Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Planes, pains and experimental starvation

I changed my clock forward to Taiwan time the moment we got onto the plane. It says 4:08am right now, which means it is just after 10pm back home. I haven't done a lot of air travel, but every time I do I come to the conclusion that I really enjoy being in interesting places, but I hate getting there. Flying is a pain, if they ever invent a teleporter, I will be first in line. Perhaps by some miracle we'll be able to fly business class one day, but right now I it's just painful. I can't sleep, I'm uncomfortable and there is too much light.

I did manage to convince Renalda to try one of my more interesting experiments.  We ate breakfast this morning, but have had nothing to eat since. That means we have been fasting for about 13 hours right now. I plan to only eat again at 8am Taiwan time, which will mean we won't have eaten for 17 hours. Why? I read an interesting article regarding jet lag. I may get the details wrong but the gist is that you can theoretically switch your circadian rhythm, by changing your meal cycle. The idea is that when we were hunter gatherers, if there was a scarcity of food we could quickly change to being nighttime hunters. This would quickly change our rhythm from diurnal to nocturnal. 

The problem is they also recommend you get lots of sleep on the flight, and I'm really struggling with that one. We'll have to see how we feel in a few hours time.

Ok, so it's a bit later now, and we had our supper at 8.30 am, Taiwan time. The stewardess was not impressed and warned me sternly that if I get food poisoning from the cold supper it was on my head.

1 comment:

M said...

Mark, good luck with this great adventure.....M