Author: Donald Saunders
Source: isnare.com

Combating jet lag diets have been around for some time, but does it work? Perhaps the best known diet against jet lag is the Argonne Diet, developed at Argonne National Laboratory in 1982. Over the years, thousands of people have downloaded copies of this diet online and is reputed to have been used by an impressive list of people including the late former President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. Secret Service, CIA and the U.S. Army and Navy. Another aim of having been used by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Canadian swim team. However, when you realize that the only evidence supporting the effectiveness of this diet is a study by the U.S. military This list of 'followers' may not seem so impressive. On the surface the U.S. study military does not seem to support the effectiveness of the diet, although the report (published in 2002) has identified a number of problems with the study and stated that "controlled studies of larger and better quality should be used to verify the usefulness of the diet Argonne. " Perhaps the biggest problem with this study, however, lies in the reasoning behind the study and the group of people used for the study. hundreds of U.S. military deploy thousands of soldiers around the world every year and jet lag has a significant effect on its operations. Prevention of jet lag is thus something of a priority. However, curing jet lag on this scale can also be a very expensive business and looking for a simple, inexpensive, convenient and easily accessible, with few or no side effects was essential. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, which focused on the possibility of using a diet as nothing could be simpler or cheaper to implement. It also represented a natural solution without any emotional or medical problems so often associated with the usual pills or injections. Perhaps more significant though was the group chosen for the study. The volunteers were taken from 186 National Guard troops are deployed in Korea. Of these, 95 used the diet in the output leg of the journey and 39 used the diet back home. Two questions seem to arise here. The first question is whether or not results seen in a group of National Guard personnel could reasonably be expected to appear in the general travel population. I think most people would agree that this can not be said to be a representative sample. The second question is why only 39 people volunteered to try the diet on the way home, when 95 people had used the diet on the outward journey. Surely, if those using it for deployment had been effective, then you can expect more than 41 percent of them have wanted to use back home. These questions are of course important, but perhaps the real question to ask is why a diet should be effective at all as a cure for jet lag. Jet lag results from the inability of the body to adjust its own internal clock fast enough to ensure conformity to local time when traveling. For example, when you reach your destination and the clock says nine in the morning and the time to start the day job, your internal body clock may still be reading two of the morning (time to return home) and says you should be in bed. So how is a diet supposed to help solve this little problem? Well, the simple answer is, of course not. Yes, what you eat and drink may play a role in helping your body to overcome the effects of jet lag and may help reduce symptoms of jet lag. The diet, however, is only one small element in the equation to solve the problems of jet lag and simply making some adjustments to what you eat and drink before, during and after your trip, along with other preventive measures, is all that is required. Cure jet lag by using the so-called anti jet lag diets is a good idea, but, unfortunately, is more myth than reality. Copyright 2005 Donald Saunders