Did Jet Lag Contribute to Famed Flight Attendant Outburst?

You’ve heard the story a million times now. Flight attendant gets fed up with passengers, curses them out on the planes PA system, quits job, grabs beers, opens hatch and slides down the emergency chute.

The theatric outburst elevated Steven Slater from anonymous flight attendant to working class hero overnight. He did exactly what everyone dreams of doing but would never dare to carry out: an epic cathartic release of all his job-related frustrations.

He’s been awarded with celebrity status, countless media interviews and eventually the inevitable book deal. Oh, and he’s charged with a federal felony.



What would make someone commit high-profile career suicide and risk going to prison? Exhaustion and jet lag must have contributed.

Jobs at commercial airline are among the worst for sleep. Most flight attendants are familiar with the dreaded rotating shift. Flight attendants are constantly switching shifts and making quick turnarounds. The most desired, exotic gig of working on international flights is the worst of all. International duty means shifts up to 18 hours long and constant battles against jet lag.

Living out of a suitcase doesn’t help either. A constantly changing sleep environment can be difficult even when staying in high-end hotel rooms.

Many of the stresses of the job are inescapable, such as flight delays and rude passengers. Flight attendants do have some degree of control over their sleeping patterns.

Sleep hygiene isn’t just for home. Try to bring your bedtime ritual with you on the road. If you’re a high strung flight attendant try taking a bath a couple hours before bed. Or pack your favorite yoga DVD and practice in your hotel room.

If you’re only staying in the time zone for a short time act as if you never left and sleep when people in your home time zone sleep.

Lengthier stays in other time zones require more preparation. Try gradually adjusting your sleep schedule starting about a week in advance. Go to bed a half hour earlier or later every night. Once you arrive in your destination use light therapy and try to stay awake until the late evening. It’s up to you to determine which approach to jet lag you’ll want to take.

One last piece of advice, take it easy with crew parties at the hotel. Alcohol will only fuel the effects of jet lag.

Don’t Let Bed Bugs Take a Bite Out of Holiday Travel

Last year, the Sleep Education Blog reported on the resurgence of bed bugs in North America, primarily on the both coasts. Infestations of the miniscule creepy crawlers can be difficult to clear once they get inside your home. And bed bugs find their way there by hitching a ride on your clothes or belongings.

Americans hitting the highways for the holiday weekend should beware of these blood-sucking bugs. Stay in one infested hotel room and the next thing you know your home bedroom mattress will be crawling with bed bugs. It’s impossible to tell by the naked eye if a hotel has bed bugs. You may think you’re safe if you stay at reputable hotel, but that’s not true. Even 4-star luxury resorts get them.

Hotels don’t want to ruin their reputation by letting the information get out, so most of the time bed bugs go unreported. That’s why a website called The Bedbug Registry exists. It’s a searchable website that tracks user submitted reports by hotel name, city and date. Be warned, the cases are not independently verified. But if a hotel has numerous complaints it’s a good bet it has bed bugs.

Bed bugs don’t transmit disease, but can cause itching and discomfort. There is no pesticide that kills the tiny creatures. Treatment methods vary. One way to get rid of them is through heat, by raising the temperature to 115 degrees. If your home has bed bugs its best to get professional help.

Will Jet Lag Affect this Weekend’s NFL Playoffs?

A Bloomberg.com story takes an interesting look at this weekend’s NFL playoff games. West Coast teams Arizona and San Diego both must travel to the East Coast to play. Will jet lag affect their performance? Results from this season suggest it might.

Arizona finished 9-7 to win the NFC West Division. But the Cardinals were 0-5 in games on the East Coast. San Diego finished 8-8 to win the AFC West Division. They faired a little better on the East Coast, going 1- 3. The Chargers kept their playoff hopes alive by flying east to beat Tampa Bay 41-24 on Dec. 21.

Why would jet lag affect sports teams? Quickly crossing time zones disrupts the timing of your body clock. This can upset your sleep patterns and your daytime alertness.

It’s harder to adjust when you fly from west to east. You have to convince your body to go to sleep at night, and to become alert in the morning, hours earlier than normal. This is bad news for the Cardinals and Chargers.

Playing in the Pacific time zone, the Chargers face a three-hour change when flying to the East Coast. Until November Arizona was also three hours behind Eastern Daylight Time since the state does not observe daylight saving time. But until March the state is now on Mountain Standard Time, a two-hour difference.

A study of more than 24,000 Major League Baseball games confirmed a jet-lag trend in sports. Teams with a three-hour time-zone advantage won 60 percent of the time. Teams with only a one-or-two-hour advantage won about 52 percent of the time.

So does the East-Coast advantage make the Panthers and Steelers a lock for this weekend’s games? Not so fast. The Cardinals will play their game at 8:15 p.m. EST. This may give them a slight edge.

Research suggests that athletic performance may peak in the late afternoon. Performance may decline at night as sleepiness increases.

A 1997 study in the journal Sleep analyzed Monday Night Football games from 1970 to 1994. It looked at every one of the games that had a West Coast team playing an East Coast team.

Each of these games began around 9 p.m. Eastern time. This means that games on the West Coast began at 6 p.m. Pacific time. In games played on the East Coast, the West Coast teams played at a 6 p.m. “body-clock time.”

The study found an advantage for the West Coast teams. They won about 64 percent of the games by an average of 14.7 points per game. They even won about 56 percent of the games played on the East Coast. Results remained significant even after controlling for home-field advantage and point spread.

So the “6 p.m.-alert” Cardinals will have a clear advantage over the “8 p.m.-sleepy” Panthers? Well, not quite.

Today teams have a better understanding of jet lag’s effect on performance. It’s common for them to arrive at the host city a couple days early. This gives players time to adjust to the new time zone. In effect the Cardinals may shift their body clocks closer to the East Coast time.

So how will it all pan out? Maybe each game will simply be won by the best team.