Jet lag: the business traveler's curse.

Those of us who travel frequently are aware of the symptoms: fatigue, insomnia, disorientation, inability to concentrate, headache, aching joints, diarrhea and/or loss of appetite.

For those who are susceptible, the potential hit from jet lag is serious enough that some companies will not let executives sign binding documents within 24 hours after getting off a flight through several time zones. The worst-case scenario? Fly eastward over six time zones or more; depart at night; drink lots of coffee.

Eastbound travel tends to be somewhat more taxing than westbound for the body's biological clock, that elusive but very real mechanism that organizes physical functions and responses under a schedule as regular as sunrise and sunset. Generally speaking, the farther you fly at jet speeds, the more time needed for your natural cycles to adjust to an familiar daylight envelope.

It would be nice to believe we frequent flyers can condition ourselves to jet lag, but that is unlikely. I can safely say I have never missed a meal or blown an appointment on the other side as a result of "the traveller's curse." However, after a 20-hour (net in-air) return to New York from Bangkok with just enough of a layover in Japan for a tall beer and a short earthquake (true), I went down for a full three days--totally useless, babbling on and on about arriving at JFK an hour before I left Tokyo, which was so. On monster flights like this, business travelers from either side of the Pacific seem equally hapless. Some try to roll into a little ball that can sleep in two seats; the rest usually pass out sitting straight up during the third movie, one arm extended into the aisle, fist clenched around three or four miniature liquor bottles with necks protruding between fingers like a set of brass knuckles.

Seasoned travelers in sales and marketing jobs make their own personal adjustments to jet lag. Ed Murphy, an executive who oversees a large organization's prodigious worldwide direct sales of audio/video/entertainment products, makes six or more overseas trips a year, most of them to Europe. "I arrange to arrive at my hotel by about 10 a.m.," says Murphy. "I immediately take a hot shower, draw all the blinds and go to sleep until sometime in the late afternoon." He gives up a day to minimize the ravages of jet lag. "I found out long ago that if I didn't do this, I'd be falling asleep in afternoon meetings for the rest of the week."

Kathy Gowing, a senior financial manager for Portland-based Justice Corp., says advice passed around in the company helped her evolve a strategy to deal with four or five Far Eastern trips (13-16 hours each way) per year. "Based on what others here have suggested, I never sleep on the plane either going or coming back," Gowing says. "I tried sleeping en route originally, but that just seems to make jet lag worse. I also eat very little and drink only water." Gowing usually tries to arrive in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore or mainland China by Saturday evening to be fit for business on Monday morning.

The toll that jet lag takes on business travelers has inevitably brought it under heavy attack. For more than a decade, the specialty of "chronobiology" has been getting more attention. Individual studies to identify both a prevention and cure for circadian dischronism have all followed generally similar paths. Currently, the most accessible approach is the set of complicated procedures put forth in the anti-jet-lag program devised by doctors in Chicago.

Meanwhile, dramatic successes in resetting the biological clocks of NASA astronauts by administering intense artificial light at programmed intervals suggests future methods for institutional prevention.

Rhonda Pearson, R.N. works as a managed care consultant in Los Angeles.