Latest Weapon in the War on Jet Lag: Viagra?
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 05.22.07 | 12:27 PM ET
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).What’s World Hum? Here’s our story.
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
AngryLabRat 05.22.07 | 5:07 PM ET
Now you can be “up” for travel and a late night of Ooh la la and still rise early the next morning. Watch that dosage, though, or those airplane aisles will become even more cramped!
See my blog post on this topic at:
angrylabrat.blogspot.com/2007/05/take-viagra-for-jet-lag.html.
TambourineMan 05.22.07 | 10:10 PM ET
I curse you, Jim. I just spent 20min cruising the Singapore Hamsters Club website. And I want those 20min back.
Jim Benning 05.23.07 | 12:01 AM ET
Exactly, AngryLabRat. You don’t sound so angry after all.
Now TambourineMan, you know those were 20 minutes well spent. We should all be up on the club’s latest happenings. You’re just a step ahead of most of us now.