? about Jet Lag

[dreamgirl]

I live on the East Coast and have never been more than one time zone away. My question for you experts is how much time do you need to adjust or is it not that bad. I would love to go to DL for a week but I am having trouble with whether I should give myself a day at home before returning to work or if I should just catch an early morning flight and have more time at DL. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Judy from Boise]

depends on your age! I would always give myself an extra day at home for rest and laundry.......

 

[safetymom]

We did the red eye back to FL. and then allowed ourselves that day to recover from our vacation.

 

[yecats]

I'm in my 30's and always leave a day to rest/relax when I come back. You'll notice a bit of difference in the time change. My body knows my hometime zone and it still wakes up with that in mind (I'll wake up CA time at 4:30 because its 6:30 at home, etc. - messes a bit with the way I eat as well as I wake up hungry since I would've eaten 2 hours earlier).

 

[diberry]

Anybody got any useful tips for an 8 hour timeshift? We usually go to WDW (from UK) and cope with that ok though we wake up really early the first couple of days and sleep solidly when we get home again but I can't imagine being 8 hours out of synch!! We'll arrive at 7.30 in the evening but it will be 3.30 in the morning to us - how do we stay awake another 3 or 4 hours? We'll be going to bed at the time we would normally get up! I know lots of people travel a lot due to work so what's the secret?

 

[chrisnjilly]

Hi Diberry,

We posted a reply to your hotel question and maybe we can help with this too.

First tip is to set your watch to LA time as soon as you can on the flight. This will give you chance to start to mentally adjust to moving 8 hours “back”

Next, it is important to try and stay awake until somewhere close to bedtime on your arrival in LA. This should not be too hard as you are getting there at 19.30 (if this is your flight arrival time) it will be an hour or so before you are settled in the hotel and at least 21.00 before you get to sleep.

Another tip is that things ALWAYS seem bad to us the first evening we arrive so don’t worry if you feel this too. Maybe a result of disorientation but that night we often feel rather “ill at ease”. However we now know that this is only temporary and the next morning the feeling will be gone and the excitement and enjoyment starts

You will likely wake up at about 02.00 or 03.00 thinking that it is morning but, if you are lucky you can get your head down again until 04.00 or 05.00. After that you will be 100% awake and so you are better to plan to start you first day early. Once the sun comes up your body will start to believe it really is morning and any leftover “blues” from the night before will quickly disappear.

As you will have had a poor nights sleep you should try to make the first day as relaxing as possible and you will certainly need an early night again though this time you should sleep straight through to 04.00 or 05.00. By the second day you should be largely over the jet lag but we tend to keep to an early rise and early bed for most of our trips.
In practise we don’t find much trouble with jet lag while in the US, it is a bigger problem when we get back to the UK but that is another story

 

[grinningghost]

Can anyone tell me if Las Vegas and Los Angeles are both on Pacific time? I'll be doing a few days in Vegas before heading to DL, and it would be really nice if they were both on the same time.

 

[Mary Anne]

Thank you for the tip of changing your watch as soon as possible. I think that's a great idea. It's only 3 hours for me, but I will do it as soon as we are airborne.

 

[diberry]

Thank you very much for your tips chrisnjilly - I see you've made that trip a few times!! I particularly liked the mention of feeling disorientated the first night as I've noticed that in the past with WDW and it's nice to know I'm not the only one who feels like that!!
Even at WDW we wake up very early the first few mornings and get later and later as the holiday progresses!!
I'm sure we'll have a wonderful holiday and hope you do too in April. Tell us all about it when you get back!!

 

[chrisnjilly]

You are very welcome Diburry and we look forward to being able to help out with up to date information once we are back. We will watch out for your posts.

 

[carmel]

Hubby grew up in LA so we make the trip from Eastern Time Zone a few times a year. Going out is great - you get 'bonus' hours.

We usually take the redeye out of LA that leaves at 11:30pm. I grab a few winks on the plane, land in Cleveland at 6:30am and go straight to the office. Sure that first day is a bit rougher than normal but I get right back on schedule.

I have also been to China a few times where they are 12 hrs different. The best advice I can give anyone is to get on the local time zone a soon as possible. I have always done it and it has worked for me.