Pharmacy on Web

Starving yourself before a long flight may help beat jet lag, a study suggests.

Normally, the body's natural circadian clock in the brain dictates when to wake, eat and sleep, all in response to light. But it seems a second clock takes over when food is scarce, and manipulating this clock might help travellers adjust to new time zones.

"A period of fasting with no food at all for about 16 hours is enough to engage this new clock," said Dr Clifford Saper of Harvard Medical School, whose study appears in the journal Science.

"Because the body's clock can only shift a small amount each day, it takes the average person about a week to adjust to the new time zone And, by then, it's often time to come home."

Dr Saper and colleagues knew that when food is scarce, animals are able to override their normal biological clock to improve their chances of finding food.

"This is built into the brain. The problem is, nobody knew how it worked," he said.

He and colleagues set out to find this mechanism. They used a group of mice that had been genetically engineered to lack a master gene that regulates the body's clock.

Starving yourself before a long flight may help beat jet lag, a study suggests.

Normally, the body's natural circadian clock in the brain dictates when to wake, eat and sleep, all in response to light. But it seems a second clock takes over when food is scarce, and manipulating this clock might help travellers adjust to new time zones.

"A period of fasting with no food at all for about 16 hours is enough to engage this new clock," said Dr Clifford Saper of Harvard Medical School, whose study appears in the journal Science.

"Because the body's clock can only shift a small amount each day, it takes the average person about a week to adjust to the new time zone And, by then, it's often time to come home."

Dr Saper and colleagues knew that when food is scarce, animals are able to override their normal biological clock to improve their chances of finding food.

"This is built into the brain. The problem is, nobody knew how it worked," he said.

He and colleagues set out to find this mechanism. They used a group of mice that had been genetically engineered to lack a master gene that regulates the body's clock.