The Jet Lag Curse

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31984, 10 May 1969, Page 20

The Jet Lag Curse

One of the more poignant slapstick scenes in the world is that of passengers debarking at Copenhagen after the over-the-pole flight from Tokyo and Anchorage. The clocks say 7.35, the morning sun is shining, and the passengers all look as if they need at least a dozen hours sleep.

And so they do. For one thing, they have been cooped up in the plane for about 17 hours, and even experienced cat-nappers will feel the effects of a flight that long. But by far the most damaging factor to the tired passenger is the newly recognised phenomenon of jet lag—the disruption of : the body’s internal clock by rapid travel from one time zone to another. The Tokyo - Copenhagen passenger is thrown off by almost 12 hours. The airport clock in Denmark may say that it is early morning when he gets there, but his internal clock tells him it is about 5.00 in the evening. Not long after lunch-

time. he will be groggy with fatigue. The same problem applies to all oast-west and westeast flights. A noon flight from London, for example, will reach New York at 1.40 p.m. local time, which looks as though it is no disruption at all. But the poor passenger will “feel” It to be six hours later than that Three Days The result is that he will be ready for bed by dinnertime at least Even if he fights off this sleepiness and stays up until midnight New York time, he will still wake up as if he were on London time—at 3.00 or 4-00 a.m. It commonly takes about three days for the body to adjust to the new time plan. Jet la£ has such a profound effect on many persons that some companies no longer allow their executives to take part in transatlantic meetings on the morning they arrive. Several American corporations expect their executives to arrive two or three days early to allow time to acclimatise, and the State Department requires the same of its senior diplomats. ?? Three Zones It is true that jet-lag effects are "difficult to pin down With scientific precision, though no-one who has ever flown across three time zones will deny that there is such a thing. Scientists do know in a general way that the body’s clock is set to run on 24hour cycles. Mental alertness, hunger, pulse, temperature and glandular activity all vary according to the time on the body-clock. When a long-distance

flight throws the bodyclock and the clock on the wall out of synchronisation, the body goes its own way for three or four days before accepting the new time. Thus, a man can be awake at 4.00 a.m., ready for dinner at 10.00 a.m., or mentally played out at noon, and there is nothing he can do about it except wait for his metabolic clock to adjust The problem is complicated by the elaborate food and drink served on long flights. A passenger has trouble enough adjusting to dawn-at-midnight Conditions even if he has not just eaten a huge dinner and drunk two cocktails, three different kinds of wine and a couple of snorts of brandy. Solutions to the jet-lag problem are, it must be admitted, often more trouble than they are worth. Some researchers, for Example, suggest living for a few days ahead of time on the schedule you AriU be following at your destination. The only real solution is to grin and bear it—-News-week Feature Service.