What should you know about prolonged jet lag?

Jet lag follows rapid travel across time zones. Your internal clock may still signal sleep, hunger, and alertness according to the place you left. Difficulty sleeping, daytime sleepiness, headache, poor concentration, and digestive changes can follow. Eastward travel often makes an earlier sleep schedule harder, while westward travel requires a later one.

Symptoms should gradually fit the local day. Ongoing difficulty sleeping may overlap with insomnia, but persistent or severe symptoms can also reflect another problem, medication effect, illness, or an unsafe sleep schedule.

Use local time for meals, waking, activity, and bedtime. Seek outdoor daylight at a useful time for the direction travelled, keep evenings dim and calm, and keep the bedroom quiet and comfortable. Take brief naps only if needed, avoid driving when very sleepy, and limit alcohol and late caffeine. A travel-health clinician can help plan light exposure or medicines around a future trip.

Arrange medical advice when sleep disruption or daytime sleepiness is not easing, repeatedly affects work or driving, or continues after you have returned to a stable routine. Seek urgent help for confusion, fainting, severe headache with neurological changes, chest pain, or severe breathlessness.

Ask whether your symptoms fit jet lag or insomnia, how to time daylight and sleep, whether a medicine is appropriate for your trip, and how to protect safety when alertness is reduced.