I agree with this assessment. However, the worst short term problems with Jet lag had to be 1999 for me in flying from San Francisco via the polar route to London and then to Edinburgh. I hadn't learned yet to sleep 15 hours to kill most of the effects of jet lag when flying across so many time zones at once yet. So, in Edinburgh, driving on the opposite side of the road with reverse roudabouts especially on the right side of the car where the driver's drive there with a stick shift to my left and my rear view mirror to my left I almost killed my then 10 year old daughter and my mother a few times until I gave up driving on roundabouts in traffic in severe jet lag and decided to drive north to Aviemore where there is much less traffic out in the Cairngorm mountains where the Royal family skis in the winter of Scotland.
However, the worst jet lag I have experienced now twice (long term) is flying back from South Korea after being there two weeks each time. At first coming back to San Francisco it's fine and then for almost the next month I found I couldn't sleep from Midnight until 5 am which can be really awful if you are having to get up and work. Luckily, I'm mostly retired so I was only really bad off if I had early morning appointments and such. But, it's true, the worst long term jet lags are from West to East. But, like I said the worst short term jet lag was from San Francisco to London to Edinburgh for me in 1999 before I learned to sleep 15 hours straight to adjust to the time change when I get to my new location. It's a great trick that works. I used it in Paris in 2009 and in London in 2011 and I was much better off until I flew back to California and then it was difficult. But not as difficult as coming back from Asia to San Francisco long term. (like one month).
Jet lag may be the worst part of traveling. And it hits many people harder traveling east …
Why Jet Lag Can Feel Worse When You Travel West to East
Jet
lag may be the worst part of traveling. And it hits many people harder
traveling east than west. Why they feel this way is unclear. But
scientists recently developed a model
that mimics special time-keeping cells in the body and offers a
mathematical explanation for why traveling from west to east feels so
much worse. It also offers insights on recovering from jet lag.
Deep
inside the brain, in a region called the hypothalamus (right above
where our optic nerves cross) the internal clock is ticking. And
approximately every 24 hours, 20,000 special pacemaker cells that
inhabit this area, known as the superchiasmatic nucleus, synchronize,
signaling to the rest of the body whether it’s night or day. These cells
know which signal to send because they receive light input from our
environments — bright says wake, dark says sleep.
But
when you travel across multiple time zones, like flying from New York
to Moscow, those little pacemaker cells that thought they knew the
routine scramble around confused before they can put on their show. The
whole body feels groggy because it’s looking for the time and can’t find
it. The result: jet lag.
Most
of our internal clocks are a little bit slow, and in the absence of
consistent light cues — like when you travel across time zones — the
pacemaker cells in your body want to have a longer day, said Michelle Girvan, a physicist at the University of Maryland who worked on the model published in the journal Chaos on Tuesday.
“This
is all because the body’s internal clock has a natural period of
slightly longer than 24 hours, which means that it has an easier time
traveling west and lengthening the day than traveling east and
shortening the day,” Dr. Girvan said.
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Jet lag can be resolved by matching your internal clock to your destination’s clock as soon as possible. (There’s an app
for that). So the researchers built a model that considers all of your
pacemaker cells, how sensitive you are to light, the brightness of
light, multiple time zones and people’s slightly off kilter internal
clocks. They hope the model offers a simple way of explaining how a
typical body might recover from jet lag with no intervention. That is,
how its pacemaker cells try to synchronize in the presence of different
light cues (like sunshine, artificial light or dim light from clouds)
when arriving at various time zones three hours, six hours, nine hours
and 12 hours away either to the east or west.
The
model confirms what was already known: Generally, westward recovery is
easier than eastward. But it also helps us understand that flying across
more time zones can sometimes be easier than traveling across fewer.
For
example, it would take you about eight days to recover from a westward
trip across nine time zones, if you did nothing to fight it. But if you
cross the same number of time zones going east, recovery would take more
than 13 days, according to the model. This recovery time is worse than
if you flew smack across the globe, crossing 12 time zones, which is
about the distance from New York to Japan.
Confusing?
The model shows that your body is confused, too, as your cells try to
adjust to new light cues in different places. It also shows that a trip
less than 12 hours going east is going to feel worse than the same time
going west.
It all comes back to whether you’re a lark — an early riser — or an owl, and “most people are a little owlish,” said David Welsh,
a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, who
studies the body’s pacemaker cells and was not involved in the study.
If
you’re traveling across several time zones, like from New York to
Moscow, and you want to start feeling normal sooner, “you really want to
experience that external stimuli appropriate to your new time zone as
quickly as possible,” said Dr. Girvan. And that sometimes means owls
succumbing to early nights.
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