Some years ago a particularly harsh conjunction of trips took me to North Africa, Tokyo, Vancouver and then on to Odessa [Ukraine] with a 24-36 hour stopover in the UK between each journey. While I was happily skipping up the famous Battleship Potemkin’s stairs, I paid for it when I finally got home to London.

Biology magazine recently reported on some University of Virginia research suggesting that jet lag might actually shorten a human’s life. Tests on young and old laboratory mice showed a dramatically increased mortality rate for older mice when their normal physiological cycles were disrupted by shifting light cycles. Furthermore, there was a clear distinction between those mice whose days moved forward and those whose days slipped back. Under normal (stay at home) conditions, 83 per cent of older mice survived, but only 68 per cent survived a backward-shifting (travelling west) regime, while 47 per cent survived a forward-shifting light regime (travelling east).

Every regular flyer has their own remedy for handling jet lag—the most popular is a strong sleeping pill for the flight—and it would be interesting to see how the mice reacted to a course of the hormone Melatonin, or a change of diet (to high-protein meals in the morning and sleep-promoting high-carbohydrate meals at night).

The only sure-fire treatment for jet lag though, is recovery time. Doctors generally claim that one day is needed to compensate for every time zone you pass through, although there are fast-track solutions. The Luzmon Lifestyle Clinic in Kensington has just introduced a NASA-backed thermostimulation treatment for chronologically confused travellers newly arrived in London. 
I could have done with such a place in Kuala Lumpur for the time when I went for my breakfast meeting with a government minister—only to discover that the grey morning light was actually grey evening light.