Beating Jet Lag: What Works

Jet lag is not tiredness. It is your body running the old time zone's schedule in a new place: wide awake at 3 am in Bangkok, falling asleep into lunch in New York. The fix is not willpower. It is light.

Your clock listens to daylight

The body clock resets mainly through bright light hitting the eyes, and it shifts roughly one to two time zones per day at best. That gives the honest rule: eastward travel is harder than westward, because advancing your clock is harder than delaying it, and a big jump takes days no matter what anyone sells you.

The practical version: after flying west, seek evening light and stay up late. After flying east, seek morning light and avoid bright evenings for the first days. Get outside; window glass and hotel lobbies are weak medicine compared to sky.

What genuinely helps

• Start shifting before you fly: two or three days of moving bedtime an hour toward the destination softens the landing.
• On board, live on destination time from the gate, as covered in our long-haul guide.
• Caffeine is a tool: mornings only, local time, and none after local noon while adjusting.
• Melatonin, where it is legal and cleared with your own doctor or pharmacist, is the one supplement with real evidence for shifting the clock; treat it as timing medicine, not a sleeping pill, and read the local rules because some countries restrict it.
• Short naps are allowed: twenty minutes, alarm set, never at dusk.

What is mostly theatre

Fasting protocols, grounding, special diets, expensive light-therapy glasses for a one-week holiday, and any app promising a one-day fix for eight zones: the evidence ranges from thin to none. Hydration matters, but it treats flight dehydration, not the clock itself.

The arrival playbook

Day one: outside in daylight, gentle plans, dinner at local time, sleep at a plausible local hour even if it is early. Day two: normal schedule, morning light, no naps after lunch. By day three most people are functional across six zones; a sunrise at Senso-ji is a better alarm clock than any app.

Pack the essentials, respect the light, and give the clock the days it was always going to take. Jet lag cannot be beaten, only negotiated well.