Looking for other ideas to help jet lag

[azalice]

My jet lag was very bad a month ago after cruising from Amsterdam and going to Paris after. Home is Arizona. I am thinking of staying an extra day at a Heathrow hotel next trip before continuing on to Athens. Have you tried just adding a day in a time zone to try to mitigate jet lag? It was the first time jet lag was that bad for me.

 

 

[rkacruiser]

20 hours ago, azalice said:

My jet lag was very bad a month ago after cruising from Amsterdam and going to Paris after. Home is Arizona. I am thinking of staying an extra day at a Heathrow hotel next trip before continuing on to Athens. Have you tried just adding a day in a time zone to try to mitigate jet lag? It was the first time jet lag was that bad for me.

 

 

 

Flying from Singapore to Dayton, Ohio, I had a 3 day stopover in San Francisco thinking that would help in getting adjusted to the time change.  Well, it didn't!  When I got home, I had the worst jet lag that I have ever had.  It lasted for 10 days.  But, many do believe a stopover helps and maybe, if I had stopped over in Hawaii, that might have made a difference.  Besides, I wanted another visit to The City by the Bay.  

[LHT28]

I saw on another forum people recommended a "jet lag app"

Looks interesting  & maybe look into it  & see if that will help

 

 I always  do worse coming hope from Europe  it can takes  me a few days

[Zach1213]

I can only tell you what I do on overnight flights, but it works almost every time (and I fly longhaul internationally at least 2x roundtrips monthly, sometimes more):

 

• Take the latest flight possible. On the day of my flight, I try to stay active, take a long run, drink lots of water. Basically anything to make me tired. 
• On the flight, I do have a few drinks with dinner. This allows me to get relaxed, and I understand it's against a lot of advice. But, I also drink a lot of water. 
• Try to sleep as much as possible on the plane, of course. 
• On arrival (again, as late as possible), keep going - don't rest, don't nap. Drink lots of water, keep active, get fresh air. 
• Late afternoon/early evening, I have a few drinks and a good dinner out. This puts me in a relaxed mood and allows me to start winding down. 
• Get as much sleep as possible. If you can sleep in the next day, great; if not, so be it. After these steps, I find myself pretty much accustomed to the time. 

[fbgd]

Assuming you are looking at PHX-LHR-ATH?

 

I do a lot more US East Coast-London flights which should be rougher on the jetlag but some of the things I do....luckily I don't really get jetlag no matter how hard I try but I still do the following:

1) Take the latest flight possible so it's nearer your normal bedtime

2) Get up early the day you fly and stay active during the day (go to the gym, take a hike, whatever) but also go to bed very late the night before so you're short on sleep when you board.

3) Book the highest class of service you can. AA and BA offer lie flat beds in business class (and First, obviously). If you end up connecting through DFW then you can decent food and beverage in the Flagship Lounge beforehand, even moreso if you're in First as there's a separate Flagship First Dining room for longhaul FC passengers with decent restaurant quality food and drink. If you go straight from PHX-LHR there's no such offering but there is still a lounge with snack type food options. BA's lounges at Heathrow have showers if you have sufficient time on your connection. Recommended after a night of sleep onboard.

4)Try to maximise sleep onboard. Don't be afraid to pass on meal services in order to sleep. In Business/First you'll find most people are trying to sleep on routes with full dining facilities in the lounge beforehand, for PHX which is a longer flight but also has a "lighter" lounge offering you'll find a lot more people dining onboard, less so from DFW.

4) Have a glass of water for any alcohol you may have from the time you leave home.

5) Buy/use noise cancelling headphones onboard. You'll struggle to sleep with them on but on dayflights they are great (AA supply B&O NC headphones in Business/First, BA's are pretty low rent. I bring my own Bose ones regardless). I swear that dealing with or listening to the fuselage whoosh for 8+hrs contributes to feeling tired. I throw earplugs in when sleeping.  

 

One thing to note if you're looking at First/Business is that BA's LHR-ATH flights are typically offered with shorthaul seating. It's 3-3 seating where the middle is blocked off and with standard coach legroom. ATH does sometimes see longhaul aircraft thrown into the mix but it's not the default. Don't expect US domestic FC seating/legroom...

 

Personally I wouldn't book the overnight hotel at Heathrow, seems a waste of time and money. 

 

[Zach1213]

1 hour ago, fbgd said:

I do a lot more US East Coast-London flights which should be rougher on the jetlag but some of the things I do....luckily I don't really get jetlag no matter how hard I try but I still do the following:

1) Take the latest flight possible so it's nearer your normal bedtime

 

 

 

One perk of coming from the East Coast to London are those daytime flights. Those things are godsends and I take them whenever possible. Even O'Hare-London, though longer, makes things so much easier - take the morning flight, get there in the evening, head to the hotel and sleep, and recovery (for me at least) is pretty much instant in the morning. 

 

Heck, I remember once taking BOS-LHR and was able to wake up at a hotel in Boston for breakfast, and have dinner in London on the same day. A beautiful thing. 

[fbgd]

1 hour ago, Zach1213 said:

 

One perk of coming from the East Coast to London are those daytime flights. Those things are godsends and I take them whenever possible. Even O'Hare-London, though longer, makes things so much easier - take the morning flight, get there in the evening, head to the hotel and sleep, and recovery (for me at least) is pretty much instant in the morning. 

 

Heck, I remember once taking BOS-LHR and was able to wake up at a hotel in Boston for breakfast, and have dinner in London on the same day. A beautiful thing. 

True, though from PHX-ATH the dayflights would then involve three travel days. Unless you wanted to add from short, red eyes on ex-PHX or into ATH.

[Zach1213]

2 minutes ago, fbgd said:

True, though from PHX-ATH the dayflights would then involve three travel days. Unless you wanted to add from short, red eyes on ex-PHX or into ATH.

 

I do know someone who was so desperate to get to London by dinner the next day that they took a redeye DEN-JFK to connect on to JFK-LHR daytime flight. Sounded miserable to me, but they had a deadline in mind. But yeah, they were just ending in London, not Athens. 

 

Orrrrr...you can be completely crazy and do a redeye PHX-JFK, connect to daytime JFK-LHR, and then a redeye LHR-ATH (there's an Aegean flight that leaves LHR at 10:15pm, getting in to Athens at around 4am). Kill me now, but it's possible...

[rkacruiser]

9 hours ago, Zach1213 said:

On arrival (again, as late as possible), keep going - don't rest, don't nap. Drink lots of water, keep active, get fresh air. 

 

That's what I have done.  With the exception of my Singapore to Dayton experience with the San Francisco stopover, it didn't work.

 

9 hours ago, Zach1213 said:

• Late afternoon/early evening, I have a few drinks and a good dinner out. This puts me in a relaxed mood and allows me to start winding down. 
• Get as much sleep as possible.

 

Do that as well with an early dinner (light on the wine) and to bed much earlier than I normally do.  And, sleep "in" as long as I can.  Usually works for me.  

[fbgd]

On 10/17/2022 at 1:56 PM, Zach1213 said:

Orrrrr...you can be completely crazy and do a redeye PHX-JFK, connect to daytime JFK-LHR, and then a redeye LHR-ATH (there's an Aegean flight that leaves LHR at 10:15pm, getting in to Athens at around 4am). Kill me now, but it's possible...

 

That was the nightmare I was thinking of when you posted about the daytime JFK-LHR flight. When I did JFK-ATH on BA a few years ago there was a BA option for an overnight to ATH, similar heinous timings to what you mentioned. A 3 and a bit hour overnight flight in 30" EuroBusiness sounded wretched. I did not partake 😄

Edited October 18, 2022 by fbgd

[FlyerTalker]

1 hour ago, fbgd said:

A 3 and a bit hour overnight flight in 30" EuroBusiness sounded wretched. I did not partake 😄

 

Precisely because so many intra-Europe flights are on tight-pitch single aisle aircraft, it makes connecting in IST an attractive option.  Only a short 345 mile flight from there to Athens.

 

Plus, Turkish has some attractive stopover options which might work into jet-lag mitigation efforts.

[waterbug123]

On 10/17/2022 at 9:18 AM, Zach1213 said:

I can only tell you what I do on overnight flights, but it works almost every time (and I fly longhaul internationally at least 2x roundtrips monthly, sometimes more):

 

• Take the latest flight possible. On the day of my flight, I try to stay active, take a long run, drink lots of water. Basically anything to make me tired. 
• On the flight, I do have a few drinks with dinner. This allows me to get relaxed, and I understand it's against a lot of advice. But, I also drink a lot of water. 
• Try to sleep as much as possible on the plane, of course. 
• On arrival (again, as late as possible), keep going - don't rest, don't nap. Drink lots of water, keep active, get fresh air. 
• Late afternoon/early evening, I have a few drinks and a good dinner out. This puts me in a relaxed mood and allows me to start winding down. 
• Get as much sleep as possible. If you can sleep in the next day, great; if not, so be it. After these steps, I find myself pretty much accustomed to the time. 

 

Same!  For us the key is to just power through on arrival without taking a nap.  A short nap after a red eye flight usually just makes me feel even more groggy than before the nap.  Power through the day, drink a lot of water, and get outside in the sunlight!   Then dinner and bed around 9-10pm... At that point I'm good and tired but regardless of the following day's agenda can typically get 8-10 hours of good sleep and be ready to go.

 

[Zach1213]

4 hours ago, waterbug123 said:

 

Same!  For us the key is to just power through on arrival without taking a nap.  A short nap after a red eye flight usually just makes me feel even more groggy than before the nap.  Power through the day, drink a lot of water, and get outside in the sunlight!   Then dinner and bed around 9-10pm... At that point I'm good and tired but regardless of the following day's agenda can typically get 8-10 hours of good sleep and be ready to go.

 

 

Back in my younger days when I really started traveling for a living, and before I mastered my anti-jet lag routine, I learned "what not to do" the hard way - flew from the US to Germany on the earliest flight possible (landed in Frankfurt at 5:30am), and took a mid-afternoon nap (because, well, I landed in Frankfurt at 5:30am). I was miserable the entire week because I didn't recover until the end when it was time to turn around and head back home having JUST acclimated. A few weeks later, I tried the "latest flight possible and no nap" method, landing at 1pm instead of 5:30am, and it made such a massive difference. 

[NMTraveller]

I would fly in at least the day before.  Stay up as late as you can the day that you fly in.  That may only be 4 PM, 6 PM or perhaps 8 PM.  Sleep as long as you can which may be 12 hours or so.  That seems to work fine for us.

 

The trick is fighting the tiredness on the first day and staying awake and not taking that nap.  That nap may turn into a 6 hour affair or longer if you doze off and later cause problems with sleep patterns.

[Flymia]

Flying in a day before certainly helps. To me the key is get a later flight, but personally I don't like arriving into Europe past lunch time as that then messes up your clock a bit too. 

 

I try very hard to get some sleep on the flight just 3-4 hours (from Miami 8.5 hours to London) helps a lot and even take some Benadryl to help get sleepy. Only take sometime if you have taken it before though and know how it affects you. 

 

Arrive, don't take a nap, just don't do it. I usually will try to shower, and then enjoy the day as much as I can. Hopefully by 11pm/12am local I am tired enough to go to sleep. Again maybe taking a Benadryl to get sleepy. Usually it still may take a day or two to get sleeping earlier in the night, but as long as I am falling asleep by 12-1am I am usually fine with it. 

 

East to West is much easier. My trip to Hawaii this summer, I actually stuck to a great schedule falling asleep by 10pm every night and waking up around 6-6:30 a.m each morning, which is not something I usually do on vacation. We had a night in LA each way, which certainly made it easier. But going back home it took a few days to get back into things. 

[Hlitner]

A lifetime of travel has taught us nothing about defeating jet lag.  Yes, lots of anecdotal stuff but we are told that our internal clocks can only adjust 2-3 hours per day.  Like any frequent traveler, we have our way of dealing with the problem.  The best solution is to fly Business/First Class in lay seats andet  get some sleep on the plane.  If you are still exhausted at your destination, think about taking a short nap (no more than 2 hours) sometime during the day (before dinner) and then going to bed at your normal time (using local time).  This does work for us, although that first day can still be tough.  But the sooner you get yourself back to a normal schedule (going to bed at your normal bed time) the sooner your body will adjust.

 

Hank