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Fasting May Fix Jet Lag
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon May 26, 2008 07:08 AM
from the lost-in-translation dept.
from the lost-in-translation dept.
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."
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Another excuse for poor airline service ! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Another excuse for poor airline service ! (Score:5, Funny)
That would be about the only thing that could make the TSA a genuine public service.
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Everything old is new again (Score:3, Informative)
Anti-Jet-Lag Diet [anl.gov]
I've got a better idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:I've got a better idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:2)
Eg, England -> Singapore / France -> Korea. Both cases the seats were fine, had your own TV/games console and could get up at any time and get more food/drink.
It is the short flights (up to 5 hours) that steerage tended to be bad.
Another thought is maybe you just need to loose weight.
Re:I've got a better idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have yet to find a diet that makes my legs shorter.
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Re:I've got a better idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
If aviation worldwide was deregulated and e.g. foreign airlines such as Singapore Airlines and QANTAS were allowed to fly domestic routes inside the US, the dinosaur airlines that offer the crappy service like United and American would have to get better or go bust.
(disclaimer: I have never flown on any US carrier but I have read enough about how US carriers suck from people who have)
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Re:I've got a better idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason is that airline customers care about price above all else. I recall a study (no, I don't have a cite, sorry) where people would ignore significant differences in amenities for as little as a $5 difference in price.
This is why service sucks everywhere. If an airline cuts food from a price and this allows them to undercut their competitor by some trivial amount, they get a significant influx of new customers. It becomes a race to the bottom, with costs cut on amenities everywhere to allow for reduced ticket prices.
Because of this it's unlikely that Singapore Airlines or QANTAS would make much of a difference in the US market. They'd either have to do the same stuff in order to compete or they would get priced out of the market.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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Amenities? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's plenty of middle ground out there. Aside from United, the different airlines vary quite a bit in terms of how much room they give you. They may not advertise this fact strongly, and the various travel web sites may not make it easy to search for this, but it's not hard
Re:I've got a better idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
If there are any enterprising developers out there, there may be a market for this...
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Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
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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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Think airline seats suck? Try webbing sling seats in a C141 (yes, I'm old) or other airlifter.
Heh. Yeesh. Thanks for reminding me. For those who have never had the joy, behold [att.net]. Imagine sitting like this, knees interlocked with the guy in front of you, for 18 hours, with your luggage on your lap! Nowadays those kids have it easy riding the C-17 [att.net]. I made sure to tell them that all the way to Kabul on my final deployment.
Is jetlag a /significant/ issue or just annoying? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Is jetlag a /significant/ issue or just annoyin (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Is jetlag a /significant/ issue or just annoyin (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Is jetlag a /significant/ issue or just annoyin (Score:2, Interesting)
I've tried a lot of things to see how they work. Such as drinking a lot as soon as in f
Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
Better idea, and requires no fasting (Score:4, Funny)
Surely that's a "treatment protocol" that airline food could handle...
Some people don't eat after 12 noon (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Some people don't eat after 12 noon (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in good health, not overweight or any other problems like that.
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One man's meditation camp is another man's torture. I eat 4000-6000 calories per day, and cannot sleep while hungry. I'll typically have a nice large meal (a bunch of pasta, some veggies, fruit, some protein) around 2AM, and fall right asleep. If I don't eat, I can't sleep.
And no, I'm not overweight - my BMI (or whatever the insurance companies use) is so low that I've b
Next Ryan air Ad (Score:4, Funny)
Melatonin, a couple of beers, iPod & shades (Score:2)
6mg of Melatonin and a couple of beers in the airport bar are usually enough, but it doesn't hurt to have some soft music (I use "Music for the Mozart effect") and dark glasses (which don't look anywhere near as looserish as a sleep mask) to help with the process. If I do it right, I end up waking up at 7:00-8:00AM Hong Kong time at
Not for me (Score:2)
Old news (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Comparative Importance (Score:2, Funny)
Of course, jet lag is much less of an issue WHEN YOU'RE STARVING!
Oh well, so long as I can drink all I want....Re:Comparative Importance (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
*SIGH* All the "funny" moderators must be at a picnic.
An alternative research proposal (Score:2)
Do they need volonteers? (Score:2)
During the week I go to sleep at around 01:00 and wake up at around 07:30. During the weekend this is around 04:00 and 11:30. I am sure many people have such a "jet lag".
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Most people are missing the main point here (Score:3, Interesting)
Fasting on the airplane (Score:2)
Thank goodness we don't need to forgo the DRINKS (they help get over time zones too, you know).
Fasting BEFORE the flight (Score:5, Informative)
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 [bbc.co.uk] that Viagra might help with jet lag, but it might create unrelated issues that you might have trouble explaining.
Re:Fasting BEFORE the flight (Score:4, Informative)
1. Start with the day you will arrive in your final time zone.
2. Count back 16 hours from your normal breakfast time on that day, and stop eating from that point.
3. At your normal breakfast time on the final day, eat a substantial, nutritious, meal
Note that this means you may have to eat your breakfast on a plane or in an airport, and it may not be your normal breakfast time in the local timezone when you eat breakfast. You are supposed to eat substantial real food, not coffee and a pastry, so you may have to expend some effort and foresight to ensure that such food is available when you are supposed to eat it.
Parent
16 Hours before what? (Score:2)
Melatonin? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Just in college? (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
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Come to think of it, the summer when I was best at getting up early for work, was a time when I used to have breakfast (porridge at the time) at home.. interesting. Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day!?
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Should computer simulations ever reach the point that we can model all of the biological effects of a treatment, they would provide a useful alternative to mice or other animals. Until then, we really have no choice. We can try things out on isolated tissue, but there's no substitute for in vivo studies.
By that point, the simulations may as well be living organisms themselves, but I won't go there...
Re:Poor mice (Score:4, Informative)
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... [mos.org]
And we can look at a bit of an unconfirmed urban legend here [kottke.org](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 [virginia.edu]...
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Re:You don't REALLY care because ... (Score:4, Funny)
Are you talking about the food or the customers?
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Are you talking about the food or the customers?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Are you talking about the food or the customers?
I think those mice are called rats.