Time zone changes give some athletes an edge Professional teams traveling from later to earlier time zones win more, study finds

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Time zone changes give some athletes an edge

Professional teams traveling from later to earlier time zones win more, study finds.

Traveling across several time zones can be draining for anyone. So, how do professional athletes manage to turn around and compete in games after traveling from one coast to another?

Apparently, not always that well, a new study says. And that's especially true when teams are traveling from an earlier time zone to a later one.

When professional sports teams in North America travel west to east, they have a higher winning percentage than those traveling east to west, researchers said

The study authors looked at five years of regular season games for the National Basketball Association, the National Football League and the National Hockey League. They compared game outcomes and the direction of travel for all the teams.

The results showed an advantage for teams in all three leagues traveling west to east, but the winning effect was most significant in the NBA. The study only found an association, but suggest circadian rhythms of the athletes are affected. Circadian rhythms are the physical and mental changes responding to daylight and darkness within a 24-hour cycle.

They also raise concerns about well-established practices such as early training sessions and late-night athletic competitions and the possible negative effects on performance and health," said study co-author Genevieve Forest, from the University of Quebec, Outaouais.

"The effect of the circadian disadvantage transcends the type of sport being played and needs to be addressed for greater equity among the western and eastern teams in professional sports," she said in an American Academy of Sleep Medicine news release.

The study was published in the journal Sleep. It was also presented  at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine meeting in Denver.

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Martin Greyvenstein, Men’s Transformation, New Year 2016 Challenge
People with poorly controlled risk factors forheart disease could cut their chances of future trouble by having pharmacists help manage their care, new Canadian research suggests.

For the study, trained community pharmacists recruited people at high risk for heart attack and stroke. Half of the study participants received "medication therapy management" in tandem with a pharmacist and half received "usual" care.

After three months, people who received intensive services to help them meet treatment targets had a 21 percent lower risk of future heart events when compared with those who received usual care, the study found.

People receiving pharmacists' care lowered their estimated future risk of heart disease by more than 5 percent from the beginning of the study to its conclusion three months later. There was little change in risk for those receiving usual care.

"Since the risk for [heart] events is so high, any reduction is a good one," said study author Ross Tsuyuki, a professor of medicine at the University of Alberta. He added that "it is likely that we have underestimated the real reduction in risk," since many risk factors for heart disease change slowly.

The study focused on reaching out to people with multiple risk factors, consulting with them, prescribing needed medicines and adjusting medication dosages.

Delivering better care

Tsuyuki and his team believe the study may be the first large randomised trial of its kind.