Sunglasses Reduce Effects Of Jet Lag

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Main Category: Neurology / Neuroscience
Also Included In: Sleep / Sleep Disorders / Insomnia
Article Date: 10 Apr 2006 - 15:00 PDT

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If you are going on a long plane trip you could benefit from wearing sunglasses as they can reduce the effects of jet-lag, say researchers from the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, Scotland. It seems that by altering your light patterns you can tweak your body-clock to adjust to new time zones more easily.

Researchers examined one thousand passengers on long-haul flights. They found that for every hour difference when you travel westwards it takes a day to recover from the effects of jet-lag (without sunglasses).

Dr. Chris Idzikowski, study leader, said that jet lag is a physical thing - not something made up. He said the biological clock is 20,000 nerve cells in the brain.

The researchers found that travellers recovered faster if they wore sunglasses during some their trip.

When you travel westwards your day is much longer. If you fly from London to New York, your 24 hour day becomes a 29 hour day. When you travel east the day becomes shorter. Travelling eastwards is harder to recover from.

The researchers have devised a chart which tells passengers how long they should wear their sunglasses for, depending on their trip.

Dr Idzikowski said "The internal body clock steps up at dawn which is when we can manipulate exposure to light, it's a way of fooling the biological clock."

He added that immigration officials often ask you to take your sunglasses off - this can weaken the benefits.

This study was carried out by the Edinburgh Sleep Centre on behalf of British Airways.

http://www.edinburghsleepcentre.com

Written by: Christian Nordqvist
Editor: Medical News Today
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

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