Jet lag advice is full of things that sound sensible and do very little. Drinking tomato juice, taking a specific vitamin, eating according to an elaborate four-day schedule, sleeping in a particular direction. None of these have much evidence behind them, and the fact that so many exist tells you how badly people want a shortcut.
The underlying problem is simple to describe. Your body runs on an internal clock, based in a small region of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which controls when you feel sleepy, when your core temperature drops and when your body releases melatonin and cortisol. Fly across several time zones, and that clock stays on the old schedule while the world around you runs on the new one. It shifts back at roughly one time zone per day if you leave it alone.
Three things reliably speed that up. Everything else is either marginal or a distraction.
1. Get the light right, and get it at the right time
Light is by far the strongest signal your body clock responds to, and it is the only tool that genuinely moves the clock rather than masking the symptoms. The catch is that timing matters enormously, and getting it wrong will push your clock in the wrong direction.
The rule of thumb is straightforward. Traveling east, which means you need to fall asleep earlier than your body wants to, morning light at your destination helps and late evening light hurts. Traveling west, which means you need to stay awake later, evening light helps and very early morning light works against you.
In practice, after an eastward flight from the United States back to Britain, that means getting outside in the morning for at least half an hour and wearing sunglasses if you find yourself out in bright light late in the evening. After a westward flight to the States, it means resisting the urge to nap in the late afternoon and getting outside in the early evening instead.
Outdoor light is far more powerful than indoor light, and this is the part people underestimate. A bright office is somewhere around 500 lux. An overcast day outside is around 10,000. Sitting by a window is better than nothing, and going outside is much better than either.
If you have flown more than eight or nine time zones, the direction of the shift can flip, since your clock may find it easier to go the long way round. In that situation, the simplest approach is to hold off on bright light for the first morning and start the routine on day two.
2. Anchor your wake time, not your bedtime
Most people try to fix jet lag by forcing themselves to go to bed at the local time. This is the harder end of the problem to control, because you cannot make yourself fall asleep on demand, and lying in the dark failing to sleep tends to make the next night worse.
The wake time is the part you can control, and it is the more powerful of the two. Set an alarm for a normal local time and get up when it goes off, regardless of how the night went. Then get outside within the first hour. Do this for three or four consecutive days, and the bedtime tends to sort itself out, because sleep pressure builds through the day and eventually overrides the old schedule.
Naps are the main threat to this. A short nap of twenty minutes early in the afternoon will take the edge off without doing much damage. A two-hour nap at five in the evening will destroy that night’s sleep and set you back a full day. If you are desperate, set an alarm and take it before three o’clock local time.
Meal timing helps as well, since your digestive system has its own clock that responds to food. Eating at local mealtimes from the first day, even when you are not especially hungry, gives your body a second consistent signal alongside the light.
3. Use melatonin properly if you use it at all
Melatonin is the one supplement with real evidence behind it for jet lag, and it is also the one most commonly used incorrectly. It is not a sedative. It works as a timing signal, telling your body that darkness has arrived, which means the dose and the timing matter more than the strength.
The research generally supports small doses, in the range of half a milligram to three milligrams, taken in the early evening at your destination when traveling east. Large doses are not more effective and are more likely to leave you groggy the following morning. Note that melatonin is a prescription medicine in the United Kingdom and available over the counter in some other countries, and it interacts with several medications, so it is worth a conversation with a pharmacist or GP rather than an assumption.
Alcohol on the flight and sleeping tablets both fall into the category of things that produce unconsciousness without producing useful sleep. They will get you through a night and will not move your clock.
What about the bed at home?
Coming back from a holiday is when people notice their own bed most clearly, having spent a fortnight testing other ones. If you find you slept better in a hotel than you do at home, that is worth paying attention to, since a mattress that has softened unevenly over eight or nine years will interrupt your sleep in ways you have long since stopped registering. Brands such as Simba design around temperature specifically, because overheating is one of the most common reasons people wake in the night without knowing why, and a body that is trying to shed heat is also a body struggling to fall asleep in the first place.
Give yourself a buffer day
The most useful piece of planning advice is to come home a day before you have to be anywhere. One free day to get outside, eat at the right times and go to bed at a sensible hour will do more for the following week than any amount of effort applied while you are also back at work.
- What Families Should Look for When Choosing a New Neighborhood - August 26, 2026
- How to Recover from Vacation Jet Lag: 3 Things That Actually Work - August 26, 2026
- How a Free Consultation Can Clarify Your Legal Options After a Birth Injury - August 24, 2026
