Escaping jet lag on your vacation getaway

Your long-awaited vacation is right around the corner. As the calendar days peel away and you compile your to-do  checklist, the issue of jet lag looms if your getaway involves crossing multiple time zones.“Anyone who has ever suffered jet lag knows firsthand that our bodies are persistent in how they keep track of time,” saysDr. Alon Avidan, director of theUCLA Sleep Disorders Center. “During jet lag, a rapid shift in the light-dark cycle temporarily disrupts one’s normal sleep-wake pattern, and our bodies become desynchronized.”UCLADr. Alon AvidanImagine that you have just arrived in Athens after a 20-hour flight from Los Angeles via Paris. You are exhausted, your head is pounding, your eyes are shut and your 10-day trip to Greece is about to start.  Your guided tour of this legendary city will take place in two hours, but you are craving sleep. Avidan, professor and vice chair of the UCLA Department of Neurology,  says you are suffering from jet-lag syndrome, a special type ofcircadian rhythm abnormality.Circadian rhythms are regular and predictable cycles in sleep and wakefulness that occur during the course of a 24-hour period.   A circadian pacemaker in a special region of the brain — called the suprachiasmatic nucleus — controls circadian rhythms.  Light reaches special receptors in the retina of the eye, traveling along the optic nerve to the circadian center, causing it to “turn on” and make us alert, say s Avidan.“Darkness, or the abse...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news