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."

Comments

Re:I've got a better idea.

[drsquare]

It's called 'first class'. Unless you have some magical technology which makes planes twice as big without increasing either the manufacturing or running costs.

amenities?

[mgkimsal2]

What amenities are you talking about? I'd gladly pay an extra $20-$40 per flight for a bit of extra leg room, but paying 5-10X the amount of an economy ticket for biz class is something which most people (including me) can't justify for every trip. And if we *all* would be willing to pay that new price, then biz would go up accordingly and that new higher price would be the low bar for pricing, based on peoples' willingness to pay it.

Are we talking Coke v Pepsi? No amount of extra $$ for 'amenities' makes that much of a difference on a 3-5 ride in US domestic economy today. So why pay extra? Of course it's a race to the bottom because 'the bottom' is all that's on offer.

I flew RDU to SJC last month. I paid $230 (maybe a bit less) I had my choice of 'economy' tickets up to $600 or so (actually, I think a couple were close to $1000). Most were aounrd $200-$450. The only things that made much of a diff to me were schedules and price. On domestic routes, what other 'amenities' are there I should consider that would make me choose one carrier over another?