How to beat jet lag in a flash

Jet lag can be prevented by “hacking” into the body’s circadian rhythm during sleep using a flashing alarm clock, Stanford University has discovered.

Many people suffer from the sluggish feeling after flying to a different time zone.

But scientists have shown that it’s possible for travellers to get a head start on jet lag before it even happens by tricking the body into thinking that dawn is breaking earlier. Being subjected to short flashes of light while asleep before a trip speeds up the process of adjusting to a different time zone, researchers have proven.

“This may be a new way of adjusting much more quickly to time changes than other methods in use today,” said Dr. Jamie Zeitzer, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford University in California.

Zeitzer said it was a kind of “biological hacking” that convinced the brain the day had started earlier.

Researchers recruited 39 participants from age 19 to 36 and synchronized their sleep routine so they were going to bed and waking up at the same time every day for about two weeks.

They then had the volunteers sleep in the lab, where half were exposed to a sequence of flashes of various frequencies for an hour while asleep.

The study found that a sequence of two-millisecond flashes of light 10 seconds apart elicited a nearly two-hour difference in the onset of sleepiness the following day.

FOTOLIA Many people suffer from jet lag, but researchers may have found a way to combat it by using a series of microflashes during sleep to trick the brain.