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Scientists give Monday blues a new name: social jet lag

July 24 2012 at 05:00am

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If you struggled to get out of bed on Monday morning, scientists have come up with a handy excuse: you may be suffering from social jet lag.

They say sleeping in at the weekend can leave us too tired for the start of the working week, with many remaining groggy until Wednesday. The immediate effects include poorer memory and reaction times, which would explain that familiar Monday morning feeling of sluggishness.

Over time, repeated changes to sleep patterns can also make you fatter and more likely to turn to cigarettes and caffeine, research shows. The study at the Rush University in Chicago into how changes in sleeping patterns affect reaction times suggests that a shift of just two hours can leave you worse off in the week.

Test subjects were asked to hit a button when they saw a bullseye appear on a screen, Applied Ergonomics reports. Unsurprisingly, they were slower in the mornings than in the evenings, but they were also far slower after a pattern of sleep similar to getting up early on a Monday morning after a weekend of late starts.

Lead researcher Helen Burgess said: “The weekend sleep-in is just the process by which people shift their clocks later; it wouldn’t be a problem except for that rude awakening on Monday morning when all of a sudden we need to shift earlier.”

Unlike occasional jet lag from travel, social jet lag makes itself felt every week. – Daily Mail


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