The New York Times ran a piece on the science of dealing with jet lag. But who’s going to do this?
- Dr. Charmane I. Eastman, director of the Biological Rhythms Research Lab at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, said she had found one way to virtually eliminate jet lag from, say, a New York-Milan flight.
It involves resetting your body clock with small doses of the hormone melatonin for three days before flight time — combined with going to bed an hour earlier each day — and then taking in bright light, natural or artificial, after arriving in Italy about six hours later. She recommends using a light box, widely used to treat the “winter blues.”
Better is the article’s suggestion to drink some coffee and take a better. Better still, here are my previous tips on jet lag.