Social Jet Lag: Time Difference Adjustment

Ian C. Langtree - Writer/Editor for Disabled World (DW)
Published: 2015/03/17 - Updated: 2025/02/18
Publication Type: Informative
Topic: Sleep Disorders - Publications List

Page Content: Synopsis - Introduction - Main - Insights, Updates

Synopsis: This article dives into the concept of social jet lag, a condition where a person's natural sleep patterns clash with the demands of their work or study schedule, leaving them feeling tired even when awake. It explains how modern lifestyles - staying up late during the week and sleeping in on weekends - disrupt the body's circadian rhythms, leading to symptoms similar to traditional jet lag but without the travel. The piece highlights practical insights, like how caffeine can help in the morning but linger too long, and connects social jet lag to health risks such as obesity, offering a clear statistic: for every hour of disruption, the risk of being overweight rises by about 33%. Written in an accessible way, it's a helpful read for anyone - especially seniors or those with disabilities - who might struggle with sleep schedules, as it sheds light on why they feel off and offers a starting point for managing it better - Disabled World (DW).

Introduction

Getting your brain into gear for school or work is particularly hard when your post-holiday or daylight savings time clock is out of synch with the hours you sleep at this point. You may have traveled and now find your travels are over, yet you still experience, 'jet lag,' or maybe you are feeling drained without even having gone anywhere. You may be experiencing, 'social jet lag,' something that occurs when your body is out of synch with your work or study schedule and feel sleepy, despite being awake.

Focus

Social Jetlag

Social jet lag is defined as a syndrome related to the mismatch between the body's internal clock and the realities of our daily schedules. Humans show large differences in the preferred timing of their sleep and activity. This so-called "chronotype" is largely regulated by the circadian clock. Both genetic variations in clock genes and environmental influences contribute to the distribution of chronotypes in a given population, ranging from extreme early types to extreme late types with the majority falling between these extremes. Social (e.g., school and work) schedules interfere considerably with individual sleep preferences in the majority of the population.

Cultural Jet Lag

The expression social jet lag has more widely become associated with an unrelated delayed sleep phase syndrome and cultural jet lag has therefore become the conventional term. Cultural jet lag is sometimes just referred to by its initials: CJL.

Jet Lag

Medically referred to as desynchronosis and rarely as circadian dysrhythmia, is a physiological condition which results from alterations to the body's circadian rhythms resulting from rapid long-distance trans-meridian (east-west or west-east) travel on high-speed aircraft.

Delayed Sleep-phase Disorder (DSPD)

Also known as delayed sleep-phase syndrome (DSPS) or delayed sleep-phase type (DSPT), is a circadian rhythm sleep disorder affecting the timing of sleep, peak period of alertness, the core body temperature rhythm, hormonal and other daily rhythms, compared to the general population and relative to societal requirements.

The Human Body Clock

A person's body clock is regulated by structures in the brain and is influenced by light. Light hitting your eyes triggers changes associated with wakefulness. Yet for different reasons, a person's waking time is many times shifted later following holiday vacations, travels, or daylight savings time. People are forced to under-sleep in these circumstances. It may make the back to work or school effort feel even worse that it would otherwise.

If you have had a nice, somewhat cool and dark place to sleep while you have been on holiday, your social jet lag is more likely to be pronounced according to Victoria University sleep psychologist Professor Dorothy Bruck. The good news; however, is the cure is usually right outside of your bedroom - daylight. Everyone has a body rhythm that runs on approximately a twenty-four hour cycle, says Professor Bruck. Yet it actually runs a bit more than twenty-four hours. Our body rhythm is around twenty-four and a half or twenty-five hours for the majority of people.

What Does This Mean to You?

What this means to you is if you follow your body's natural rhythm, which is more likely when you are on holidays, you begin going to bed a little later each night and sleeping in a bit more each morning. Holiday socializing at night is yet another thing that finds you headed towards social jet lag. People do stay out later and they are less likely to feel sleepy at an earlier time because their body is running a little faster than twenty-four hours all the time. They know they do not have to get up for their early morning alarm clock.

The need to get up and moving in the morning usually keeps social jet lag in check. As soon as a person wakes up in the morning, they get the light in their eyes and that is a very strong cue to the person's body that it is daytime. It helps people to keep a bit closer to a twenty-four hour body rhythm. Yet if you have not had to get up and moving because you have had a wonderful holiday devoid of commitments, you might very well have ended up with a body clock that has shifted by a number of hours.

Some people who live a very passive and indoor lifestyle in darkened rooms as they are on holidays actually come very close to completely inverting their day-night cycle, something that takes a large effort to reverse. For the majority of people, the end of January simply means getting used to waking up a few hours earlier. It might take a person's body several days to adapt.

Efforts You Can Make to End Social Jet Lag

Some different tips are listed below that may help you to re-program your body clock to be in synch with an earlier school or work day. These tips can help your body to remain in synch. These tips include the following:

• Exposure to Bright Sunlight: Expose yourself to bright sunlight soon after waking up. Daylight is best as even more sunlight on a cloudy day is brighter than most artificial light sources. Bright daylight suppresses morning levels of the sleep-inducing melatonin hormone and resets your body clock.
• Wake Up Time: Even though wake up time has the most impact, what a person does at night matters as well. You should develop a pre-bed wind-down routine that allows you to go to bed in time to receive the sleep you need before your alarm clock goes off. A warm bath or a shower, reading, or chatting are good pre-bed forms of activities.
• Things to Avoid: Avoid watching television or using electronic devices in your bedroom in the hour prior to going to sleep, as research has shown, leads to more time taken in order to fall asleep. Electronic devices include computers, mobile phones, or tablet electronics. Along with the stimulation effects, the light from computer or other types of electronics screens suppresses hormone melatonin, which usually help to make a person feel sleepy.

If you find it hard to sleep well, or find being sleep deprived affects you particularly hard, it is worth attempting to maintain your week day schedule as much as you can on weekends according to the Sleep Health Foundation. Professor Bruck says, 'Sleep is as important as healthy food and exercise.'

Sleep physician Dr. Keith Wong says not receiving enough sleep impairs a person's reaction time, problem solving ability, immune and mood system and may - over a period of time, lead to long-term health issues such as diabetes and heart disease. Poor sleep has also been linked to weight gain and may impair a child's ability to learn while at school.

Sleep Health Foundation President Dr. David Hillman stated, Research has shown that students who do not get enough sleep experience difficulties with understanding lessons and struggle to complete assignments, exams and tests.

The Australian Sleep Association says most adults require six-and-a-half to eight-and-a-half hours of sleep each night in order to function and feel as if they are able to manage life adequately. Nine hours of sleep is recommended for adolescents, while five-to-twelve year-olds need even more sleep.

Facts and Statistics

• Social jetlag is the effect of fighting your body's natural circadian rhythms by sleeping short nights during the week and sleeping in late on the weekends.
• Over the past decade, people have been going to bed later but still getting up at the same time, losing about 40 minutes of sleep on workdays.
• The circadian clock must be rewound every day to keep it operating on a cycle of roughly 24 hours.
• A cup of coffee can be a great way to overcome your morning drowsiness, but it lingers in your body for a number of hours.
• With social jet lag, the schedule disruption is chronic because a person stays in the same place.
• The circadian clock controls sleep timing through the process of entrainment.
• For every hour of social jet lag, the risk of being overweight or obese rises about 33%, says researcher Till Roenneberg, PhD, a professor at the Institute of Medical Psychology at the University of Munich.
• Living against the clock may be a factor contributing to the epidemic of obesity.
• Our daily lives are controlled by two naturally occurring phenomena: our internal circadian clock and the rotation of the earth.

Insights, Analysis, and Developments

In a world that's always rushing forward, this piece on social jet lag feels like a quiet reminder that our bodies aren't built for the schedules we force on them. It's striking to see how something as simple as staying up late during the week can throw us off - enough to bump up obesity odds by 33% per hour of mismatch - and it makes you wonder how many of us are stumbling through the day without realizing why. For seniors or those with disabilities, who might already wrestle with sleep, this isn't just trivia; it's a clue to feeling better. The article doesn't preach, but it does leave you thinking: maybe we'd all do well to listen to our internal clocks a little more, instead of letting the world's rhythm dictate the tune

Author Credentials: Ian is an Australian-born writer, editor, and advocate who currently resides in Montreal, Canada. He is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Disabled World, a leading resource for news and information on disability issues. With a global perspective shaped by years of travel and lived experience, Ian is a committed proponent of the Social Model of Disability-a transformative framework developed by disabled activists in the 1970s that emphasizes dismantling societal barriers rather than focusing solely on individual impairments. His work reflects a deep commitment to disability rights, accessibility, and social inclusion. To learn more about Ian's background, expertise, and accomplishments, visit his full biography.