Best Jet Lag Remedy: Home Remedies, Pills and Techniques Ranked

On a press trip from Milan to Hong Kong in October 2014, a photographer handed me a 10 mg melatonin tablet at the hotel bar around 9 p.m. I slept, which was the point. I also spent the next morning’s harbor tour pinching my wrist to stay awake, which was not.

The best jet lag remedy is free: daylight at the right hours of the day, which moves your body clock faster than anything you can swallow. Low-dose melatonin taken at the new bedtime comes second, and timed caffeine third. Everything else on this list, from sleeping pills to tart cherry juice, helps you sleep or stay awake while the clock catches up, or does nothing at all.

Best jet lag remedy picks, in order

1. Daylight at the right time. Morning light after flying east, evening light after flying west. Our jet lag calculator gives the exact windows for your route. 2. Low-dose melatonin at destination bedtime. The best-supported supplement. In trials, 0.5 mg worked almost as well as 5 mg, so start with a small dose like Life Extension 300 mcg. 3. Caffeine in the local morning. Coffee works, and caffeine gum works faster on arrival day. 4. Blackout and quiet for the first nights. A contoured sleep mask and foam earplugs. 5. Amber glasses after dark to keep evening light from pushing your clock the wrong way: Gamma Ray amber glasses. Untested for jet lag itself. 6. An OTC sleep aid for one bad night only. Unisom SleepTabs put you to sleep but don’t move your clock. 7. Home remedies as a bedtime routine: a hot shower, chamomile tea or tart cherry juice. None has a jet lag trial.

For the full day-by-day plan, before the flight and after it, read our guide on how to beat jet lag.

Jet lag remedies compared

Remedy	Type	Moves the body clock?	Verdict
Timed daylight or a light device	Technique	Yes	Works. Strongest effect
Melatonin, fast-release	Supplement	Yes	Works for 5+ time zones
Shifting sleep before departure	Technique	Yes	Some evidence
Exercise at set hours	Technique	Yes, weakly	Some evidence, not tested in travelers
Caffeine	Home / OTC	Slightly	Keeps you alert, harms sleep if late
Short naps	Technique	No	Helps alertness if kept to 20-30 minutes
Zolpidem and similar	Prescription	No	Better sleep the first 3 nights
Armodafinil	Prescription	No	Less daytime sleepiness, with side effects
Antihistamine sleep aids	OTC	No	Sleep only, next-day grogginess
Tart cherry, magnesium, valerian, chamomile	Natural	No	No jet lag trials
Pine bark extract (Pycnogenol)	Supplement	Unknown	One small, unblinded study
Argonne feast-fast diet	Technique	Unknown	One non-random military study
Homeopathic tablets, grounding mats	Other	No	No evidence

Techniques: the remedies that reset your clock

Jet lag is a timing problem, and what helps with jet lag is whatever moves the clock. Your internal clock still runs on home time, and only a few signals can move it: light above all, then melatonin, exercise and meal times. A remedy that doesn’t touch one of those signals can make the wait easier, but it can’t shorten it.

Light and darkness

In a study of 28 adults preparing for an eastward shift, moving bedtime 1 hour earlier for 3 days with bright light after waking moved their clocks 2.1 hours. The same schedule in dim light moved them 0.6 hours (Burgess and others).

Direction decides which hours help:

• After flying east, get bright light in the morning at your destination and keep evenings dim.
• After flying west, get light in the late afternoon and evening, and keep the room dark if you wake at 4 a.m.
• After a big eastward jump of 8 or more zones, light at dawn can hit before your clock’s low point and push it later. Wait until late morning for the first two days.

Our jet lag calculator works out which hours to seek light and which to avoid, from your departure city, arrival city and usual sleep times.

A sunrise lamp suits the days before departure, when you are moving your wake time earlier at home in winter dark. It is too bulky for a carry-on. On the road, a window seat at breakfast does the same job.

Light avoidance is the other half of the plan. Amber lenses filter most of the blue light your clock responds to. No jet lag trial has tested them, but they fit the hotel lobby or a laptop in bed on the evenings after an eastward flight. Outdoors in the early morning after a westward flight, dark sunglasses block more.

Shifting sleep before you fly

Moving bed and wake times 1 hour a day toward destination time for 2 or 3 days before departure gets part of the adjustment done at home. Earlier for an eastward trip, later for a westward one. For trips of 2 days or less, the CDC advises the opposite: stay on home time.

Exercise and meals on local time

In a study of 99 adults, an hour of moderate exercise at 7 a.m. or between 1 and 4 p.m. moved the body clock earlier, and the same workout between 7 and 10 p.m. moved it later (Youngstedt and others). It has not been tested on travelers, but a morning run after flying east or an evening walk after flying west costs nothing. Outdoors, you get the light too.

Eating breakfast, lunch and dinner at local times from the first day adds another cue. In Reddit threads on the best jet lag remedy, r/travel keeps landing on the free stuff: spend arrival day outside, stay up until local bedtime and eat on local time even with no appetite. Several commenters allow one nap of about 40 minutes. The CDC sets the limit at 20 to 30, because longer naps eat into the night’s sleep.

Melatonin: the best jet lag supplement

Of all the jet lag supplements sold, melatonin is the only one with solid evidence. A Cochrane review of 10 trials found that taken near destination bedtime, it cut jet lag in people who crossed 5 or more time zones. In the eastward trials, symptom scores fell by about 20 points on a 100-point scale. Two westward trials showed a similar drop. The NHS still doesn’t recommend it, citing weak evidence, and in the UK it is prescription-only.

Dose. In a trial of 320 travelers flying 6 to 8 zones east, 0.5 mg worked almost as well as 5 mg. The higher dose only helped people fall asleep faster (Suhner and others). Doses above 5 mg added nothing in any trial. My Hong Kong tablet was twice that ceiling and twenty times the low dose.

Timing. Take it at destination bedtime, between 10 p.m. and midnight local time, for 2 to 5 nights after arrival. Taken in the local morning or afternoon, it makes you drowsy and can slow the adjustment.

Form. Fast-release tablets and sublingual forms beat slow-release in trials. A 2 mg controlled-release form did worse than either fast-release dose, likely because it leaves melatonin in your blood into the morning.

Label accuracy. Supplements in the US aren’t checked before sale. A test of 31 melatonin products found contents from 83% below to 478% above the label (Erland and Saxena). Gummies were worse: 22 of 25 brands tested in 2023 were mislabeled, and one contained no melatonin at all (NCCIH). The best melatonin for jet lag is a plain fast-release tablet, ideally with a USP Verified or NSF mark on the label. Start low and keep the bottle away from children. Poison-control calls about melatonin in children and teens rose more than sixfold between 2012 and 2021.

Ask a doctor first if you take blood thinners such as warfarin, have epilepsy or are pregnant. If you fly to the UK, the EU or Australia, carry melatonin in its original labeled bottle. It is sold over the counter in the US and Canada, prescription-only in the UK and Australia, and EU rules vary by country.

Caffeine as a jet lag remedy

Caffeine doesn’t reset your clock much. It keeps you functional while light and melatonin do the work. A Cochrane review of 13 trials, mostly in shift workers, found fewer errors and better attention with caffeine (Ker and others). The CDC suggests up to 200 mg every 4 hours during destination daytime, stopping about 6 hours before bed.

Timing matters more than the amount. A double espresso 3 hours before bed delayed the body clock by about 40 minutes in one lab study, which is the wrong direction after an eastward flight. In a military trial after a 7-zone eastward flight, 300 mg of slow-release caffeine each morning reduced daytime sleepiness for 5 days but worsened sleep at night.

Gum makes sense on arrival day, when you are on a train or in a meeting and there is no espresso bar. Chew one piece in the local morning, a second in early afternoon if you need it, and none after about 3 p.m.

Jet lag pills and OTC medicine

No pharmacy pill fixes jet lag, and no jet lag medicine is approved for the clock itself. The OTC and prescription options treat one symptom, either bad sleep or daytime fog, and leave your clock where it was.

Antihistamine sleep aids

Unisom (doxylamine), ZzzQuil and Benadryl (diphenhydramine) are the jet lag pills most travelers already have in a toiletry bag. They sedate you, but the CDC advises against them for jet lag because of next-day impairment and falls. In a driving study of 59 people, diphenhydramine at night impaired steering control the next morning.

I took one of these on an overnight flight from Milan to Buenos Aires in June 2015, slept five hours in a middle seat and felt hungover until lunch. The jet lag arrived on schedule anyway.

Keep a pack for a first night when nothing else works, take it only at local bedtime with 7 to 8 hours to sleep, and skip it with alcohol. Don’t use it on the plane if you have to drive after landing. Avoid it if you are over 65 or have glaucoma or an enlarged prostate.

Prescription options

• Zolpidem (Ambien). In a trial of 138 travelers flying 5 to 9 zones east, 10 mg for 3 nights gave longer and better sleep, with more headaches than placebo (Jamieson and others). It didn’t help people fall asleep faster. It carries an FDA boxed warning for sleepwalking and sleep driving. Eszopiclone (Lunesta) is in the same class.
• Armodafinil (Nuvigil). In 427 travelers flying from the US to France, 150 mg each morning for 3 days cut daytime sleepiness. Over a quarter got headaches (Rosenberg and others).

Both are controlled substances in the US and restricted in some countries. Carry the prescription and the original packaging, and ask your doctor before the trip.

Natural and home remedies for jet lag

None of these natural jet lag remedies has a jet lag trial. Some improve sleep in people with insomnia, which may carry over to a jet lagged first night. Treat them as a bedtime routine, not a cure.

Tart cherry juice. Cherries contain a small amount of melatonin. In a study of 20 adults, a week of tart cherry concentrate raised melatonin levels and total sleep time (Howatson and others). Nobody has tested it after a flight.

Magnesium. One trial in 46 older adults with insomnia found 500 mg a day improved sleep, but only after 8 weeks. A few nights on the road is a different situation. It loosens stools at high doses.

Valerian and chamomile. A review of 16 valerian trials found some benefit for sleep, with poor study quality, and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine advises against it for insomnia. Chamomile did no better than placebo in a 28-day insomnia trial. A cup of chamomile at local bedtime is still a useful signal that the day is over, and it has no caffeine.

A hot shower before bed. Ten minutes or more in water at about 40 to 42 °C, taken 1 to 2 hours before bedtime, helped people fall asleep faster across 13 pooled studies. The drop in body temperature afterward is the likely reason.

Water and no alcohol. Dehydration doesn’t cause jet lag, but cabin air dries you out and adds a headache on top. A drink knocks you out faster, but sleep after alcohol is lighter and more broken toward morning, so the CDC and NHS both advise skipping it on the flight.

Sleep gear for jet lag nights

A mask and earplugs don’t move your clock, but they protect the sleep you get. After flying west you wake at dawn because your body thinks it is midday. After flying east, you need a dark room for an afternoon nap.

For more choice, see our guides to the best travel eye mask and the best earplugs for flying. For sleeping on the plane itself, read how to sleep on a plane.

Jet lag remedies to skip

• Homeopathic jet lag tablets. No trial of No-Jet-Lag or any similar product appears in the medical literature. The tablets are harmless. The real cost is relying on them instead of light.
• Grounding or earthing mats. The only data is a 12-person pilot study of mattress pads, with no control group and no travelers.
• Pycnogenol (pine bark extract). One 2008 study reported jet lag halved in 38 travelers, but the comparison group wasn’t blinded or given a placebo, and the same group ran the follow-up. It interacts with blood thinners.
• The Argonne anti-jet-lag diet. Four days of alternating feast and fast before the flight. The one study, in National Guard troops, let soldiers choose whether to diet. The CDC doesn’t mention it. Skip it if you have diabetes or take medicine with food.
• Compression socks as a jet lag cure. They reduce leg swelling and clot risk on long flights, which is reason enough to wear them. They have no effect on jet lag.
• Slow-release melatonin. Fast-release forms work better for jet lag.
• High-dose melatonin gummies. The dose is higher than you need and often not what the label says.

Jet lag remedy FAQ