If you’ve ever suffered from insomnia, you know badly jet lag can ruin your night and subsequent workdays. The Rams, though, thought they had figured it out: aside from a difference in the calendar day, a morning start in Melbourne corresponded to an afternoon game in California. Instead of flying across the world, the Rams were trying to convince their bodies that they had never actually left.
Did it work? It certainly didn’t look like it, with Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford missing a number of his early passes. Still, this was a potential Super Bowl for sleep scientists…and an opportunity to test whether overseas travelers would be better off landing a day or so early or simply try to sleep on the plane.
It all starts with the sun
Jet lag is considered a temporary sleep disorder, one tied primarily to the circadian rhythm. Your body is used to a routine, and tries to key itself to the day-night cycle of your particular time zone. Adjust it — when the clocks change for Daylight Savings Time, say — and you can feel groggy and out of sorts; drastically reorganize it with overseas travel and the effects can last for several days. In this case, traveling seven time zones typically takes about seven days to adapt, sleep scientists say.
San Francisco pursued the conventional route: arrive early, get settled in, let your body adjust to the new schedule. The Rams, on the other hand, essentially tried to trick their bodies into thinking that they were still at home, even after a 14-hour direct flight. Reports say that the Rams’ charter included lay-flat beds (sized for football players) with blackout shades, familiar food, and so on. That’s not an unfamiliar strategy for someone with a busy schedule who has to fit in a last-minute overseas business trip: Rest, hydrate, and try to make the best of it.
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“In essence, they both make sense,” said Dr. Jamie M. Zeitzer, the co-director of Sleep and Circadian Sciences at Stanford, who spoke to PCWorld before the game. “It’s just a question of risk. The Rams’ approach is a higher risk because, from what it looks like, they’re basically going to stay on California time. They’re going to shift a little, from what I’ve read, but not much.”
Circadian biologist Dr. Satchidananda Panda, formerly with the Salk Institute, agreed. “That’s a tough question,” he said before the game, when asked which was the more viable strategy for dealing with jet lag. “Both strategies work in this case.”