Health

Timing Your Meals Right Could Be Key To Beating Jet Lag

5th June 2017

By Harriet Mallinson | Published on June 5, 2017


Battling jet lag is an unpleasant business and often done with little success.

We might raid the mini bar for spirits, swallow sleeping pills or attempt to bore ourselves to sleep with a somniferous subtitled telenovela.

However, new research has proved that the key to beating a confused body clock could be as simple as changing the time you eat.

Delaying meal times delays the circadian rhythm of sugar in the blood, researchers from the University of Surrey discovered, and the findings could prove to be a breakthrough in alleviating symptoms of jet lag and shift work.

Circadian rhythms are approximately 24-hour changes governed by the body’s internal clocks and determine many physiological processes in the body.

Lead investigator of the study, Dr Jonathan Johnston, said: “It has been shown that regular jet lag and shift work have adverse effects on the body, including metabolic disturbances. Altering meal times can reset the body clocks regulating sugar metabolism in a drug free way.”

In the first human study of its kind, Dr Johnston and Dr Sophie Wehrens from the University of Surrey examined the impact of altering meal times on the circadian rhythms of ten volunteers.

Participants were provided with three meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner. In the first phase of the study, the first meal was provided 30 minutes after waking, with later meals at subsequent five hour intervals. In the second phase, each meal was delayed by five hours after waking.

 

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Immediately after each stage, sequential blood samples and fat biopsies were taken from each volunteer in specialized laboratory conditions that allow measurement of internal circadian rhythms.

Researchers discovered that postponing meal times by five hours delayed rhythms of blood sugar by the same time frame. This discovery demonstrates that mealtimes synchronize internal clocks that control rhythms of blood sugar concentration.

Dr Johnston added: “This new research will help us design feeding regimes to reduce the risk of developing health problems such as obesity and cardiovascular disease in people with disturbed circadian rhythms.”

He continued: “Our data suggests that adding ‘appropriately timed’ meals to a treatment plan of light/melatonin may well help to adjust additional, metabolic circadian rhythms to the new time zone. The nature of the changes in meal time will of course vary according to what direction people are travelling in.

“A general strategy might be that people could adjust their meal times to the destination time zone before their flight. It should be stressed, however, that this is speculation at the moment, as we need to expand the current proof-of-concept data to more applied studies before we can give more definitive advice

Current NHS guidelines already advise establishing a new routine when arriving at your destination after a long-haul flight: “Eat and sleep at the correct times for your new time zone, not at the time you usually eat and sleep at home,” they recommend.