According to a study published some time ago in the journal Nature Neuroscience , flight attendants who constantly make transoceanic flights and cross several time zones , with little time to rest between trips, have an area of the brain called the right temporal lobe that is smaller than usual. normal . According to Kwangwook Cho, a researcher at the University of Bristol and co-author of the work, this phenomenon is due to the fact that frequent jet lag is not good for the human body, since it increases hydrocortisone levels , which in turn shrinks this linked brain area to memory. In fact, in a series of tests carried out on the workers, Cho and his colleagues found that their short-term memory and their capacity for cognitive abstraction are slightly diminished after five years working under these conditions.
Although the researchers chose to focus their experiments on women because of their greater sensitivity to the effects of jet lag , the scientists suspect that this same brain change also occurs in male aircraft crews. And they warn that this is a health risk that airlines should be aware of.
