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Jet
Lag Can Affect The Brain
NEW
YORK (Reuters Health) - Hopping the Concorde in New York and heading
to Paris for lunch may sound glamorous, but making a habit of
this kind of trip may take a toll on your brain, recent study
findings suggest.
According
to the report in the May issue of Nature Neuroscience, the right
temporal lobe, a part of the brain involved in memory, is smaller
in airline crew members who cross multiple time zones and have
only 5 days of rest before crossing time zones again.
The crew members
were compared with workers who crossed multiple time zones but
had 14 days of recovery--generally working flights that did not
cross time zones in that time--before taking another flight around
the world.
The findings
are based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from 20 female
flight attendants who spent at least 5 years crossing multiple
time zones and who logged a similar number of hours in the sky.
What's more,
the researchers observed an association between reduced volume
of the right temporal lobe and high levels of the stress hormone
cortisol in airline crew members. And when the women in the study
were given tests to check their reaction times, the short-recovery
crew performed worse, taking an average of 823 milliseconds to
respond versus 741 milliseconds for the long-recovery crew.
A previous
study by the investigators found that airline workers subjected
to repeated jet lag had higher levels of cortisol, as well as
impaired memory.
In an interview
with Reuters Health, study author Dr. Kwangwook Cho of the University
of Bristol in the UK said more research is needed to determine
whether the damage is permanent or just a temporary side effect
of working such schedules. It is also not clear if giving the
body more time to recover could prevent the problem, or exactly
why crossing time zones may cause a change in brain volume.
Adjusting
to different time zones can disrupt the circadian rhythm--the
internal clock that regulates when we sleep--causing the groggy
feeling known as jet lag.
``The findings
of the present study...suggest that jet lag recovery period may
be a potential way to eliminate the temporal lobe atrophy associated
with repeated jet lag,'' Cho and colleagues conclude.
Past studies
of people with depression or post-traumatic stress disorder have
shown that high levels of cortisol are associated with a reduction
in temporal lobe volume, as well as memory impairment.
SOURCE:
Nature Neuroscience 2001;4:567-568.
Reference
Source 89
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