Did the 49ers just show us how to beat jet lag?

The sport might have been football. But the real contest Friday night in Melbourne, Australia was how two teams dealt with the bane of business travelers: the bleary-eyed anti-productivity monster, jet lag.

The San Francisco 49ers beat the Los Angeles Rams 27-7, in a game that looked a lot further apart than it was. But the two teams took radically different approaches to how they approached the game, with the 49ers arriving a week early and the Rams showing up just 24 hours before.

If you’ve ever suffered from insomnia, you know badly jet lag can ruin your night and subsequent workdays. The Rams, though, thought they had figured it out: aside from a difference in the calendar day, a morning start in Melbourne corresponded to an afternoon game in California. Instead of flying across the world, the Rams were trying to convince their bodies that they had never actually left.

Did it work? It certainly didn’t look like it, with Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford missing a number of his early passes. Still, this was a potential Super Bowl for sleep scientists…and an opportunity to test whether overseas travelers would be better off landing a day or so early or simply try to sleep on the plane.

It all starts with the sun

Jet lag is considered a temporary sleep disorder, one tied primarily to the circadian rhythm. Your body is used to a routine, and tries to key itself to the day-night cycle of your particular time zone. Adjust it — when the clocks change for Daylight Savings Time, say — and you can feel groggy and out of sorts; drastically reorganize it with overseas travel and the effects can last for several days. In this case, traveling seven time zones typically takes about seven days to adapt, sleep scientists say.

San Francisco pursued the conventional route: arrive early, get settled in, let your body adjust to the new schedule. The Rams, on the other hand, essentially tried to trick their bodies into thinking that they were still at home, even after a 14-hour direct flight. Reports say that the Rams’ charter included lay-flat beds (sized for football players) with blackout shades, familiar food, and so on. That’s not an unfamiliar strategy for someone with a busy schedule who has to fit in a last-minute overseas business trip: Rest, hydrate, and try to make the best of it.

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“In essence, they both make sense,” said Dr. Jamie M. Zeitzer, the co-director of Sleep and Circadian Sciences at Stanford, who spoke to PCWorld before the game. “It’s just a question of risk. The Rams’ approach is a higher risk because, from what it looks like, they’re basically going to stay on California time. They’re going to shift a little, from what I’ve read, but not much.”

Circadian biologist Dr. Satchidananda Panda, formerly with the Salk Institute, agreed. “That’s a tough question,” he said before the game, when asked which was the more viable strategy for dealing with jet lag. “Both strategies work in this case.”

Both scientists agreed that the risk factor would be how well the Rams players slept on the plane. “If they can sleep on the plane, and that is a big if, then when they arrive again, there there’s going to be no acclimation period,” Dr. Zeitzer said. “They’re just going to get off the plane, just like they were getting off the plane back in California, and their brains will be optimized for that time.”

But it wasn’t just that! The Rams were actually doubling down on their strategy, because they knew that the time that they played — “5:35 PM PT” — is actually associated with the body’s peak performance.

“Circadian clocks actually work in very strange ways,” Dr. Panda said. “Late afternoon is the time when our muscles are typically warm, the joints are warmer, you don’t need too much warmup time. The cognitive performance is much better, so strategizing and reaction time — all of these are actually much better in late afternoon.”

(A 1993 study found that West Coast NFL teams traveling east to play teams on the East Coast performed poorly during daytime games. At night, however, those same West Coast teams enjoyed a significant advantage, since the West Coast bodies “felt” that they were playing an afternoon game. A 1997 followup studying 25 seasons’ worth of Monday Night Football games backed those findings up, finding that West Coast teams playing East Coast teams won more often, by more points, often outperforming the point spread.)

Jet lag begins on the plane

A passenger trying to rest on an overseas flight must overcome all sorts of obstacles: the psychological pressures of a reduced space, a reduction in oxygen during a pressurized flight, remaining immobile for long periods of time, and the increased saltiness of airline foods because of changes in how the body tastes things at altitude. Some people don’t like flying; some people will have cocktails to compensate, Dr. Zeitzer said.

And, of course, there’s just basic biology. “There’s the intrinsic biological component, which is basically, is that you know you’re trying to sleep and be awake at times that are different from where your internal circadian clock is telling you to,” Dr. Zeitzer said.

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People even throw up their own psychological barriers to flying. “You know, psychologically, some people say you know they they travel one time zone and and they can’t sleep,” Dr. Zeitzer said.

“They say they can’t sleep, and so much of it is self-fulfilling prophecy, where basically you’re like, ah, I’ve traveled, I can’t sleep, and lo and behold, you can’t sleep because you’ve introduced this great new kind of psychological barrier to getting some good sleep.”

Lack of sleep has consequences, both physical and mental — though the Rams players may have felt them more than you would.

“If you’re recording my sprint times, there’s so much variability you’d never be able to see the impact of jet lag,” Dr. Zeitzer said. “But if I’m recording a Stanford sprinter or an Olympic sprinter, you’re absolutely going to see differences there.”

You may feel groggy, of course. But sleep scientists say that you don’t actually become less competent as a result; your ability to respond simply won’t be as quick. That plays out in a similar manner physically as well.

A small study last year found that reaction times increased by 11 percent after simulated jet lag. Whether that’s true or not, that’s why the Rams’ strategy was risky: If jet lag does kick in, reaction times could increase, and physical performance could drop. That’s not great when a quick read and cut is the difference between a running back getting a first down, or flattened by a linebacker.

This doesn’t necessarily imply that jet lag means your ability to make decisions will become less accurate. It may mean, however, that it will take longer to react and respond, which means you won’t be as sharp as someone who is well rested.

Strategies for you to avoid jet lag

If you travel far and frequently, there are techniques to reduce the effects of jet lag and airline travel, Dr. Panda said.

While in flight, the cabin is typically pressurized to 10,000 feet. That means the available oxygen to your brain decreases by about 10 to 15 percent, and even less if you have a breathing problem or nasal congestion. Dr. Panda said he recommends that passengers buy and wear nasal breathing strips to help offset that.

Likewise, you’re often sitting for hours, relatively immobile. The small vibrations from the airplane engines travel up into your muscles, tensing them. For that, a warm bath, a massage, or a hot tub helps to relieve that muscle tension.

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“In addition to resetting your jet lag, you also need to reset your body,” Dr. Panda said.

Another unappreciated aspect of fighting jet lag: food. Your body doesn’t know or care whether the meal is breakfast, lunch, or dinner, but it will expect a meal at a regular time. Dr. Panda said he recommends having that meal on the ground, even after you arrive at your destination.

If you’re traveling, and your body receives food at an unexpected time, you risk indigestion, Dr. Zeitzer said. But you can actually train your body into when to expect your next meal faster than you can shift over your sleep clock.

If you’re traveling west (from Europe to the East Coast, or from the West Coast to Asia) most flights are timed to arrive in the evening. Take advantage of that, Dr. Panda said: eat a meal on the ground at your destination, take a relaxing bath or shower, and then head to bed.

If you’re traveling east, many flights will land in the morning. If you’re on the East Coast, “forget about doing anything else other than sleep,” Dr. Panda said. Once you reach your destination, have breakfast, preferably outdoors, he said, where the sun can signal your body to adjust its clock.

That’s the essence of avoiding jet lag, Dr. Zeitzer said: getting light in the new time zone when it’s light out and avoiding light when it’s supposed to be dark. That’s why sleep scientists wondered how the Rams players would accept sleeping on the plane, arriving to an early morning sun, going to bed that night and then waking up early to prepare for a 10:30 am kickoff.

As it turns out, maybe not too well. For the rest of us, however, the Rams loss provided some insight into how we can beat jet lag, ourselves — though we’ll have to show how these teams compete in week two to truly know whether the 49ers’ plan worked.