Math Models Could Make Jet Lags Bearable

Jet lag is a phenomenon associated with long flights, from a part of the world to another, when the biological clock of passengers becomes “confused.” As such, upon their arrival at the destination, they tend to sleep during the day, at the same time when it's night in their place of origin. It takes some time to get rid of the lag, and after-effects may last up to a few weeks. Now, researchers at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the University of Michigan have developed a new computer software, which uses mathematical models to prescribe to travelers a light-exposure routine that would cancel jet lag.

Naturally, it's doubtful that this type of therapy would completely eliminate the phenomenon, but at least it would make some of its effects more bearable, the team believe. Their program makes use of the knowledge that time lag is given by the fact that the body's internal clock is out-of-sync with local environmental cues. Additionally, it has been recently proven that two parts of the brain are involved in keeping us aware of how late it is, or it should be, and these sometimes don't work well together.

“Using this computation in a prototyped software application allows a user to set a background light level and the number of time zones traveled to obtain a recommendation of when to expose a subject to bright light, such as the bright lights sometimes used to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder. Although this method is not yet available to the public, it has direct implications for designing schedules for jet lag, shift-work, and extreme environments, such as in space, undersea or in polar regions,” Dennis Dean, the lead author of a paper detailing the find, published in the latest issue of the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology, explains.

“This work shows how interventions can cut the number of days needed to adjust to a new time zone by half,” the co-author of the journal paper, Daniel Forger, adds. In future studies, the researchers say, they will analyze the influence that stimuli such as naps, caffeine and melatonin could have on the human body after round-the-world trips, and if a combination of these factors, or others, could further reduce jet lag. If they find positive answers, then they will continue the studies, and investigate how to best combine these elements for an optimum result.