Curing jet lag could be easy, researchers say

Curing jet lag could be easy, researchers say

Forget exercise, melatonin tablets or any other form of supposed jet lag cure, researchers say it could be as simple as being exposed to short flashes of light at night.

Jet lag occurs when people travel across time zones and are forced to adjust to a new light-dark schedule. Dr Jamie Zeitzer and colleagues at Stanford University School of Medicine think they have found a cure for the modern malaise.

The researchers believe sleeping in front of a strobe light could work to shift the body clock into a new time zone.

They used a group of 39 volunteers to test the method.

The volunteers were asked to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day for two weeks.

Next, they were asked to sleep in the lab, where some were exposed to continuous light and others a strobe light (two-millisecond flashes of light, similar to a camera flash, 10 seconds apart) for an hour.

The flashing-light group reported an almost two-hour delay in the onset of sleepiness the following night.

The researchers believe that the light beams travel through the eyelids and tell the brain to re-set the body clock.

 

 

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