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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."
...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.
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...