lav.

The ambient air on an airplane is very dry, thus you lose a lot of water in normal perspiration, exhalation as well as elimination, but don't gain it back by breathing humid air.

Standard anti-jet lag advice is to drink lots of water and stay hydrated. I ask for water every time the beverage cart comes by, then once on the ground, I chug plain water down for the first couple of days.

(My husband did his PhD/Chem thesis on the subject of Liver Alcohol Dehydrogenase, the enzyme that breaks down ethanol in the liver.)

ReconDoc

Most of my long haul travel is from the East Coast of US to AMS and return.

For years I suffered going over. And coming back. Nothing I did seemed to work.

Finally for going over I now just stay awake until about 7 or 8 pm on the day of arrival. Can't sleep on the plane---even with ambien.

A little sleeping aid just to make sure right before I go to bed (Indica + Ambien) and I get 12-14 hours of really good sleep.

Wake up the next day and I am truly good to go. This is now fool proof for me.

Coming back to the States has always been worse for me. And after 20 trips over the years I assumed nothing I did would ever help.

Then out of the blue I decided to try something new.

I will go to the Dampkering or Grey Area Coffeeshop or some similar place. Get a little something to smoke in the a.m. before my flight. Not a lot. Just enough.

Then on the plane I eat a muffin or 2 that I got from some place like Amnesia Coffeeshop. Not everyone can tolerate these muffins----but I can without issue.

Now well rested and relaxed for the rest of the flight.

It does nothing to help me sleep on the plane.

But when I get home I now have maybe one bad day of jet lag instead of the bad week I had before.

Certainly not something that everyone would or could try.

But for me it works wonders.

Doc

p.s. I am not a medical doctor. And this is not medical advice---strictly personal

richinaz

I'd suggest you google alcohol and sleeping. While it might help you to initially go to sleep it disrupts the "deeper" portion of sleep (REM) when the alcohol wears off. So the overall quality of sleep is not good.

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publicatio...-2/101-109.htm

Of course there are studies that suggest it has limited effect.

rmcy

Really interesting thread guys....this has been causing me problems for ages. Some of the stuff on here has worked very well. I typed "Holiday sleep" into e-bay and got an outside the box package .... "Jet Lag System" with loads more good stuff! The pills work a treat but I don't get the side effect (headaches / dry mouth etc) I get after Melatonin.

srs507

Hi folks! I'm doing two ULH flights back to back in a few weeks time (JFK-AUH, AUH-SYD) and it's the first time doing that. I'm wondering whether my sleep schedule strategy that I've outlined in the attached image is what I should stick to. This is hoping things go swimmingly well and I can actually sleep, but I'll try to stick to it as best as possible. I hope the chart makes sense, but if it doesn't I can definitely try to answer questions about it. Cheers!

TheHawk2002

What are some of the tricks? Stay hydrated? Is it worse going East or West?

Gamecock

Plenty of threads on this topic, search jet lag.

I try to sleep, which I can't do on an East bound TATL.

A shower on landing helps me feel better.

Try to stay awake on the first day.