travel with meds: time zone changes? when to dose?

[schnitzer]

i had a question about how to dose my medications?

i'm going on vacation to london. I live in vancouver..  london is 8 hours faster..

i normally dose at 10pm, before i goto bed..  this means i'll have to dose at 6am london time??

how does that work?

i'm currently taking sustiva & truvada.

[sdcabincrew74]

I am a flight attendant and travel all over the planet for work.  Different time zones every day.  Since I am not in one place often, I try to take my pills at the time I would take them at home, no matter what time it is where I am.  If I am staying anywhere for any length of time (more than 2 days) I will take a dose early to get to my normal time (which for me is dinner time).  So the first night or two in London I would take my dose "early" at 10PM and go to bed then be on that schedule.  Careful coming home ... that is a little harder and usually takes me a few days to get back to my normal time as I do not like going more than 28-29 hours in between dosing.  I am on a once a day cocktail too ..... I hope that makes sense.

[schnitzer]

ok.. the dosing would be easy.. but i'm taking sustiva..  - which makes you drowsy and sleep..  could be quite a challenge if i'm planning a day trip in europe..

[budndallastx]

Newt answered this question for someone else.  Here is his response, http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=12265.0

[vegaslocal39]

It may be too late for me to chime in, but when I was taking Sustiva/Truvada (I take Atripla now), I went to Germany from my home (Vegas).  My doc advised me to just take them at bedtime when I arrived in Europe.  My doc said that the very occasional missed dose is not a big deal.  I believe his exact words were something like, "As long as you are at least 95% compliant, you'll be fine."

I might miss a dose or two per year, so it worked fine for me (per my labs).

But of course, you need to check with your doc.

[milker]

I may be completely wrong (because I'm not on meds and I haven't studied that yet), but I think the very important timing of the meds is related to

1) the time it takes for the med to be active in your body
2) your body's clock

If you change time zones, you change both, but I think the body's clock is more important, so I would adapt pill time to the new time. I may be completely wrong, so feel free to chime in.

Milker.