Sleep clock all wrong
 

Last week I went on a trip to Japan. I had a blast of course!

But ever since I got back, I haven't been able to fall asleep till about 5 AM, and sometimes I don't wake up till 5 PM AKA missing all of my college classes.

I know this is a result of jet lag, but the scary part is that it hasn't gone away yet. It has been a week since I got back. I used to go to bed around 1 AM.

Does anyone have a cure for this? Many have suggested I just stay up all night then go to bed the next day at my normal time.

Thoughts?

Yeah, pretty much the only way to get yourself back on your normal schedule is to forgo a night of sleep and then force yourself to follow your normal sleep sschedule.

There's a rule of thumb that says it takes 1 day to adjust for 1 hour of jet lag, so yes, you ought to be back on normal time by now if I understand your time difference correctly. But it takes some effort. I prefer the violent zombie method. No matter how late you fall asleep tonight, you MUST be up by 7 tomorrow morning, and stay awake until normal bedtime. Physical activity helps. Repeat for three days. Discipline, man. Don't let Japan ruin your education. :p

It takes quite a bit of effort. Forcing yourself to cope the very first day is best. In other words, stay up the first day and then try to sleep that night.

Many people that work third shift jobs stay up all day the the last day of the week so they can live like everyone else on the weekend. Of course, that kills you about 3:00 am Monday morning when you're back at work!

Working out helps. Trying to shift an hour or two/day works if you have the time. The longer you go without shifting back, the more difficult it will become. The best way is just to suck it up and push to normalize as fast as possible, which means no sleeping (including naps) in the daytime!

Great advice, but waking up early in the morning after only a couple hours of sleep is not my forte (I'm a heavy sleeper). If it's past 4 am I would just force myself to stay awake. Force myself to stay up the entire next day, and then around my normal "bed-time" or even a couple hours earlier than usual I'd be so exhausted I'd pass out. Set your alarm, wake up at 7 am (or normal time to wake up in the morning), and try and keep that schedule.


I also worked a graveyard shift, and on the last day of the week I would stay awake all day so I could be on the same schedule as my friends those days I had off. It's not the funnest thing flopping schedules like that, but it works.

um... sleeping pills. give it a try, it might work. you can find them pretty cheap.

I'd forgo the sleeping pills, they can cause dependency.

Do what the others have suggested and force your body to cope. Stay up all night one night and resume your normal schedule. It's a lot quicker then slowly adjusting each night.

use the natural hormone melatonin. Of course it would have been better you used it over there, but this will help you get back to a normal schedule.

I say just be patient, and in the next couple days you'll be back to normal. When I went to China a year ago, I was there for 9 days and it's 9 hours difference, and sure enough as Pip alluded to, it took about 9 days to get back to normal. In the meantime, I was waking up at 2AM, even if I went to sleep at 11PM, staying up for a couple hours, then going back to bed. Very weird stuff.

Easy fix. forget your life here and move to japan.