Anti-jet lag app resets circadian rhythms

Whether it’s going back home on Thanksgiving, or coming back from studying abroad, many of us have fallen victim to jet lag. We find ourselves waiting impatiently for our bodies to catch up to our new schedules, sometimes trying to reassign our circadian rhythm, or internal clock, with caffeine or nyquil. Like the hangover, jet lag holds special place in daily conversation as one of those ailments for which everyone has a remedy but no one has a cure. Until now, that is, as a group of researchers at the University of Michigan believe they have developed a system to help global travelers overcome their jet lag quicker and easier than ever before.

Remarkably, this tool is only a free download away on the Itunes app store, with an android version coming soon. Entrain, developed by Olivia Walch, a graduate student at the University of Michigan, is a mobile app aimed at resetting your circadian rhythm and helping you optimally adjust to changing time zones. The app is rooted in mathematical models of human circadian rhythms recently developed by Danny Forger, a professor of mathematics and computational medicine at the University of Michigan. His most recent worked includes a publication in the journal PLOS Computational Biology in which he outlines two of the models used by Entrain.

This anti-jet lag app works by first creating a detailed account of the user’s circadian rhythm. It records not only the time of day and the user’s duration of sleep, but also factors in the intensity of light a person is exposed to over the course of the day. These factors together help the app tailor its recommendations to best suit the user. It builds on recent scientific findings that show how exposure to different intensities of light at different points of the day can influence a circadian rhythm. 

If the user alerts Entrain to a change in location, the app can implement a schedule with recommended light exposure and sleep times so the user can make the easiest possible transition. The power of this approach comes from Entrain’s flexibility. The plan is a function of the user’s individual circadian rhythm and will adapt if the user fails to follow the app’s directions.

This development represents a work in progress, as Entrain was developed as a service to the public and a research tool. Forger and his colleagues have made the app free to the public but have requested that users anonymously report jet lag and travel information to the app for further improvement of the models. Entrain has soared in popularity, particularly among the travel community, ranking ahead of popular travel apps such as JetBlue and Skype. With this potentially large dataset, these algorithms will only improve with time.