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Fasting May Fix Jet Lag
stoolpigeon writes "Reuters reports on a Harvard Medical School study on sleep patterns and how they relate to food. Researchers already knew that the sleep patterns of mice would change to match the opportunity to feed, but they did not know the mechanism that enabled the change. To find out, they looked for the part of the brain that was involved. They bred mice without a certain master gene that regulates the body's clock, and then targeted various parts of the brain with the gene, delivered in the shell of a virus. The results may, among other things, provide a new method for preparing to deal with jet lag: 'A period of fasting with no food at all for about 16 hours is enough to engage this [alternate body] clock,' the lead researcher said. The study appears in the journal Science."
Ya know I kinda figured this was common knowledge by now. Or at least common sense to anyone who went through college.
To make it through the required all-nighters or any other binge of staying awake, you eat more food to provide more energy to your body.
Conversely, when you mess up your sleep schedule because of it, it's easy to just skip the meals that day so you goto sleep earlier because you have no energy.
So is the big discovery here that it works this way, or that it's precisely 16 hours and it affects part x of the brain?
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What a coincidence, I'm "suffering" from jet lag right now. I just got back (to the US) from Europe 2 days ago and am having the worst jet lag ever. This is weird because it's usually when I'm going in the other direction I suffer the worst. Anyway, if I eat I tend to want to "nap" right afterwards and then I end up sleeping in the middle of the day for 8 hours. Not eating seems to keep me awake, with my stomach threatening to eat itself.
I went to this 'Vipassana' meditation camp a couple years ago. It's a program where you go to this silent retreat for 10 days and just sit all day and meditate. One of the things that freaks first-timers out is that they feed you breakfast and lunch, but no dinner. You don't eat at all after 12 noon.
Sure, you're sitting all day and not expending much energy. But one thing you discover is how much better you sleep on an empty stomach.
It isn't just a college thing - think about all the people (and the current poll) who are 'late' risers... I wonder what the correlation is between late risers and eating shortly after rising...
I mean, if you dont eat breakfast, then you start at lunch, then dinner then snacks... eventually you'll stop waking up around breakfast time (according to this article).
Irregular eating patterns also make you fat, I've heard - I wonder what the correlation between late risers and obesity is?
...this was the recommended method back in 1980 when I traveled the Atlantic on a monthly basis.
1. Eat a regular meal (usually lunch or supper)
2. Fly and fast
3. Eat a meal at the next regular meal time. (Usually 10 to 12 hours later).
4. One day later in the new time zone (GMT+1), all is reset.
Worked like a charm and was based on research available at the time so I don't see what is so new about the advice.
I just dropped a couple Dramamine before the flight and slept most of the way when I deployed.
Think airline seats suck? Try webbing sling seats in a C141 (yes, I'm old) or other airlifter.
Eating first kept me from waking up due to hunger.
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Judging from the replies, I think a lot of people are missing what they're saying in the referenced study: You start fast way *before* you get on the plane. Anyway, the reasoning behind why this works, is that your body thinks: "Hey, there's no food around. I better wake up Mr. Brain there to go find something to eat. And while you're at it, if you have to start hunting saber tooth tigers at night rather than day, then I'll reset your body clock so you sleep and wake at a different time."
Flying from Tokyo to Germany, which I do on a regular basis, is a far worse situation. But even flying from the U.S. to Tokyo causes enough problems for me. I do it for business, and am on tight schedules, meaning that getting really, really sleepy in the middle of a meeting at 16:00 is a big problem. Not to mention waking up at 3:00AM and not being able to get back to sleep. It causes a lot of productivity problems.
I've tried a lot of things to see how they work. Such as drinking a lot as soon as in flight service starts, and try to sleep 1 hour later. I also tried staying up the whole time, hoping that I could sleep well once I get to my destination. I also tried adjusting my watch to the destination time and sleep accordingly during the flight, I tried melatonin, I tried.. a hell of a lot of things, but none worked that well. (Actually, drinking a lot and then sleeping did the best, but still was far from perfect.) Fasting is a new one, I'll need to try it next. I always fly business class or first class, so I really can't blame the seats....
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People have become hyper-sensitive to price because airlines charge vastly different prices for the same service. You don't have to do much air travel before you have the experience of sitting next to a guy who paid half as much as you did.
This price competition is because of services like Priceline and Kayak.com that only allow you to compare based on price and time, and don't include any of the other amenities that carriers may/may not offer.
If there are any enterprising developers out there, there may be a market for this...
Heading east from Hawaii to go back home to Toronto (+6), I just took 6 mg of melatonin at 6 PM HT / 12 AM EDT when I got on the the flight. By 7 PM HT / 1 AM EDT, I was sound asleep, and I woke up around 2 AM HT / 8 AM EDT, fully back on my regular Toronto routine with no detriments.
I don't know if this would work well with more dramatic time shifts, like Asia - North America, but melatonin in general has been a sanity saver for me. There are days where I take a four hour nap and fear that I'll never sleep at night. Pop a melatonin an hour before I want to go to bed, and I sleep a completely normal night's sleep.
No uncomfortable fasting required.
Another way of fighting jetlag is to fly a lot. It's been years since I suffered jetlag, I just got back from Japan, didn't feel it either way, I go to Europe a lot and I went to college in Hawaii and would fly to Italy for holidays. Oh yeah, I eat a lot so maybe that's it! Airlines need to start feeding people more and more often on their flights.