Taking a trip home in two weeks, and my flight leaves at 9:30 AM. 24 hours later, I reach my destination at 10:30 PM. Trying to decide the best way to handle this visa-vi jet lag. I don’t have a problem coming from the US (I leave late at night, watch a movie or something, then sleep and wake up here in the morning), but the one time I’ve traveled to there, it was brutal. Took probably two weeks to adjust.
Anyone know if they’ll try to keep the cabin dark and quiet during the first half, since it’s night at the destination? Will most people be trying to sleep, and have the window shade down? This is a United flight.
I’m thinking of getting as little sleep as possible the night before and sleeping as soon as I get onboard.
From my experience, usually they try to get you on the destination schedule, serving you breakfast in what seems like the middle of the night, etc. I don’t remember how it was last time I flew to the US
I find it much easier to sleep away half of the hours – sitting in one place, awake, for the whole duration is awful. Compression socks help a lot, but mentally it still sucks. I have a hard time getting to sleep, but eventually…
That’s fine, the point is, you want a period of being awake for 24 hours directly before or during your transit. That will reset yourself. If needed, grab a melatonin and eat one at US night. I usually am able to recover in a day or two with minor remnants of my jetlag.
Do you have layovers? If so, I find that the best way to fight jetlag is to exercise as much as possible between flights. I basically spend the whole time walking around the airport. For me, this makes a huge difference in my level of jetlag on arrival.
Arriving at night time your destination actually seems like the best case scenario – you’ll be very tired from your flight (unless you’re one of those lucky people who can actually sleep in coach…) and can just crash
I usually take a 40mg of benadryl the first 2-3 nights and that helps force me to sleep (usually still wake up once in the night, but can get back to sleep)
I have the same problem when flying from Frankfurt to Taipei.
I’ll usually watch some movies, have a glass of wine or two which help me sleep, watch some more movies or read a book, then, after arriving in trying to stay awake until it’s bedtime in Taiwan. I’m a bit knackered for two days but it helps taking off the edge of the jetlag.
