warfarin and time zones

[wes]

greetings everyone. I am about to fly halfway around the world to visit my family, and I have an interesting question that I hope you can help me with.

I normally take my warfarin dose around 7:30pm each night, and was wondering if I should adjust my dosage time to the new time zone I will enter. I will stay in this new zone for 2 weeks, so I'm not sure if that should have any bearing on my decision.

If I keep taking my warfarin at the same time and just ignore the new time zone, then it means that I'll have to take my regular dosage at 5:30am, which seems a bit ridiculous!

It seems like I have a few options
1) Ignore the new time zone and take it at (gulp) 5:30am every morning
2) Take it as soon as I wake up in the new time zone (which will probably be about 5 hours after I usually take my medication)
3) Adjust my dosage time to the new time zone.

Any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated

 

[geebee]

I would just stay with the time you normally take it (local time where you will be). That will assure that you don't forget it.

 

[mattwisconsin]

I travel back and forth to Greece often. I have never talked to a doctor about this but I usually adjust the dose on each of the days I fly, so that I can take it at the same time. Since the difference is 8 hours I take only 2/3 dose at my normal time on the way over and then save the left overs from this and use it as a supplement on the way back. So I take my normal doses at my normal time, but take the extra 1/3 during the flight. Like I said I have never talked to a doctor about this, but it seemed to make the most sense to me, to take the time difference and use that to make a ratio to adjust how much you take on the days you fly. I would be interested to know of other people agree with this or think that this is dangerous.

 

[Ross]

If it's only 5 hours different, you should be fine taking it when you wake up, but if you think you'll forget and go past 10 hours, then maybe you better get it at 5:30am instead.