Oxygen deprivation: Can it cure jet lag?

Researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and the UK’s University of Bristol believe they have discovered a way to overcome jet lag, or any disruption to the body’s circadian rhythms – temporarily reduce the amount of oxygen in the air that you breathe.

In research published last Thursday in the journal Cell Metabolism, assistant professor Dr. Gad Asher and his colleagues explained that mice breathing thinner air with 25%-33% lower oxygen content had an easier time adapting to a six hour time change than those breathing normal air.

Scientists have already found that the human body has circadian clocks regulated by eating food and temperature, NPR and the Los Angeles Times explained, and the new study revealed that the rodents consumed greater amounts of oxygen in darkness (their active phase) and less when they were exposed to light (which is when they rest, since the creatures tend to be nocturnal).

While it remains unclear at this time if altering the oxygen content of the air we breathe could be an effective way to overcome jet lag in humans, Dr. Asher’s team believes that airlines may want to try and alter the amount of oxygen that is in the air that passengers on their planes breathe.

Less oxygen equals faster recovery – but will it work on people?

As part of their research, Dr. Asher and his colleagues cultured mouse cells in laboratory dishes and exposed those cells to various amounts of oxygen to determine which genes were expressed, the Times explained. They found that those cultures exposed to air containing varied amounts of oxygen (between 5%  and 8%) became synchronized to a new circadian rhythm.

The study authors then got their test subjects used to a cycle of 12 hours of light followed by 12 hours of darkness. Once the mice were acclimated, they made a one-time adjustment to speed up the cycle by six hours, mimicking the impact of a flight from Chicago to London. In most cases, the mice breathed air with 21% oxygen content (which is also what humans breath in real-world conditions), but for the experiment, some of the subjects breathed air that was 16% oxygen.

The 16% oxygen mice were found to adapt to the new day-night schedule significantly quicker than their counterparts, the researchers found, based on observations of their eating, sleeping, and overall activity levels. Furthermore, reducing oxygen content to 14% for a two-hour time period helped the mice recover from their so-called “jet lag” even more quickly, the newspaper said.

As Dr. Asher explained to NPR, the next step is to determine whether this ability is exclusive to mice or applicable to humans and other organisms as well. If the latter is true, then the next step would be to determine if it would be best to tinker with the oxygen levels before, during or after a flight, and whether a single treatment would be sufficient or multiple ones would be required. Provided his team can find the answers, jet lag may soon become a relic of the past.

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