Jet lag happens when your body's clock gets confused by traveling across time zones. Imagine your body has a little clock that tells it when to sleep and wake up. When you fly from one place to another, that clock suddenly thinks it’s in a different time zone, and it doesn’t know what to do anymore!
What Your Body Needs
Your body likes to stay on the same schedule every day. It uses light to tell when it's daytime or nighttime. If you go to bed too early or too late, your little clock gets mixed up, and you feel tired or sleepy at the wrong time.
Examples
- Flying from Los Angeles to New York makes your body think it's still afternoon when it's actually nighttime.
- You get on a plane in the morning and arrive at night, but you're still sleepy like it was morning.
- Your brain is confused between two different times, so you feel tired or wide awake at the wrong time.
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See also
- What Causes ‘Jet Lag’ and How Can You Fix It Faster?
- How Do Our Bodies Know When to Sleep and When to Wake Up?
- What Causes the Different Kinds of Sleep Patterns?
- Why Do People Have Different ‘Sleep Cycles’?
- What Makes Some People ‘Night Owls’ and Others ‘Early Birds’?
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