Question
How do I switch times zones in Europe for my meds?
28 July 2011. Related: Adherence, All topics.
I’m on darunavir/ritonavir and Truvada which I take at 0820 each morning (+/- 20 mins) with breakfast, and it seems to be working well. I’m shortly going on holiday to France. Do I stick with 0820 (French time) which is a really convenient time to have breakfast when that means a 25 hour gap the first day I’m back in the UK.
Answer
Thanks for your question.
With only an hour difference being slightly earlier or later for the first and last day of your holiday will make no difference.
Usually it is easier to keep to the same relative time as you do in the UK – ie at 8.20 French time.
With the drugs in your combination an hour earlier of later is unlikely to make any difference whether travelling of not.
Good luck for your holiday.
The main principal about taking meds across different time zones is to minimise the chance that the drug levels become too low.
So that if you take your meds once-daily, you don’t want to go more than 24 hours in real time without taking your meds. If you take them twice-daily, you don’t want this to be more than 12 hours.
If is fine to bring a dose forward so that you take it earlier than normal in order to get on the same clock time in the new time zone. Having slightly higher drug levels for a few hours will not do you any harm.
For some very difficult trips across a lot of time zones, this might mean taking an additional middle-dose of your meds. One exceptions might be with efavirenz though as taking this in the day time could made you drowsy from the side effects and drug levels are generally pretty good if you wanted to extend the efavirenz dose for the first day.
I’m taking Atripla @ 20h30 (SA time), but am going to Thailand and I believe they are 5hrs ahead from S.A, does that mean I will rake meds @ 01h30?
Please assist, I’m very concerned