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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."
Don't let the airlines know about this, or they are going to 'improve the jetlag adaptation' by not feeding you anymore ! And for an additional price.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
How about making the airplane seats big enough and comfortable enough to actually sleep in?
Jet lag would be much less of a problem if the airlines didn't squash us all in like sardines for 13 hours at a time.
I piss off bigots.
Jetlag has not proven to be a significant issue with me or any of the people I have travelled internationally (as in, more than 5 time zones in one go) with. Is it only a significant issue to those who are changing timezone on an almost daily basis?
Typically if you're travelling west, you just get an hour's nap (or not) on the plane, but stay up an extra 5 - 8 hours or so (or less and go to bed a bit earlier). That's pretty easy to do. You will tend to wake up a little earlier than normal, but that's not a massive deal.
Travelling east is more difficult, as going to sleep 5 - 8 hours earlier is usually impossible (or impractical if still travelling) so you need to stay up an extra 8 - 12 or so hours, go to bed early, and get extra sleep that night. In both cases, you wind up waking up at roughly a sensible time.
Perhaps there is a significant group (who I do not travel with) who are unable to stay up for 28 hours on the odd occasion when it's necessary to resync with the local time zone? Or is it that if you do it, say, every week, this technique becomes totally impractical?
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.
Surely that's a "treatment protocol" that airline food could handle...
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
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.
Travel in Ryanair and we take care of your jetlag (by not feeding you)
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
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?
You are talking about a typical transatlantic or transcontinental 5-8 hours jetlag. they are indeed easy to overcome. As far as I understand, an 8-12 hour trip (London-Sydney/Tokyo) is a whole different story.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Actually, yes they do.
Just like people die of smoking - the smoking doesn't kill them, but the effects of smoking do.
We could look at the dangerous effects of jet lag here...
And we can look at a bit of an unconfirmed urban legend here(but also not disproven, I just can't find an original article)...
And we can see the long term effects of jetlag (Thanks to mice... Surprisingly... NOT) here...
...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.
Are you talking about the food or the customers?
Ignore this signature. By order.
This isn't anything new. Argonne National Laboratories did research much like this, to engage the "alternate body" clock. It involves feasting and fasting, with special attention to the day prior to travel crucial to it working:
Anti-Jet-Lag Diet
It's easy, always travel west. The earth is round.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
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."
Apparently in haste to make jokes about bad airplane food, most have missed the point that the article refers to fasting BEFORE the flight. The Reuters headline writer also missed that fact.
The idea is to start pushing your food cycle toward the target before you fly so your body is more receptive to the time change.
In fact, if you're taking the typical ATL-ICN-HKG route some airplane dining is going to be pretty important. You'll arrive in Hong Kong around 10 p.m. Your elapsed clock time including layover will be nearly 24 hours, and if you manage your eating and sleeping during that time you'll actually be in pretty good shape the morning after your arrival. (Hint: Sleep as much as possible between ATL and mid-Pacific, and only after that should you turn on the entertainment system.)
Another study suggests that Viagra might help with jet lag, but it might create unrelated issues that you might have trouble explaining.
If you are starving after 16 hours you have something wrong with you.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
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....
Well, true enough, but the feebly attempted joke didn't have the same punch when I wrote REALLY HUNGRY.
*SIGH* All the "funny" moderators must be at a picnic.
Invenio via vel creo
What are these magic amenities that will make a 4 hours flight with no leg room more bearable for an extra $5?
People will save $5 on a flight choosing a cheaper one because in economy there's basically no difference. What are the amenities? Coke v Pepsi products? Seats without tears in them? New sickbag in every seat pocket?
I'd *gladly* pay a smaller amount more for a bit more leg room. I'm not a big person (5'9") but am cramped in economy seats. But the only choice is biz and/or first class, often at 5-10x the price of the economy price. There's no middle ground, so people choose the cheapest economy they can.
I went from RDU to SJC for about $230 last month. I could have paid up to $500 for the same trip on a different carrier, but still 'economy'. I've flown economy on all the major carriers at one point or another, and they all have the same size seats and basic service, so why pay double for the same thing?
I almost tried JetBlue, but the scheduling wasn't even close to what I needed, so I'd have had to go the day before and get a hotel for another $200. Plus the JB ticket was $650 or so - close to 3x the price I paid. I've heard good things about JB, but not good enough to pay an extra $620 for my trip.
If an airline would promote their 'amenities' for the extra few dollars, maybe I'd give it a try, but there's few amenities save legroom that can make a 5 hour trip worth any extra amount of money.
creation science book
Are you talking about the food or the customers?
Probably the management.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.
Not just this, but your body does things on a schedule (basically, you eat, it takes time to digest and time to get back to being hungry again... that's fairly consistent). If you've ever owned pets, dogs particularly, you know that they know when feeding time is even though they can't read clocks! The trick to overcoming jetlag is to do things to shift your body's schedule to match your new surroundings. I've done this many times by staying awake (don't sleep on the plane) so that I can go to sleep at my 'normal' time in the new place from just being so tired. You also do this by eating your meals according to the local clock, even if you aren't necessarily hungry, just eat a little to start tricking your body into the new time zone.
Using these tricks (and others) I can usually be integrated into my new time zone within 48 hours. It's worked going to Europe and to Australia. Once, I had a rough time in Moscow but that was because it was winter and the (lack of) sun in the sky in the mornings and afternoons meant I couldn't get used to the daylight schedule as easy.
Are you talking about the food or the customers?
Probably the management.I think those mice are called rats.
Ignore this signature. By order.
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.