Illness Increases with Length of Travel

We always suspected that jet lag was not good for us. Now a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine reports that athletes who travel through more than five time zones for competitions are two to three times more likely to get sick, when compared to their playing games at home. The study was reported in Travelers Today by Katie McFadden on August 9.

Researchers studied the health of 259 rugby players who participated in a large international rugby tournament in 2010. The tournament took place between eight teams from Australia, South Africa and New Zealand and lasted for 16 weeks. Each team traveled to places that were at least 2 hours from their own country and some traveled as many as 12 hours.

Team physicians found that, during the four-month tournament, there were 469 illnesses that were experienced by 72% of the players. Those who traveled five or more hours from home were sick 32.6 days out of every 1, 000. Once the players were home, the number of sick days dropped to 10.6 for every 1, 000 days.

The majority of the illnesses, 54.5%, were infections, which included about 31% respiratory conditions, 27.5% gastrointestinal problems and 22.5% skin and soft tissue issues.

The researchers said that aside from dealing with different time zones, the illnesses may have been caused by environmental stressors, such as pollution, temperature, humidity, allergens or altitude of the country. Different foods and germs may have also been a factor.

“The illness risk is not directly related to the travel itself, but rather the arrival and location of the team at a distant destination, ” the researchers wrote in the paper. This suggests that flying itself may not have been a factor that contributed to the illnesses.