New Drug Resets Internal Clock & Makes Jet Lag a Thing of the Past

Researchers at McGill University and Douglas Mental Health University Institute have developed a pill that can reset the body’s circadian rhythm, which could help eliminate the plague of jet lag.

Bedraggled travelers may soon be able to rest easy thanks to a new experimental drug — a pill that eliminated the fog of jet lag.

The pill — developed by researchers at Canada’s McGill University and specialists at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute — works by synchronizing the body’s white blood cells and resetting an individual’s circadian rhythm. Long-term disruption of the circadian rhythm, which regulates the body’s sleep cycle, has been linked to an array of illnesses, including stress, heart disease and even cancer.

In findings published to the Journal of Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, the researched explained that white blood cells hold biological clocks that are controlled by a switch in the brain and govern the body’s response to night and day. The pills developed by researchers contain a steroid-based compound called glucocorticoid, which can reset the body clock.

While the pills are not yet approved for general use, they have been successfully tested on 16 subjects who were put into isolation chambers and voluntarily had their circadian rhythms disrupted.

“Problems adjusting to atypical work schedules are a major issue for society,” explained Diane Boivin of the Douglas Medical Health University Institute. Previous studies, she said, show that desynchronized circadian clocks not only disrupt sleep, but the performance and cardiac parameters of shift workers.

Whether individuals use it for adjusting to the graveyard shift or, as in the case of so many business travelers, taking the red-eye, researchers believe the pill could “open the door to innovative therapies” for those who frequently need to change their sleep patterns.

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