The Anti-Jet-Lag Diet is more than a diet. It helps avoid jet lag with a coordinated plan that combines a number of time-giving cues -- including alternate days of moderate feasting and fasting -- to help speed your adjustment to a new schedule. Still, we call it a 'diet' because meals are central. What you eat sends your body signals about waking up and going to sleep. And because meals tend to occur at reasonably consistent times during the day, their regularity helps to reinforce the regularity of other time-setting activities.

The Anti-Jet-Lag Diet can help avoid jet lag with a planned rescheduling of time-giving cues. It starts a few days ahead of your departure date to prepare your time-zone adjustment by carefully planning the amounts and types of food eaten at meal times. On the day of you arrive at your destination, your body's clock is reset by assuming the same meal and activity schedule as people in the new time zone.

An example traveling east: A traveler planning a Sunday flight from New York to Paris faces a nine-hour flight across six time zones. The traveler plans to arrive Monday at 10 a.m. Paris time, and wants to advance his or her body clock so it is not still set for 4 a.m. New York time upon arrival.

To avoid jet lag, the traveler begins the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet on Thursday, three days before the flight. Meals are eaten at their regular New York times. Thursday is a feast day, to be followed by fasting on Friday, feasting on Saturday and fasting on Sunday. The day of the flight is always a fast day.

Feast days: On feast days, you eat three full meals. Take second helpings. Breakfast and lunch should be high in protein. Steak and eggs make a good breakfast, followed later by meat and, perhaps, beans for lunch. Protein helps the body produce chemicals it normally produces when it's time to wake up and get going. High-protein meals do not need to be exclusively protein, but they should emphasize it.

Supper is high in carbohydrates. They help the body produce chemicals that it normally produces when its time to bring on sleep. Spaghetti or another pasta is good, but no meatballs -- they contain too much protein. High-carbohydrate meals need not be exclusively carbohydrate, but they should emphasize it.

Fast days: On fast days, eat three small meals. They should be low in carbohydrates and calories to help deplete the liver's store of carbohydrates. Acceptable meals on fast days would contain 700 calories or less and might consist of skimpy salads, thin soups and half-slices of bread.

Whether feasting or fasting, the traveler drinks coffee, or any other drink containing caffeine, only between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. This is the one time of day when caffeine seems to have no effect on the body's rhythms.

Flight day: Sunday evening -- flight day -- you board the plane about 7 p.m. and begin the first phase of speeding up your body's internal clock to Paris time. Drink two or three cups of coffee between 9 and 10 p.m., turn off the overhead light and goes to sleep.

Destination breakfast time: About 1:30 a.m. New York time, you take the final steps that reset your body's clock to Paris time: You begin a third feast day, but this one is based on Paris time. It may be 1:30 a.m. in New York, but in Paris it's 7:30 a.m. -- your normal breakfast time. You wake up -- the coffee you drank before going to sleep helps you do this -- and eat a high-protein breakfast without coffee; it might be last night's supper, which you saved for breakfast. Most airlines will gladly agree to this request. The large, high-protein meal helps your body wake up and synchronize itself with the Parisians, who are eating breakfast at about the same time.

Stay active: Having finished breakfast, you stay active to keep your body working on Paris time. The other passengers may be asleep, but you are walking the aisles, talking to the flight attendants or working at your seat.

Monday afternoon in Paris, eat a high-protein lunch. Steak is a good choice. That evening, eat a high-carbohydrate supper -- crepes, for example, but with no high-protein meat filling -- and go to bed early.

Tuesday morning, you wake up with little or no jet lag.

The return trip, traveling west: On the return trip, the procedure is reversed, with one change. Going from east to west, you want to turn the body clock back six hours so that upon arrival at, say, 10 p.m. New York time, your body clock is not still set at 4 a.m. Paris time.

The same feast-fast-feast-fast procedure is followed as before. For the first four days, your meals and activities are on Paris time. Your fourth day -- a fast day -- is the day you leave Paris. In the morning, you drink two or three cups of caffeinated coffee. You break the fast with a high-protein "breakfast" at the same time New Yorkers are eating breakfast. At that point, you begin a third feast day, but on a New York time schedule. Do not nap on the plane after you break the fast. Stay active and alert. In New York, go to bed about an hour earlier than usual. Wake up the next morning with little or no jet lag.

The diet can be flexible. If you don't have time to alternate feasting and fasting for three days before you fly, you can just fast on the day you leave and follow the rest of the plan accordingly. It may not avoid jet lag entirely, but it will help.

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Anyone traveling across three or more time zones can benefit from the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet plan. Besides aiding travelers, this research has important implications for helping shift workers. Many organizations are using shift-rotation programs based on this plan to help workers adjust quickly to continually changing work shifts.

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The professional journal Military Medicine reported a test of the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet on 186 members of the Minnesota and Wisconsin National Guards during a joint training mission with South Korean troops across nine time zones. On the trip east to Korea, soldiers who used the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet were 7.5 times less likely to experience symptoms of jet lag. On the return trip west, soldiers who used the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet were 16.2 times less likely to have jet-lag symptoms. Read the Military Medicine study (1.6 MB PDF file).

In addition, the University of Chicago's Argonne National Laboratory, where the diet was developed, has received thousands of letters from people who have used the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet. More than 99 percent have been positive. Left to its own devices, the body normally needs one day to adjust for each time zone crossed. But proper use of the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet can help the traveler make the change in one day.

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Most layovers are a few hours at most. It’s best to ignore layovers and make the adjustment from your starting city to your final destination. If you are stopping for two or three days in one, you may want to adjust to that destination first, then use an abbreviated plan to adjust from there to your final destination.

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The diet grew out of studies of circadian rhythms -- natural body cycles controlled by molecular "clocks" found in every cell of the body -- by Dr. Charles F. Ehret, a biologist at Argonne National Laboratory.

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Hundreds of thousands of travelers have requested copies of the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet over the years. Among them are President Ronald Reagan (whose personal physician consulted with Dr. Ehret), the U.S. Army and Navy, the U.S. Secret Service, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the World Bank, the Federal Reserve System, and the Canadian National Swim Team, and dozens of corporations, scout groups, church groups and other travelers.

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Jet lag is a feeling of irritability, insomnia, indigestion and general disorientation. It occurs when the body's inner clock is out of synchronization with time cues it receives from the environment. Time cues include meal times, sunrise and sunset, and daily cycles of rest and activity.

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The anitjetlagdiet.com site is based on research performed at Argonne National Laboratory. Other approaches may work, but we have no detailed information about those approaches, since Argonne has not studied them. The following links may help you learn more about other approaches:

• Light therapy – There is evidence that exposure to bright light at the right time can help adjust your body clock
• Melatonin – A natural hormone that many claim combats jet lag, but research support for this claim is mixed and weak.
• Nojetlag – This site sells a pill to combat jet lag
• StopJetLag – This site combines diet, melatonin, light therapy and exercise to devise a plan tailored to an individual traveler’s itinerary and habits.
  

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High-protein foods that provide all the amino acids your body needs include meat, fish, poultry, milk, cheese and eggs. Proteins provide the amino acids your body uses as building blocks. They are needed for growth, maintenance, and replacement of body cells. They also form hormones and enzymes. The Anti-Jet-Lag Diet incorporates high-protein meals for breakfast and lunch because proteins stimulate the body to produce catacholamines, biochemicals that it naturally produces during the active part of the daily cycle.

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Unprocessed foods that are high in carbohydrates include cereal grains, such as wheat, rice, corn and oats, potatoes, many fruits and vegetables, peas, beans, taro, tapioca, sugar cane and sugar beets. Processed foods that are high in carbohydrates are pasta, bread and other baked goods, jams, jellies, syrups and dried fruits. Carbohydrates fuel the body's energy needs. The Anti-Jet-Lag Diet incorporates high-carbohydrate suppers because carbohydrates stimulate the body to produce indolemines, biochemicals it naturally produces during the resting phase of your daily cycle.

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Many plant foods are high in protein.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the following are good examples: almonds, 24 grams of protein per cup; blackeyed peas, 13 grams; broccoli, 5 grams; Brussels sprouts, 7 grams; cashew nuts, 24 grams; collard greens, 7 grams; corn kernels, 5 grams; creamed corn, 5 grams; frozen mixed vegetables, 6 grams; great northern beans, 14 grams; green peas, 8 grams; hazelnuts, 14 grams; kidney beans, 15 grams; lentils, 16 grams; lima beans, 10 grams; navy beans, 15 grams; peanuts roasted in oil, 37 grams; pecans, 11; spinach, 6 grams; sunflower seeds, 35 grams; and walnuts, 26 grams. For comparison, one cup of whole milk contains 8 grams of protein. The protein content and quality of vegetarian meals can be increased by adding milk, cheese, and eggs.

Even plant foods that are high in proteins tend to lack a combination of amino acids that the body can use to build tissue, hormones and enzymes. This lack can be overcome by eating the right combination of vegetables at each meal. Plant foods come in three basic categories: (1) grains, (2) beans and legumes (peas), and (3) nuts and seeds. If you include food from at least two categories in each meal, you will provide your body with a combination of amino acids it can use.

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Caffeine, like theophyllin found in tea and theobromine in cocoa, belongs to a class of chemicals called "methylated xanthines." Research has shown that methylated xanthines tend to speed up the body clock when taken late during the normal activity cycle and tend to slow it down when taken early in the cycle. During the middle of the daily cycle, they have little or no effect.

This means that for most people, caffeine consumed in the morning will slow down their natural cycle so they take longer to get to sleep at night. Caffeine consumed in the evening will speed up their natural cycle so they wake up earlier than usual in the morning. (Note that this is contrary to the popular belief that drinking coffee in the evening will keep you from getting to sleep; what it really does is wake you up early.) Drinking caffeinated beverages in the mid-afternoon -- say, between 3 and 5 p.m. -- has little or no effect.

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Figuring out your own Anti-Jet-Lag-Diet plan can be confusing when your trip takes you across the International Date Line. On paper, it may look like you skip a day when traveling west or start before you leave when traveling east. To be safe and spare yourself the concern, we recommend that you let us calculate your diet plan and email it to you for a small fee.

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No. Daylight Savings Time is continually changing all over the world. Rather than try to track it all, we take the simple approach of ignoring it. If you fly across several time zones and can adjust quickly to within one hour of your destination time zone, you’re in good shape.

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Alcohol is another food that can reset your circadian rhythms. But the precise effects vary with the amount consumed, the time of day, your body weight, and enough other factors that it makes predicting the outcome too complicated. It's easier to eliminate alcohol for a few days, making the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet simpler and more effective.

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If you are under a doctor's care, you should consult your physician before using the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet -- not because using the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet will harm you, but because varying your doctor's instructions might.

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The older you are, the harder it is to adjust to jet lag and the more you can benefit from using the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet. Pre-teenagers adjust so quickly to new time zones that they seldom need the help of the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet.

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