Resetting Your Body Clock After Transatlantic Flights

The 7-9 hour flights and 5-6 hour time changes of Transatlantic travel are huge wrenches to your circadian rhythms (both sleep and eating). After many years of doing it, we believe in one-day reset - shock therapy - provided it is properly calibrated:

West-to-East (America to Europe). Flights leave in the evening (American time) and arrive in the morning (European time), which means you will be facing a day. The key is a very short nap at the right time:
- Before you go, make a reservation at a destination hotel that will be quiet.
- Immediately on the plane, go to sleep. (Eat if you must, but under no circumstances try to stay awake.) If you cannot sleep, doze. Make yourself warm. Close your eyes. If the journey involves multiple legs, doze on each one. Create as much rest as you can.
- Arriving at your destination city, go straight to your hotel (collect your rental car if you have it), and check in.
- At your hotel, take a 1 1/2 hour nap. Sleeping may seem hard - you have a flush of heliotropic diurnal energy - but with curtains drawn, you will sack out. And you must get up soon thereafter; if you weaken and extend your nap you will still be off-cycle.
- Go on with your regular day. Have a full dinner as late as you can and go to bed.
The next morning, you will be on schedule, both sleeping and eating.
East-to-West (Europe to America). These flights leave in the morning-afternoon and arrive in the afternoon-evening. Adjusting your body clock is thus much easier because you are stretching out an extra-long day (and going home). Here the key is to preserve energy for arrival:
- On the aircraft, doze now and then. If you cannot fully nap, at least stay relaxed. If ever you feel drowsy (after a meal, for example), close your eyes and take the half-hour.
- Once home, eat something and take a shower. Both will give you an energy boost.
- Stay up as long as you possibly can. You will want to sleep (it will be dark, you'll be comforted by your own home, you have post-stress relief), but force yourself. Drink coffee or tea and keep the system going to within an hour or two of your regular bedtime.
- You're highly likely to wake up too early the next morning ... but even though you may feel just a touch disoriented for a few days, you will be basically back on rhythms.

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Resetting Your Body Clock After Transatlantic Flights

ã Copyright 2002 David Alexander Smith