Taking The Lag Out of Jet Lag

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- There may soon be a cure for jet lag that you can simply download onto your laptop. Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and the University of Michigan have developed a software program that prescribes a regimen for avoiding the bane of the frequent flier.

Nearly everyone who has traveled across several times zones is familiar with the frustrations of insomnia at night and difficulty remaining awake during the day. These symptoms, which substantially impair cognitive performance, reflect de-synchronization between the body's internal time clock and local environmental cues.

The software program seeks to re-synchronize the body with its new environment using inputs like background light level and the number of time zones traveled. Timed light exposure is a well-known synchronization method, and when used properly, this intervention can reset an individual's internal clock to align with local time. The result is more efficient sleep, a decrease in fatigue and an increase in cognitive performance.

Using their method, researchers were able to show that the computation provided the optimal result for timing light exposure to reduce jet lag symptoms. "Using this computation in a prototyped software application allows a user to set a background light level . . .to obtain a recommendation of when to expose a subject to bright light, such as the bright lights sometimes used to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder,"  lead-author Dennis Dean is quoted as saying.

"Although this method is not yet available to the public," said Dean, "it has direct implications for designing schedules for jet lag, shift-work, and extreme environments such as in space, undersea or in polar regions."

Co-author Daniel Forger is quoted as saying, "This work shows how interventions can cut the number of days needed to adjust to a new time zone by half."
 
The next phase of this research includes the addition of interventions such as naps, caffeine and melatonin to help realign the internal body clock while reducing decreased performance.

SOURCE:  PLoS Computational Biology, June 19, 2009