The Sleep Mistake Flight Attendants Make When It Comes To Jet Lag

Find yourself draggy for a week after a redeye? Just think of the flight attendants and pilots who do it all the time. Former Continental Airlines flight attendant Abbie Unger told The Huffington Post that for her, the most grueling part of working transcontinental flights was the varied schedule. Unger, who is also a HuffPost blogger, was an on-call flight attendant and did not have a set number of flights she worked per month. “I never worked a day that was nine to five, so I was constantly trying to regulate my body clock as I juggled early morning check-ins followed by late night check-ins,” she said. To help her fall asleep when her clock was messed up, Unger would carry the sleep aid melatonin. She wasn't alone: New data from a recent survey of flight attendants working for the Irish airline Aer Lingus revealed that as many as a third of the crew reported using some type of sleep medications at least once a week. “This is a concerning statistic, but not surprising,” Dr. Neil Kline, a sleep physician and director of the American Sleep Association, told The Huffington Post.  “Humans are creatures of habit when it comes to time. Our internal timer is set to an (almost) 24-hour clock,” said Kline, who was not involved in the Aer Lingus survey. However, he explained, being exposed to bright light or trying to sleep at different times than we're used to disrupts our internal clocks, which is what leads us to feel jet lagged. ...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news