“A fixed meal schedule and a larger breakfast can help reset the clock,” he said. Yellow letter “Pepper”is a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University and lead author of a study published in Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science.
Jet lag can be even worse for older people
Our brain’s 24-hour circadian clock and a network of peripheral clocks in nearly every tissue and organ drive our body’s functions. They respond to many cues, including exposure to light. food and physical activity.
As we age, our circadian clock network more prone But it’s not yet clear why this happens, researchers say. This may be partly due to the fact that the lens of the eye turns yellow over time, affecting light perception and changes in brightness.
Jet lag is one of the symptoms of a mismatch that occurs when your body’s circadian rhythm doesn’t match your outdoor day/night schedule.
Huang and co-authors have developed a mathematical model that simulates the potential. Change model variables to reduce the effects of aging on circadian rhythms during long-distance travel, reduce the body’s sensitivity to light, or weaken the ability of the circadian clock to communicate. Researchers create mathematical models that simulate processes in our bodies to better understand how we respond to certain changes in our environment.
using the model They found that it can take five days for a trip west and six days for a trip east for the human body clock to adjust to a six-hour time difference. For the elderly, the model predicted that he could take 7 days and he could take 9 days, respectively.
The model’s predictions mirror those of similar studies in mice, the researchers said. But they cautioned that the results showing that the circadian clock’s ability to adapt to new environments declines as humans age needs to be confirmed in clinical trials.
Work in this study was funded in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Simons Foundation.
How to get rid of jet lag
The new study’s model simulated four 24-hour meal schedules.
- 4 meals evenly spaced throughout the day and night.
- Eat three meals when you are hungry.
- Eat 3 meals at regular intervals during the day.
- Three days of eating a lot of breakfast and skipping the evening meal.
The researchers said they found that “basking in the sun, getting light and eating a good breakfast” appeared to have the greatest impact on circadian rhythm regulation. rosemary brownis a co-author of the study and an Associate Professor of Molecular Biological Sciences, Applied Mathematics and Physics at Northwestern University.
“All things being equal, you may find that focusing on eating breakfast at a specific time each day helps you recover from jet lag faster,” she says.
Although the model didn’t take into account the number of calories in a meal or the type of food, the researchers found that eating more food early in the day was better than eating the same amount of food throughout the day or eating less. It has been found that eating on a daily basis seems to be better for regulating the circadian system. A late-night meal, Mr. Brown said. Models show that eating a large breakfast and skipping a late-night snack can shorten recovery time from jet lag by two days.
For example, someone taking an evening flight from New York to Paris can have an early dinner before arriving at the airport, skipping the in-flight meal and avoiding the “midnight” meal of Paris time. Eating late at night can disrupt your circadian clock. Our brains may think it’s time to go to bed because our liver responds to the food we eat.
Once you land, you can have a solid breakfast.
The model is based on a six-hour time difference, but the findings could reasonably be applied to shorter time differences, such as the three-hour time difference between New York and Los Angeles, the researchers said.
The model in this study makes certain assumptions, including that light and food are the only cues that influence our body clock. Other factors, such as exercise and taking supplements of melatonin, a hormone produced by the pineal gland in response to darkness and dim light to aid sleep, were not taken into account.
A ‘Fantastic’ Study of Two Watches
Mealtime can be a “very powerful resynchronization” of the body’s circadian rhythm, he said. Ilia CaratzoreosProfessor in the Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, researching the effects of circadian rhythm disruptions on health.
“We already knew all these things,” said Caratzoreos, who was not involved in the research. “But given the way they’ve put together the tool, I think it could potentially help us ask some questions and generate some hypotheses.”
for research The study’s findings are backed by clinical trials, and the recommendation to eat a big breakfast could be a “goddess” for frequent travelers, he said. Sameer Hattar, Principal and Senior Investigator of the Section on Light and Circadian Rhythms at the National Institute of Mental Health, was not involved in the study. However, based on modeling, “it looks like it’s working pretty well.”
He said the mathematical model is interesting because it considers two different clocks that respond to light and food. Sacchin Pandaa professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences,circadian codeis a book about the importance of maintaining your circadian rhythm.
“In that sense, all of this is pretty novel,” said Panda, who was not involved in the research. “Most models of circadian rhythms take into account the effect of light on the clock. But very few take into account how food affects the clock.”
Panda and other researchers studying circadian rhythms said they “usually avoid airplane meals” when traveling abroad and try to switch quickly to new time zone meal schedules.
The good news, he said, is that breakfast options in Europe are usually much better than in the US.
