Play Ball! (But First Adjust Your Circadian Rhythm)

Picture trying to hit a 95 mile-per-hour fastball. Now picture trying to do it with jet lag. Don't worry—it gets even harder for the pros, too. In a study funded by Major League Baseball, Christopher Winter of Martha Jefferson Hospital Sleep Medicine Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, studied the circadian sleep rhythms of professional ball clubs traveling around the country over a decade. He said today at the Associated Professional Sleep Societies meeting that he found whichever team was better adjusted to the time zone they played in won more often. In crunching the numbers, Winter figured it takes one day to adjust for each time zone a team crossed. So a team that flew from the Pacific to the eastern time zone was three days away from being back on its circadian rhythm. In 80 percent of MLB games, the two teams are equally adjusted to their time zone, so ...