I live in the eastern (US) time zone. If I travel to the central time zone, it’s trivially easy to “stretch” my day by staying awake for one extra hour. When I return to the eastern time zone, it is easy to undo that time change by “compressing” my day by going to bed one hour early.
It gets harder to compress a day when the # of time zones increases. For example, a person traveling from Seattle to New York will have a difficult time going to bed (and waking) three hours short of a 24-hour cycle.
I recently had perhaps the most severe case:
-At the end of October, I flew from Detroit to Japan. I stretched my day by 11 hours (yes, it takes about a week to get fully adjusted so that you’re not dog-tired by bedtime).
-In mid-November, I returned to Detroit. Daylight saving time went away during my trip - but instead of trying to compress my day by 10 hours, I opted to stretch it by 14 hours. On the face of it, it seems to dumb to stretch a day by more than 50% instead of compressing it by less than 50%, but IME it’s easier to stay up late and sleep as long as you can instead of going to bed early and waking up with an alarm.
Somewhere in between those two extremes (one time zone vs. ~a dozen) there’s s tipping point at which the two options - compressing your day by X hours and stretching it by (24-X) hours - are equally misery-inducing.
I don’t practice this approach to dealing with jet lag.
I start with timing naps on the flight over to wherever it is, along with possible rest periods once I arrive there. If I’m flying west, for example, I have no problem with going to bed somewhat earlier than normal and just accepting that I will wake up earlier until I get acclimated – I’m not going to stretch a day just to go to bed at the “proper time” of 10pm or whatever.
Also, to the extent that I can, I try to pick flights that make the adjustment easier. This isn’t always an option, but for example, I’d rather pick a late flight to Europe from the East Coast than an early one. Getting on a 7pm flight that arrives at 6am local (or whatever) means it will be hard to fall asleep on the plane and you arrive to a very long day. I’d much rather have an 11pm departure and 10am arrival.
For some reason, jet-lag only bothers me when I go home, and I can’t get back into daily routine. When I leave home, I never seem to have any trouble accommodating to the new time at my destination.
I have at times in my career regularly traveled globally (Europe, Asia, Latin America, etc.) I have always found it easiest when getting on the plane at departure from the US, to immediately assume I am on the time of my destination, and attempt to sleep or stay awake during the flight that corresponds with the local time. And then do the reverse when traveling home. The first day is rough, but by the second day I am usually acclimated, to the local time.
The worst trip was an overnight stay in Singapore and back…didn’t even try to get on local time.
That’s fine if we’re talking about just a few time zones. Detroit to Seattle? Sure, I’ll go to bed at 9PM instead of midnight on the first night, and wake up at 5AM instead of 8AM. That doesn’t create any huge logistical challenges; businesses, restaurants and tourist attractions will be open at times that are convenient to my needs.
But if I’m going to Japan, I don’t want to be going to bed at 2PM after arriving there and then and waking up at midnight, casually shifting my schedule over the course of a couple of weeks. That puts a large portion of my waking hours before/after restaurants and stores are closed.
I don’t aim for the “proper” bedtime on the first night there (or the first night back home) - that’s just not possible without ludicrous amounts of caffeine and willpower. But I push it as hard as I reasonably can; a trip to Japan takes a big physical and financial toll, and I want to make the most of my time on the ground while I’m there.
My general strategy is to sleep as much as possible during the trip - even if I can’t sleep, I’ll attempt to fall asleep once an hour or so. In case of Tokyo, that includes the bus ride from Narita. Once I arrive at the final destination I do my best to stick with the local time. If I wake up in the middle of the night I’ll try to get back to sleep - unless it’s after 4:30am or so, then I’d just get up.
That’s pretty much what I found to work the best. So if you’re going to Europe, you’ll probably fly out in the afternoon/evening US time, and land in Europe in the early morning, which feels like the wee hours of the morning (7 am GMT = 1 am CST).
Once you get there, your day begins- stay up all day, do busy/strenuous things if you can, and then go to bed as late as you can manage in that time zone (I rarely make it past 10 pm). Don’t nap, although you’ll be tempted. You’ll probably be zombified by the end of the evening, but that’s good- you’ll be ready to sleep through your new night time.
I imagine doing that along with the fasting trick and you’ll be right as rain.
I always stretch the day when traveling and jet lag becomes a real issue (5+ time zones.) I find it much easier to just zombie it out and get to sleep at, say, 8 or 9 p.m. destination time (which is earlier than my usual midnight bedtime) than it is to try to get to sleep much earlier. I suspect this is very much a YMMV situation, though.
Ambien is my jet lag friend. I’ve traveled between Asia and the US for 30+ years. Being well rested is key for me. Or to say a different way, being exhausted doesn’t work for me. Nothing like having been short of sleep for the week before a trip, staying “up” and then waking up at 2:00am.
I try to be rested before the trip. I get on the plane and if I can’t sleep take half an Ambien (so I wake up, stretch go the restroom etc). IThen I take another half an ambien. I do that until I arrive. If I can sleep, well I sleep until I wake up, then take half an Ambien and do the above.
When I’m at my destination, then I stay awake until bedtime and if I can’t sleep take half an Ambien. If I wake up at before 5:00am, then I take half an Ambien (it only makes you sleep half as long). When I no longer wake up and need half an Ambien, then I am adjusted.
One caution. I got blood clots once because I just slept through and didn’t wear pressure socks. You don’t want that to happen.
Anyhoo, I’ve read plenty of literature that on average, it takes about a day to adjust for one time zone. You change 12 hours then it’s about 12 days to adjust. IMHO, 2 week trips are the absolute worst. You just get fully adjusted, then come home and go through the jet lag 12 weeks of hell all over again.
Make your own choice but after suffering jet lag for about 15 years, Ambien became my friend.
Jet lag adjustment is rather similar to shift work adjustment. To advance 12 hours I adjust my sleep time before hand.
So if I get off work at 7pm on Wednesday after a 12 hour shift but need to return at 7pm on Thursday to start a 12 hour shift I adjust my sleep schedule. I subtract 8 hours for sleeping plus another 60 to 90 minutes for getting up and ready for work. So 9 to 9.5 hours before 7pm I want to be getting into bed to sleep. That is a target bedtime of 7pm minus 9 to 9.5 hours, or about 9:30am to 10 am.
I then split the difference and sleep a third of the hours between my normal bedtime and the newly adjusted target bedtime. If I worked til 7pm then I got home around 8pm and would have gone to bed around 9pm. The difference I am splitting is the 9pm normal bedtime and the target 10am going to bed the next morning. That is 10.5 to 11 hours. I need to sleep about one third of that - roughly four hours.
So rather than going to bed at 9pm I will stay up a couple extra hours and go to bed around 11pm. Force myself to get up after 4 hours, so at 3am. I am a bit rested, not as fully as I like but I can manage for a few hours because I get to go back to bed in 7 hours. And after an 8 hour rest I am functional for a night shift… or a normal daylight day half the world away.
When traveling over time zones I just tweak the process according to how many zones I am crossing.