What is jet lag caused by?

changing of time zones.. that's it

Many people seem to believe different things about jet lag but I think one of the more logical reasons of Jet Lag is because your body is used to living at a comfortable 4 to 6 feet off the earth, and when you suddenly increase to nearly 500,000 feet and then back down again it causes your body to throw itself into a sort of emergency mode where it tries to rapidly adapt from the sudden changes in altitude and while your body is still adapting you come back down to a normal level of hight, again causing your body to try to quickly adapt, there for causing jet lag, hope this helped!

Hello, (ANS) Jet Lag is a condition ( a phenomena) caused solely by flying long haul between continents. How & why? Jet lag is caused by upsetting the bodies internal body clock (basic biological cycles), this happens because we move between one location and another so quickly that the body doesn't get a chance to catch up until later. Human beings were not designed to travel so quickly from one place to another and so in this sense flying is unnatural to us as a species. **Flights that travel from East to West such as outbound flights from the UK to the USA tend not to cause as much jet lag (and sometimes non at all). This is because the journey is in sympathy with the earths own direction of rotation. NOTE: Jet lag is far more common & more intense when traveling from West to East, from USA to UK. This is because the journey is traveling counter (against) the Earth's own direction of travel (spin). Plus this jet lag takes longer to over come, and for the bodies own cycles to come back into its natural balance once again. **YES! Time zones are a part of this process too. **Nobody gets jet lag if the trip is only 1 hr or just short haul i.e. say within the Europe. Ivan

it is caused by large differences in time,,flying west to east is worse than flyin east to west,,,however China has only one time zone so you could argue that it is the differences in day and night and our natural body clock

Jet lag is cause by the changing of new time zone when people sleep and wake up. Their should be no jet lag from irland to england... It's just the sitting for a hour on a plane that get people tired. Not really jet lag.

Current thinking is that the adrenal glands have a part to play in this problem, and once they adjust to the messages from your body a to what time of day you are now in, homeostasis is returned and the body is in the new time zone. there people who live in one time zone and there body is stuck in another permanently. a very rare genetic condition though. depending on the length of your stay and purpose of your trip it may be best to stay in your time routine on a short trip if possible. or take a mild sleeping aid on the flight to restart your wake cycle if you land at your destination in the morning, their time. CRO xx

You can't get jet lag that quickly, and not at all without a significant time difference. It is due to the body's circadian diurnal rhythm, which is set at approximately 24 hours. This controls hormone levels and desire to sleep, digestion and blood pressure. We can only correct by an hour or so a day, so a disruption of 3-4 hours or more will produce symptoms of disorientation and make us feel unwell. A similar problem can occur in shift workers.