Word: lag
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...there a medical condition more emblematic of the modern age than jet lag? Dislocated and deadened, the sleep-starved traveler wanders through meetings or tourist sites in a somnambulant haze. Now an experimental drug promises to reset the body's internal clock and banish jet lag zombies for good - and, surprise, it comes in a pill...
...drug, tasimelteon, works by mimicking the effects of the naturally occurring hormone melatonin, which has long been identified as the regulator of the body's sleep and wake patterns. In Phase II and III clinical trials of 450 people who were subjected to simulated jet lag in a sleep laboratory (participants were forced to go to bed at 6 p.m. and wake up at 2 a.m.), a team from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston found that the new drug restored near normal sleep the first night it was used. In one arm of the study, participants taking...
Melatonin, which is available over the counter in pill form, is a known treatment for jet lag, but the substance can't be patented, leading drug companies like Vanda Pharmaceuticals, the maker of tasimelteon, to rush to develop drugs that imitate it. Dr. Irshaad Ebrahim, medical director of the London Sleep Centre, says the recent study, published Dec. 2 in the journal The Lancet, confirms what experts already know. "I'm not sure this adds anything. Melatonin itself can be quite effective on its own. So, of course, something that mimics melatonin would show promising results," he says...
...developed more reliable - albeit more complicated than popping a pill - methods of altering the body's natural melatonin production, which may help some of the 100 million people who take international flights from the U.S. each year, and the millions more who live in a perpetual state of jet lag due to night-shift work. One strategy is to use light-dark exposure, which helps cue the body's circadian rhythm. British Airways, for example, offers a "jet-lag calculator" that applies research into bright-light therapy to advise passengers when to sit in a pitch-black room and when...
Highlight Reel:1. On Brando (known as Bud as a child) and his early desire to prove everybody wrong: "Academically, he continued to lag, and various members of the faculty implied-or said outright-that he would never amount to anything. The athletic coaches disagreed: the following year Bud won letters in track and football, finished first in the school decathalon, and set a record by doing one thousand straight push-ups. He might have done more, but a teacher, worried that the youth would strain his heart, ordered him to stop...