Jet lag is an ongoing problem for long-distance travelers. Early research, primarily with animals, suggests that sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, may help jet lag sufferers to cope.
Jet lag has a scientific name: desynchronosis.
It is a physiological condition that results after the body’s natural circadian rhythms are thrown off due to rapid transport across multiple time zones. Depending on how many time zones one crosses, and how quickly, jet lag can last for several days. Frequent travelers and airline pilots and crews have to cope with jet lag regularly, and airlines have specific regulations designed to help pilots combat jet lag.
The National Sleep Foundation says that behavioral adjustments are the best way to manage jet lag, and that sleeping pills only help with short-term insomnia rather than the underlying circadian rhythm imbalance of the condition. Melatonin, a natural human hormone that affects circadian rhythms, is used by some travelers, who take it an hour or two before they want to go to sleep as they adjust. However, the National Sleep Foundation doesn’t think much of this approach, saying it increases the tendency to sleep during the day without affecting the amount of sleep a person gets at night.
How Do People Treat Jet Lag?
Choosing a flight that arrives at its destination in the early evening and then staying up until about 10 p.m. local time is the recommended way to cope with jet lag. The National Sleep Foundation says that if you are overwhelmed by the need to sleep during the day, you should only sleep for a maximum of two hours. Otherwise, you should be out in the daylight as much as possible to battle jet lag.
And, like just about everything these days, there’s an app for jet lag. British Airways has a jet lag calculator that allows you to enter your local time as well as the time in the time zone to which you’re traveling to receive advice on when to be outside and when to go to bed once you reach your destination. Avoiding caffeine and alcohol in the hours before bedtime, as well as practicing good “sleep hygiene” (sleeping in a dark room with the proper noise level and temperature) are other sound measures to fight jet lag.
Yet Another Possible Use for Viagra
Viagra, the first and most famous prescription drug for erectile dysfunction, may actually help with jet lag. Though it has only been studied in hamsters, the results of this study, which took place in Argentina, were encouraging. In hamsters, light-induced phase advances (essentially adjustments to shifts in the circadian cycle) involve the activation of several compounds in the brain, including one called cyclic guanosine monophosphate, or cGMP.
Viagra, it turns out, works by blocking the action of an enzyme called phosphodiesterase-5, or PDE5, which breaks down cGMP. When a man takes Viagra, less cGMP is broken down in the smooth muscle cells lining blood vessels, and that’s how it addresses erectile problems. But would it work if you wanted to keep cGMP levels high in order to address shifts to the circadian rhythm (i.e. jet lag)?
In hamsters, PDE5 is present in the part of the brain that controls adaptation to changing circadian rhythms, so researchers gave hamsters Viagra to see what happened. It turns out that hamsters treated with Viagra and exposed to artificially changing day/night cycles adjusted to the changed cycles more quickly than hamsters in the control group. “These results suggest that sildenafil [the active ingredient in Viagra] may be useful for treatment of circadian adaptation to environmental changes, including transmeridian eastbound flight schedules,” say the researchers.
This study alone along with anecdotal evidence have already led some people to try Viagra for jet lag, with 1 in 10 zone-hopping Singaporeans admitting they’ve tried Viagra for this purpose.
Possibilities of Other Studies
Viagra has been studied for treating a wide range of conditions, including altitude sickness, pulmonary hypertension, and certain types of lymphatic tumors. With the encouraging results from the jet lag trial in hamsters, more possible uses for Viagra are raised. For example, people who do rotating shift work or those who regularly cross time zones as part of a jet crew could benefit from the circadian adaptation effects of the drug, though studies have not yet been done on this. People suffering from delayed sleep-phase disorder could possibly benefit, too.
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