Jet lag is a curse of the modern world. When a flight cuts across several time zones, travellers often find themselves unable to sleep at night and exhausted during the day — conditions that certainly don’t make for a merry start to any trip.
But is the effect worse if a flight goes east or west? “For most travellers, jet lag is worse if they travel east,” says Andrea Rodenbeck, a researcher in sleep disorders at Porz am Rhein Hospital.
“The majority of people have an inner day-night rhythm that’s actually a little longer than 24 hours. That’s why it can feel easier to prolong the day as when a passenger flies west. Shortening the day by flying east, however, brings the body into confusion.”
Losing sleep during transit also adds to the disturbance of this inner body clock, Rodenbeck explains. “Those who can relax and manage to get some sound sleep during the flight will manage flying over several time zones more easily.”
Skipping sleep and keeping your rhythm
If the time difference is 10 to 12 hours, it makes sense to stay awake until it’s really night time at your destination. One or two naps of 20 minutes at most and a coffee should get you through the day, says Hans-Guenter Weess of the German Sleep Society.
Daylight also helps to keep you awake. “This way you get into the sleeping pattern there relatively quickly,” he says.
If you’re going to another time zone for less than 48 hours, you don’t need to make such an effort to get used to the time difference, says Weess, so it makes sense to stick with your rhythm.
On business trips, for example, the odd nap can help, but otherwise it’s best to stick to your own sleeping patterns from home. Take care with sleeping pills: According to Weess it’s not clear whether drugs can help against jet lag. “The data is ambiguous,” he says.
If you do decide to take sleeping pills, you shouldn’t take them for longer than two nights, he says — you can quickly get addicted to them. You should also try testing them at home, perhaps at a weekend. “In rare cases they can have the opposite effect to what you expect,” he says. – dpa
