How to Treat Jet Lag: Night Lights can Help, Scientists Suggest

Scientists may have found a cure for jet lags other than medication and other conventional treatment procedures. This one comes in the form of short flashing lights at night.

The findings of a study published on Monday in the Journal of Clinical Investigation suggests that when people are exposed to short flashes of light while sleeping, the brain responds by resetting the biological clock that could help those travelling from different time zones adjust more easily.

"Jet lag itself is really a nuisance syndrome as it is self-resolving," senior author Jamie Zeitzer told Reuters Health in an email.

"However, the treatments that are developed for jet lag can be used for less prevalent, though far more significant societal problems including delayed sleep in teens (in whom we have an ongoing clinical trial using the flash technique) and shift workers who try to flip between a night time schedule for work and a daytime schedule for leisure," added Zeitzer, who is also an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California.

In the study, 39 participants between the age of 19 and 36 were asked to go on a regular sleep cycle where they go to bed and wake up at the same time on a daily basis for about a couple of weeks. Some of the participants were then exposed to continuous light for an hour while sleeping in the lab. Another group was exposed to a sequence of flashes of various frequencies for an hour.

The researchers found that there was about a two-hour delay in the sleepiness the following night on those who were exposed to two-millisecond flashes of light every 10 seconds. Those who were exposed to continuous light, on the other hand, had a delay in sleepiness of just 36 minutes.

"The circadian clock is the central conductor of the many clocks that are found in nearly all tissues of your body," Zeitzer said. "This clock remains synchronized with the external day through regular exposure to light."

The researchers concluded that using flashes of light can be more effective in developing countermeasures to jet lag as compared to continuous light, which is being used today in some light therapy treatment, notes CNN.

The findings of the study is a positive step towards finding treatment that could benefit not just those who travel and experience jet lag in the process, but also those who have irregular sleeping patterns, such as people with shifting work schedules.

But, Zeitzer was also quick to admit that there is still a long way to go and more tests to be done before making any recommendations for the public.