December 16th, 2011 by KerriSparling in Opinion
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The flight from Boston to London took just over six hours. The time change was five hours ahead of Boston, so when we landed at 6 pm, I was only ready for lunch. The trek from London to Dubai was almost seven hours, pushing the clock ahead a full nine hours from Boston, making my head hurt because how was it Wednesday morning when I was still on Tuesday’s timetable?
(I wrote about the impact of changing time zones for an Animas column last month, but I seriously had no idea what I was in for when I decided to take the trip to Dubai.)
That first day there, the Wednesday, everyone gave me the same advice: “Don’t go to sleep.” (It felt like A Nightmare on Elm Street.) “Work through the exhaustion and just go to bed on Wednesday night on Dubai time, and you should be good the next day.”
For the first few hours after landing, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*
December 14th, 2011 by AmyGivlerMD in Health Tips
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Many of my patients, over the years, have taken melatonin. Many other patients have asked me about it, but I’ve never had much to say. I hadn’t heard anything particularly bad about it, but couldn’t really recommend it. “Research melatonin” has been on my “To Do” list for a long time.
So here’s what I’ve discovered: Melatonin is a hormone. I’ve known that since medical school, of course, but that fact has struck me as peculiar these past few weeks. Why? Because it’s sold over the counter, and many people take massive amounts of it. No other hormone is available like this. The use of other hormones, such as insulin and thyroid hormone, need careful monitoring. Is melatonin so universally safe that it can be taken at any dose, for however long? The more we learn about melatonin, the less that seems to be the case. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Making Sense of Medicine*
