Athletic Performance Following Rapid Traversal of Multiple Time Zones

1990 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick J. OʼConnor ◽  
William P. Morgan
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew W. McHill ◽  
Evan D. Chinoy

AbstractOn March 11th, 2020, the National Basketball Association (NBA) paused its season after ~ 64 games due to the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, only to resume ~ 5 months later with the top 22 teams isolated together (known as the “bubble”) in Orlando, Florida to play eight games each as an end to the regular season. This restart, with no new travel by teams, provided a natural experiment whereby the impact of travel and home-court advantage could be systematically examined. We show here that in the pre-COVID-19 regular season, traveling across time zones reduces winning percentage, team shooting accuracy, and turnover percentage, whereas traveling in general reduces offensive rebounding and increases the number of points the opposing (home) team scores. Moreover, we demonstrate that competition in a scenario where no teams travel (restart bubble) reduces the typical effects of travel and home-court advantage on winning percentage, shooting accuracy, and rebounding. Thus, home-court advantage in professional basketball appears to be linked with the away team’s impaired shooting accuracy (i.e., movement precision) and rebounding, which may be separately influenced by either circadian disruption or the general effect of travel, as these differences manifest differently when teams travel within or across multiple time zones.


2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-52
Author(s):  
Andy Fodor

Traveling across multiple time zones, especially from east-to-west so that hours are “lost”, has documented negative effects on athletic performance. Nichols (2012) finds mixed evidence that sports betting markets fail to account for these effects. We reconsider, for the 2005-2010 NFL regular seasons, the “jet lag” hypothesis with more direct methods. We find that closing lines of NFL contests are set irrationally such that the jet lag effect is not appreciated. More importantly, we are the first to document that betting against potential jet lag teams proves to be markedly profitable. This profitability is statistically significant, which is a standard very rarely encountered throughout the literature. Consistent with our conjectures, we find these results to be even stronger when only afternoon games are kept in the sample and when division games are omitted from the sample.


2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 394-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Christopher Winter ◽  
William R. Hammond ◽  
Noah H. Green ◽  
Zhiyong Zhang ◽  
Donald L. Bliwise

Purpose:The effect of travel on athletic performance has been investigated in previous studies. The purpose of this study was to investigate this effect on game outcome over 10 Major League Baseball (MLB) seasons.Methods:Using the convention that for every time zone crossed, synchronization requires 1 d, teams were assigned a daily number indicating the number of days away from circadian resynchronization. With these values, wins and losses for all games could be analyzed based on circadian values.Results:19,079 of the 24,121 games (79.1%) were played between teams at an equal circadian time. The remaining 5,042 games consisted of teams playing at different circadian times. The team with the circadian advantage won 2,620 games (52.0%, P = .005), a winning percentage that exceeded chance but was a smaller effect than home field advantage (53.7%, P < .0001). When teams held a 1-h circadian advantage, winning percentage was 51.7% (1,903–1,781). Winning percentage with a 2-h advantage was 51.8% (620–578) but increased to 60.6% (97–63) with a 3-h advantage (3-h advantage > 2-hadvantage = 1-h advantage, P = .036). Direction of advantage showed teams traveling from Western time zones to Eastern time zones were more likely to win (winning percentage = .530) than teams traveling from Eastern time zones to Western time zones (winning percentage = .509) with a winning odds 1.14 (P = .027).Conclusion:These results suggest that in the same way home field advantage influences likelihood of success, so too does the magnitude and direction of circadian advantage. Teams with greater circadian advantage were more likely to win.


Author(s):  
Russell G. Foster ◽  
Leon Kreitzman

While time of day, interacting with an individual’s chronotype, can have an important impact upon performance and health, severe disruption of the circadian system adds another level of complexity and severity. ‘When timing goes wrong’ considers the effects of flying across multiple time zones, resulting in jet lag, and shift work on human health. Sleep and circadian rhythm disruption is almost always associated with poor health. Four circadian rhythm sleep disorders have been identified: advanced sleep phase disorder, delayed sleep phase disorder, freerunning, and irregular sleep timing. Sleep and circadian rhythm disruption in mental illness and neurodegenerative disease is also discussed.


Physiology ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 1 (5) ◽  
pp. 156-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
MC Moore-Ede

The circadian pacemakers, which time the approximately 24-h cycle of sleep and wakefulness, resynchronize only slowly after an abrupt phase shift in environmental time cues. Consequently, we are not well equipped to cope with jet travel across multiple time zones or with rotating shift work schedules, neither of which was in the evolutionary experience of the human species. Recent studies of the human circadian system suggest some strategies to minimize the ill effects of jet lag and shift work.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maximilian Ullrich ◽  
Dorothee Fischer ◽  
Sebastian Deutsch ◽  
Karin Meissner ◽  
Eva C Winnebeck

AbstractAfter a flight across multiple time zones, most people show a transient state of circadian misalignment causing temporary malaise known as jetlag disorder. The severity of the elicited symptoms is postulated to depend mostly on circadian factors such as the number of time zones crossed and the direction of travel. Here, we examined the influence of prior expectation on symptom severity, compared to said “classic” determinants, in order to gauge potential psychosocial effects in jetlag disorder.To this end, we monitored jetlag symptoms in travel-inexperienced individuals (n=90, 18-37y) via detailed questionnaires twice daily for one week before and after flights crossing >3 time zones. We found pronounced differences in individual symptom load that could be grouped into 4 basic symptom trajectories. Both traditional and newly devised metrics of jetlag symptom intensity and duration (accounting for individual symptom trajectories) recapitulated previous results of jetlag prevalence at about 50-60% as well as general symptom dynamics.Surprisingly, however, regression models showed very low predictive power for any of the jetlag outcomes. The classic circadian determinants, including number of time zones crossed and direction of travel, exhibited little to no link with jetlag symptom intensity and duration. Only expectation emerged as a parameter with systematic, albeit small, predictive value.These results suggest expectation as a relevant factor in jetlag experience - hinting at potential placebo effects and new treatment options. Our findings also caution against jetlag recommendations based on circadian principles but insufficient evidence linking circadian re-synchronization dynamics with ensuing symptom intensity and duration.Significance StatementJetlag disorder afflicts millions of travelers each year - a nuisance on holiday trips but also a danger in safety and performance-critical operations. For effective prevention and treatment, it is critical to understand what influences jetlag severity, i.e. jetlag symptom intensity and duration. In contrast to what guidelines state, in our study, we did not find that symptom severity could be explained by the number of time zones crossed or travel direction. Rather, travelers’ expectations about how long and strongly they will suffer from jetlag symptoms was the only factor systematically predicting jetlag severity. If this holds true not only for subjective but also objective symptoms, we need to revisit assumptions about how circadian desynchronization relates to experienced jetlag symptoms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 76-82
Author(s):  
B. Ruby Rich

FQ editor-in-chief B. Ruby Rich presents her take on festival-going in the time of COVID. While noting the challenges posed by geoblocking and navigating festival schedules across multiple time zones, along with the absence of the excitement and comradeship that provide live festivals with their momentum, she observes that virtual festivals—liberated from geography—offer advantages in terms of access. Surveying the offerings at the Toronto Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and DOK Leipzig, Rich highlights feature films and documentaries that offered a welcome escape from her COVID-demarcated existence, from critical favorites such as Nomadland (dir. Chloe Zhao, 2020 ) and Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” anthology series, to discoveries such as Hong Sang-soo’s Domangchin yeoja (The Woman Who Ran, 2020) and En route pour le milliard (Downstream to Kinshasa, 2020), by the young Congolese documentarian Dieudo Hamadi.


Diabetes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (Supplement 1) ◽  
pp. 1031-P
Author(s):  
CEARA AXELROD ◽  
KRISTIN N. CASTORINO ◽  
WENDY C. BEVIER ◽  
GAL HAROUSH ◽  
CHRISTIAN C. FARFAN ◽  
...  

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