Well, after a few days away from blogging due to travel, here I am with a blog post that hopefully helps keep you awake 😉
The annual spring time change is upon us. Shifting the time every year is reportedly associated with myriad health conditions. Risks of heart attack and stroke increase. A higher number of traffic fatalities, medical errors, and mental health disorders have also been reported. All in all, changing to daylight savings time seems to be bad for our collective health.
How Might KAATSU help?
In 2021, a paper was released discussing how KAATSU could mitigate effects of flight dysrhythmia (jetlag) in athletes competing at the Tokyo Olympics. Athletes participating in international events are usually allowed to arrive several weeks before their event to adjust to the new time zone. However, the pandemic restrictions in place in Japan required athetles to arrive no more than 5 days prior to their event. This short period of time would not allow athletes to fully recover from the negative physiological effects typically associated with changing time zones.
Experienced KAATSU users who travel are familiar with KAATSU’s beneficial effects to help mitigate jetlag symptoms. This 2021 paper outlined some of the ways KAATSU can act on the underlying mechanisms that regulate the body’s circadian rhythm (internal clock). This seems to be another area where research is catching up to the lived experience of KAATSU users who have been using KAATSU to better deal with time zone changes for years.
While the change to and from daylight savings time is only one hour, it’s quite possible that KAATSU can help mitigate the physiological effects this change has. KAATSU’s jetlag protocol requires users to perform KAATSU prior to the flight, in the middle of the flight, just before landing, and then regularly for 1~2 sessions per day after landing. It seems to me that regular use of KAATSU in the evening before the time change and on the morning of the time change may have a beneficial effect.
This is an area that definitely needs more research, but it’s another intriguing way that KAATSU can help with overall health and wellness, beyond its proven cardiovascular and muscle-building benefits. I know I’ll be doing my KAATSU, as I have a kendo refereeing seminar the morning of March 12th and I’d like to be as sharp as possible for it. I’ll keep you posted 🙂