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And I thought that that shitty feeling from the red-eye flight was just sleep deprivation.

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MSNBC.com May 20, 2001

Research: Jet lag shrinks brain Memory among mental faculties most seriously impaired

WASHINGTON, May 20 — Chronic jet lag causes a part of the brain to shrink and impairs mental functions, including memory, researchers said Sunday.

THE STUDY COMPARED the size of the brain’s temporal lobes of two groups of flight attendants who had different amounts of time to recover from jet lag. Using magnetic resonance imaging scans, researchers found that the group who had less time between flights had smaller right temporal lobes.

The findings appear in the journal Nature Neuroscience. “I found there was no deficit of language, but certain short-term objective memory and very simple abstract cognition was quite bad,” said the study’s author, Dr. Kwangwook Cho of the Anatomy Department at the University of Bristol in England.

Jet lag, a condition suffered by many people who travel over time zones, is characterized by fatigue, disorientation and disrupted sleep.

The sample group was made up of 20 women ages 22 to 28 who had five-year careers with international airlines and flew across at least seven time zones. Cho said he left men out of the sample group because women appear to suffer more acute jet lag.

The right temporal lobe is involved in visual recognition and spatial memory. The left is responsible for language. The study measured short-term memory and cognition, both functions of the right temporal lobe, and found significant deficits.

Cognition tests involved understanding and differentiating between simple symbols, such as the design of the U.S. or British flags. To measure memory, the women were asked to recall the location of dots on a computer screen after 20- to 50-minute intervals.

The findings could have broad implications for more than just flight attendants and other airline workers. Shift workers and parents of young children also experience disruptions in their circadian rhythms — the cycle of waking and sleeping and of lightness and darkness.

“The implication [of the study] is that rapid circadian shifts have a damaging effect on the brain,” said Dr. Robert Sack of the Sleep Disorders Medicine Clinic at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland.

“It’s interesting because we think of jet lag as a kind of a nuisance ... but this study would suggest that it may have more serious consequences than previously thought,” Sack said.

Further research is needed to determine how long the atrophy of this part of the brain lasts, Cho said, adding that a follow-up examination will be needed after the women involved in the study retire.

In previous studies, Cho had found a link between chronic jet lag and high levels of cortisol, a hormone produced by the adrenal glands. The hormone rises in the morning and drops in the evening, in accordance with normal sleep patterns. It also rises in times of stress, such as an argument. Cho and his colleagues found evidence that people who had been subjected to repeat jet lag had higher levels of cortisol and impaired cognitive abilities. Higher cortisol levels were correlated with a greater reduction in temporal lobe volume.

The results are consistent with previous studies showing that high cortisol levels, such as those associated with severe depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome, are correlated with a smaller temporal lobe and memory impairment.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), May 21, 2001

Answers

Is this why stews are so easy after the red-eye?

-- (Platinum_Pony@OK.corral), May 22, 2001.

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