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Diet InformationDo Jet Lag Diets Work?
by:
Donald Saunders
Opposing
jet lag diets have been about for several time now, but do they work?
Perhaps the better cognize opposing
jet lag diet is the Argonne Diet, developed at the Argonne National Laboratory in 1982. Over the years thousands of folk have downloaded copies of this diet online and it is acknowledged to have been used by an impressive list of folk including the late President Ronald Regan, the US Private private secret Service, the CIA and the US Army and Navy. In addition, it is acknowledged to have been used by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Canadian swim team.
However, once
you realize that the only evidence to keep the effectiveness of this diet is a study conducted by the US military, this list of ‘supporters’ doesn’t maybe seem quite so impressive.
On the surface the US military study makes appear to keep the effectiveness of the diet, tho'
the report (published in 2002) pointed out a number of problems with the study and explicit that "larger and better controlled studies need to be used to verify the quality
of the Argonne diet".
Perhaps the biggest problem with this study however lies in the reasoning behind the study and in the group of folk used for the study.
The US military deploy hundreds of thousands of troops about the earth every year and jet lag has a significant effect upon their operations. Preventing jet lag is thus thing
of a priority issue. However, action jet lag on this scale can as well be a really costly business and so looking for a simple, inexpensive, convenient and pronto accessible solution, with few if any side-effects was essential. It is not maybe astonishing therefore that they focused their attention of the possibility of mistreatment a diet as nothing could be simpler, or cheaper, to implement. It as well delineate a natural solution, without any of the emotional or medical problems so often associated with the usual pills or injections.
Perhaps much significant tho'
was the group chosen for the study. Volunteers were taken from 186 National Guard personnel being deployed to Korea. Of these, 95 used the diet on the outgoing leg of the journey and 39 used the diet coming home.
Two questions seem to arise here.
The 1st question is whether or not results seen in a group of National Guard personnel could reasonably be expected to appear in the general traveling population. I think most folk would-be agree that this can hardly be aforementioned to be a representative sample.
The second question is why only 39 folk volunteered to try the diet on the return house once
95 folk had used the diet on the outgoing journey. Surely, if those mistreatment it for the readying
had found it effective then you would-be expect much than 41 pct of them to have wanted to use it once much coming home.
These questions are of course important but maybe the real question that we should be asking is why a diet should be effective at all as a jet lag cure.
Jet lag results from the inability of your body to adjust its own internal clock fast enough to bring it into line with local time once
traveling. For example, once
you arrive at your destination and the clock says it nine o’clock in the morning and time to start the day’s work, your internal body clock may still be reading two o’clock in the morning (the time back home) and telling you that you should be in bed.
So just how is a diet supposed to help solve this little problem?
Well, the simple answer of course is that it can’t. Yes, what you eat and drink can play a part in serving your body to overcome the effects of jet lag and can assist in reducing jet lag symptoms. Diet, however, is only one small element in the equation for determination the problems of jet lag and just fashioning several adjustment to what you eat and drink before, during and after your journey, on
with different preventative measures, is all that is required.
Curing jet lag through the use of so-called opposing
jet lag diets is a good idea, but, unfortunately, it’s story
rather than reality.
Copyright 2005 Donald Saunders - http://help-me-to-sleep.com
Just just about the author:
Donald Saunders is the author of a number of health related publications including "Jet Lag – A Natural Approach". Discover much just about jet lag and pick up your free copy of "How To Get A Nice Night’s Sleep" to learn the private secret to curing insomnia
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