Exposure to flashing light ‘could aid recovery from jet lag’

Short flashes of light at night could help people to recover from jet lag more effectively, according to a new study.

Research from the Stanford University School of Medicine has been conducted to find an optimal technique for using light exposure to help people adjust more quickly to changes in their sleep cycles.

Current approaches involve sitting in front of bright lights for hours at a time during the day, which helps to adjust the circadian rhythm to a new time zone. However, recent studies have shown that light therapy works best at night, even through closed eyelids.

Moreover, it was indicated that short flashes of light are more effective than continuous light exposure, and could potentially speed up the process of adjusting to a different time zone before a trip.

A sequence of two-millisecond flashes of light ten seconds apart resulted in a nearly two-hour delay in the onset of sleepiness; for participants exposed to continuous light, the delay was only 36 minutes.

Dr Jamie Zeitzer, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, said: "This could be a new way of adjusting much more quickly to time changes than other methods in use today."