Goodbye Jet Lag: A pill that resets your body clock
With this revolutionary pill, jet lag will soon be history.
Now jetting through time zones and across waters won’t cost you that dreaded jet lag.
Scientists from the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and McGill University have unveiled an experimental drug that resets your body clock by fooling it that night is day and vice versa.
Travellers shape their schedule around their sleeplessness, but there are a lot more biological complications that follow a disrupted circadian rhythm — think cancer and heart attack. No matter where you are in the world, the human body is supposed to sleep at night and wake up in the morning. But after that red-eye long-haul flight from Singapore to London, your body will take days to adjust.
This is where the tablets come in. Within the white blood cells is the switch that controls the body clock. The tablets, containing steroid-based compound glucocorticoid, will effectively synchronize the clock back to normal.
The researchers isolated 16 healthy subjects in chambers and disoriented their body clocks. After taking the pill, the bodily functions adjusted immediately. The study was published in the Journal of FASEB (Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology).
Unfortunately, people working in shift rotations like security guards and nurses, best not be excited. “At this stage, we are not recommending the use of glucocorticoids to adjust the rhythms of night-shift workers,” said Dr. Diane B. Boivin, Director of the Centre for Study and Treatment of Circadian Rhythms, in a statement. “There could be medical risks.”
Right now, the pill is yet to be sold for general use but we are hopeful for jet lag-free travels!
Natasha Gan
