Latest Weapon in the War on Jet Lag: Viagra?

Pico Iyer has described jet lag as a “place that no human had ever been until 40 or so years ago and yet, now, a place where more and more of us spend more and more of our lives. It’s not quite a dream state, but it’s certainly not wakefulness, and though it seems as if we’re visiting another continent, there are no maps or guidebooks to this other world. There are not even any clocks.” Yet some are intent on eliminating this place from our collective experience.

Hence, this week’s news that scientists in Argentina say the drug Viagra could help fight jet lag (regular Viagra, not the “Turkish Viagra” pictured here, though we’re sure that’s excellent, too). They’ve found that hamsters taking Viagra recover “up to 50 percent faster from forward shifts in their daily cycles.”

So we can all now fly off to Mongolia and arrive feeling unusually rested and a little, uh, “excited,” right?

Not so fast. Notes the BCC: “[T]he drug only worked in conjunction with light therapy, and only in one time direction—the equivalent to flying eastbound.”

What’s more, according to the story, “Injection of Viagra before the time shift meant the hamsters adjusted to the new time cycle faster, even when low doses of the drug, which did not cause penile erections, were used.”

Oh yeah, and so far, it’s worked only on hamsters. As they say, more research needs to be done.

It sounds to me like the hamsters still haven’t actually been tested with Viagra after real flights. How about at least giving them a free, all-expenses-paid trip to, say, Southeast Asia. I’m sure members of the Singapore Hamsters Club would be delighted to host a luncheon.

Photo by Tjeerd via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

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