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Posted by iammesol on May-23-2008 15:40:

Overcoming Jetlag

quote:

Skip the pretzels: starving may fend off jet lag
By Julie Steenhuysen - Thu May 22, 12:57 PM PDT

73% of users found this article helpful.

A passenger walks past a Welcome Aboard sign at the Delta Air Lines ticket counter at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia in this April 15, 2008 file photo. (Tami Chappell/Reuters)
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Starving yourself before a long flight may help prevent jet lag, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

Normally, the body's natural circadian clock in the brain dictates when to wake, eat and sleep, all in response to light. But it seems a second clock takes over when food is scarce, and manipulating this clock might help travelers adjust to new time zones, they said.

"A period of fasting with no food at all for about 16 hours is enough to engage this new clock," said Dr. Clifford Saper of Harvard Medical School, whose study appears in the journal Science.

He said a person from the United States traveling to Japan must adjust to a 11-hour time change.

"Because the body's clock can only shift a small amount each day, it takes the average person about a week to adjust to the new time zone. And, by then, it's often time to come home," Saper said in a statement.

Saper and colleagues knew that when food is scarce, animals are able to override their normal biological clock to improve their chances of finding food.

Studies have shown that mice fed only during the time when they normally sleep shift their body clocks to this new schedule. "They would be awake and alert and ready to go an hour or two before a meal was due to appear to have maximal chance of getting the food," Saper said in a telephone interview.

"This is built into the brain. The problem is, nobody knew how it worked," he said.

He and colleagues set out to find this mechanism. They used a group of mice that had been genetically engineered to lack a master gene called BMAL1 that regulates the body's clock. They put this gene into the shell of a hollowed-out virus that acted as a vector to deliver the gene only to brain cells they were interested in studying.

When they put it into a small region of the hypothalamus known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which serves as the body's primary clock, the mice adjusted to a light-based schedule for waking and sleeping, but not eating.

"If you don't wake them up they will starve to death," Saper said.

However, when they restored the gene only in a section of the hypothalamus called the dorsomedial nucleus, which helps organize waking and feeding schedules, the mice adjusted to the eating schedule, but not daylight.

Saper said when food is scarce, this second clock can override the body's primary clock. He said these same clock genes are known to be in all mammals, including humans.

While skipping meals ahead of a long flight or night shift has not been proven to work in humans, it may be worth a try.

"I'm certainly going to do it the next time I go to Japan," he said.

(Editing by Maggie Fox)

source



Thought there is a lot of people who travel in this forum, so heres some help.


Posted by Ted Promo on May-23-2008 15:41:

methamphetamine and sudoku


Posted by iammesol on May-23-2008 15:43:

well I'm sure that works as well


Posted by jonze on May-23-2008 15:47:

i hear walking around your hotel room barefoot and scrunching your toes works.

/die hard


Posted by elFreak on May-23-2008 15:51:

2 days before leaving for the trip you switch sleeping schedules to the new one even if it takes sleep aids. Works everytime for me. Not eating on long ass flights fucking sucks man.


Posted by Gauss on May-23-2008 16:10:

People can go without food for 16 hours?
I can barely make it for 3-4 hours, after that my stomach starts to crumple and/or ache.
I guess that's the downside of fast metabolism.


Posted by whiskers on May-23-2008 16:43:

quote:
Originally posted by jonze
i hear walking around your hotel room barefoot and scrunching your toes works.

/die hard


Beat me to it


/walk on the carpet barefoot and make fists with your toes


Posted by iammesol on May-23-2008 17:22:

quote:
Originally posted by elFreak
Not eating on long ass flights fucking sucks man.


no kidding



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