Skip a meal or two to beat jet lag

It's too late to try this trick for the holiday weekend, but some scientists at Harvard Medical School think that they may have discovered a "cure" for jet lag.

Normally, sleeping and eating times are dictated by our circadian rhythms, a kind of biological schedule that is at least partially triggered by daylight. When we travel by airplane to destinations that are far out of our time zone, it takes days or even over a week to catch up. Problem is, few vacations last much longer than that.

When the Harvard scientists worked with mice, however, they found that when food was scarce, a second sort of biological rhythm overrode circadian rhythms, which makes sense because if you sleep through dinner, you aren't going to survive long in the wild. It hasn't been tested in humans yet, but these researchers think that if you fast before your next long airplane ride -- at least 16 hours with no food -- you'll beat jet lag a lot faster than your fellow passengers. Worth a try? What do you think?