flying shrinks brain

brain: Jet setting drains brain

HELEN PEARSON

Too much long haul travel could shrink your brain.

© SPL

Flying becomes even more dangerous this week. Even if you survive the

in-flight food and seat-induced deep vein thrombosis, repeated jet lag

without time to recover could shrink bits of your brain, research shows1.

Five years of long-haul travel without rest time shrivels parts of the

cortex and hippocampus, the thinking and learning parts of the brain,

reports Kwangwook Cho of the University of Bristol.

Cho, who last year found that female cabin crew suffer poor memory and

increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol after repeated long

flights2, imaged the brains of 20 air hostesses working for international

airline companies.

The group that had less than five days to recover when they flew over more

than seven time zones showed significant shrinkage compared with those given

a full two weeks to recover. The more demanding schedule also cut the

women's ability in spatial learning and memory tasks.

"It’s tantalizing stuff," says Charalambos Kyriacou, who studies biological

rhythms at the University of Leicester, UK.

According to Kyriacou, jet lag confuses the master body clock in the brain,

the supra-chiasmatic nucleus, which sends out signals — such as boosted

cortisol levels — to reset the rest of the body. A withering hippocampus may

be the result of disrupted cell division by these signals, he speculates.

"Your brain resets quickly but your different organs reset more slowly,"

Kyriacou says — it’s this that makes us feel lousy. To avert air-hostess

brain syndrome, Cho recommends allowing plenty of time to recover after a

flight.

whew! What a relief! It only affects females!

Is that why my friends call me a birdbrain?