Ever used melatonin for jet lag?

[Momling]

I'm taking my mom and older daughter on a 2 week trip to the UK in a few weeks. I'm anticipating some serious jet lag. On previous trips, my daughter was light enough that I could carry her as she slept, but she's too big now!

 

We'll be leaving at 8:30am in the morning and will arrive at 7:30am the next day with an 8 hr time difference. I'm hoping to transition a few days before to an earlier bedtime and rising time (but 8 hrs would be impossible!). I'm wondering if melatonin might help all of us with this. I've never been able to sleep on public transportation and I do very poorly without sleep.

 

Any experience? When I look online, I see recommended dosages of 0.3mg to 30mg. Little is mentioned of a children's dose.

 

Any other thoughts? Valerian? Benadryl?

 

Thanks!

[lmrich]

We used melatonin on our trip to Paris and Italy last year. It helped the first night to get to sleep so easily. We were all exhausted from our travels and the time difference, but we were also kind of hyper too. So it was just nice to drift off to sleep by about 8:30 and catch up on some ZZZZZZZZ's

[Misty]

My daughter has Asperger's and she has to take melatonin every night to help her sleep. She is 7 years old and takes 1 mg. The average dose is anywhere between 1 and 5 mg.

 

My daughter takes the sublingual orange-flavored melatonin by Source Naturals. It dissolves under the tongue and tastes great. She's asleep within 30 minutes.

[Lisa in Jax]

When we went to India (a nearly 12 hour difference!) we took melatonin for a week or so before leaving (to move our bedtimes back a bit) as well when we were on the plane. We also took cortisone (I think) to jump-start our days. Both things seemed to help. :)

 

Lisa

[RegGuheert]

...but there is one thing that I have found that helps with jetlag: noise-isolating or noise-canceling headphones. I've used several different types of headphones, but I'm pretty happy with the Etymotic Research ER6i that I got on a lightning deal at Amazon before Christmas. These are fairly expensive, but they have amazing sound and do a better job of blocking out airplane noises than even the active noise-canceling headphones that I have tried. One other benefit is that there are no batteries, so your batteries won't die during the flight.

 

Enjoy your trip!

[meet me in paris]

I don't know how much it would help to take it *before* you go, but once you get there it will definitely help. My daughter is 11 and has been taking 1mg every night under doc's orders for a few years, so I think that is a very safe dose.