Scientists at the University of Warwick, jointly with those at Université Paris-Saclay, Inserm and Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (France), have challenged the widespread belief that shift workers adjust to the night shift, using data drawn from wearable tech.
By monitoring groups of French hospital workers working day or night shifts during their working and free time, the researchers have not only shown that night work significantly disrupts both their sleep quality and their circadian rhythms, but also that workers can experience such disruption even after years of night shift work.
Their findings, reported in a study in the Lancet group journal eBioMedicine, are the most detailed analysis of the sleep and circadian rhythm profiles of shift workers yet attempted, and the first to also monitor body temperature. This key circadian rhythm is driven by the brain pacemaker clock, and coordinates the peripheral clocks in all organs.
[...] Analysis by the University of Warwick statisticians of interruptions to sleep and rhythmic variations in core body temperature showed that night-shift workers had less than half the median regularity and quality of sleep of their day-shift colleagues. 48% of the night-shift workers had a disrupted circadian temperature rhythm.
[...] Importantly, even workers who had been on night shifts for many years still showed these negative effects on circadian and sleep health. The more years they had been on night work, the more severe the circadian disruption, contradicting widespread assumptions about adaptation to night work.
[...] Professor Bärbel Finkenstädt from the University of Warwick Department of Statistics said: "There's still an assumption that if you do night work, you adjust at some stage. But you don't. We saw that most workers compensate in terms of quantity of sleep, but not in terms of quality during the work time."
Journal Reference:
Yiyuan Zhang, Emilie Cordina-Duverger, Sandra Komarzynski, et al., Digital circadian and sleep health in individual hospital shift workers: A cross sectional telemonitoring study [open], eBioMedicine, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2022.104121
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 23 2022, @02:37PM (8 children)
IMO, the single biggest problem with night shift is, people waking you up at all hours of the day for petty little problems that could have waited. Or, worse, waking you up because they are careless, inconsiderate turds who don't think of anyone but themselves. All day workers know that they need 6 to 8 hours of sleep at night (or whatever their personal needs might be). But they have no problem with waking a night worker for whatever.
Got a night shift worker in your life? Do everything possible to ensure that he/she isn't disturbed while sleeping! Let him sleep until he wakes by himself, or the alarm goes off if he uses one. Yeah, you're going to make noise in your daily routine. Take it to the farthest corner of your home, or even outside, then be as quiet as possible!
The idiot who works on his unmuffled raggedly junk car right outside the bedroom window, revving it up just to hear it needs to be horsewhipped. Or, the other idiot who has to bang away on something with a sledge hammer. Yeah, ask me how I know . . . Oh yeah, slamming doors. It always seemed that no one under 30 was capable of walking through a door without slamming it! Today, I'm raising that to age 40, and I'm not sure it shouldn't be 50!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 23 2022, @03:10PM (3 children)
I live right off the main road here and have a roommate that works night shift. There are assholes that drive past doing 25 mph at 5000 rpm with their coffee can mufflers like some kind of peacock, as if anyone cared. They've attached their ego to their car, and they don't give a damn about anyone else.
Some big truck owners do the exact same thing, flooring it in their twin-stack diesel-guzzling smoke machine. They make that that engine roar so they can act like a lion on the Serengeti, announcing to everyone "I'm big, I'm dangerous, and you better get outta my way!"
They will never consider anyone else but themselves because that would deny them their preening and showboating. It's core to their identity, and no amount of rational discussion will change their behavior.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 23 2022, @04:18PM
Little secret about those truck drivers. If you look carefully at their stacks, there is no muffler. It's just flex pipe from the manifold to the frame mount, hooked up to straight pipes. The pipes always have to be 10 or 12 inch pipes, smaller pipes are verboten among that crowd. I never understood those guys, they quite literally throw away a couple thousand dollars worth of muffler, and pay another couple thousand for those straight pipes, to ensure they lose their hearing before age 50. And, as you say, to annoy every living thing within two miles of their trucks. On a quiet night on the desert, you can hear those fools ten miles away, sometimes more.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 23 2022, @04:40PM
Castration might help.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Sunday July 24 2022, @02:27AM
They think it's impressive somehow, but it always reminds me of the out of shape guy huffing, puffing, and wheezing mid way through a single flight of stairs. Not really that impressive that the thing has to work so hard to get up to 25 MPH.
Rational discussion might never change their behavior, but I wonder if enough pointing and laughing might.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by sonamchauhan on Saturday July 23 2022, @04:38PM (3 children)
> IMO, the single biggest problem with night shift is, people waking you up at all hours of the day for petty little problems that could have waited.
The bigger problem is we aren't biologically designed for night shifts. And neither is society. Dogs barking while being walked, people having a chat, someone in the apartment next door drilling their wall to hang a picture, a pool party in the apartment block, holiday festivities, workmen, kids going to school, kids returning from school, kids Trick-or-treating on Halloween, crying babies, door to door salesmen, courier deliveries, police door-to-door canvassing, census takers.
It's endless.
I think employees on night shift should physically work no longer than 5 hours (but get paid for 8), plus get a night shift penalty rate to reflect these twin handicaps they must overcome.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday July 23 2022, @08:14PM
I wouldn't say that's a bigger problem. It *may* be, but both are real, and which is more significant may depend on your environment.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Monday July 25 2022, @08:13PM (1 child)
Speak for yourself!
I've had insomnia my entire life. Alternatively, if these assholes would just let me sleep in a bit I would be totally fine. I would just fall asleep and wake up later than most folks (and could stop taking all that Ambien!)
Someone still being awake at night when a bear attacks, for example, seems to have provided some evolutionary benefit to our communal species. [theguardian.com]
Waking up at the ass crack of dawn and being able to fall asleep in the evening right when your precious little head hits the round rock your ancestors used as a pillow was likely only possible because of mutants like me. But that doesn't mean you aren't also a mutant with your particular sleep pattern!
(Score: 2) by sonamchauhan on Friday July 29 2022, @01:04AM
I speak for me of course.
Like you, I have insomniac patterns. During childhood, I'd doze off hours after everyone was in dreamland, only to be prodded awake and become the walking dead at dawn, then doze off in class. Even now, 2-3 AM sleep times are common. Thankfully, my job tolerates late starts.
Unlike you, I never tried pharma for insomnia (or rather it was never on offer). So if I am a mutant, I am lower down the X-man hieirarchy than you are. :-D
If my insomnia is a mutation though, it's not writ-in-stone for me. I have tried and forced myself to sleep in at times with a combination of willpower and exercising/overworking the day before. When I do this, I do wake up at the crack of down feeling more refreshed than normal. Also, I recall having more vivid dreams, indicative of better and deeper REM sleep. So if my predisposition to insomnia is genetic, it's probably subject to epigenetic modification [google.com] and/or environment manipulation.
Another funny thing: a wake drug in the morning -- even better than coffee -- is fresh iceberg lettuce leaves straight from the fridge. Chewing them zings me into hyper alertness, without coffee's after effects.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Opportunist on Saturday July 23 2022, @02:44PM
Because I have no problem working through nights and sleeping during days.
I also don't have a family and live in a quiet neighborhood where I can actually get some sensible sleep during the day.
(Score: 5, Funny) by mhajicek on Saturday July 23 2022, @03:35PM (4 children)
Hit the workers with a quasiperiodic Fibonacci laser pulse sequence to give them an extra time dimension and stabilize their circadian rhythms.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday July 23 2022, @03:55PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday July 23 2022, @07:45PM (1 child)
I understood the reference, but I still don't understand the meaning. ;)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday July 23 2022, @08:17PM
It's a really silly idea that couldn't be applied, but it's topical if you use a very wide context. I find this kind of thing funny, though not extremely so.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by jman on Sunday July 24 2022, @12:35PM
Yikes, then I could be sleepy-tired and refreshed-awake at the same time? The horror! ;)
(Nice tie-in with one of the other stories, BTW.)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Saturday July 23 2022, @03:47PM (1 child)
This represents one of the fatal flaws of human thinking.
"I was able to do it, these other people can do it." Some people take it further with labels. "They're lazy, undisciplined and not as good of a human as me."
You see this type of thinking across so many subjects. Many arguments about morality end up using this faulty logic. "I got through not having an abortion, so can you." "I don't drink, you don't need a drink." "I don't have a late night snack, you don't need one."
The reality is that everyone is different on some level. Yes, almost everyone is human and needs food, sleep and a place to live. How their brain prioritizes these thoughts is almost always going to be different than yours.
Is it possible that people can "think" alike? Sure. In America and much of the western world, we call this indoctrination. Free thought makes it such that your society likely won't end up with clones of each other. If you believe in free thought, judging someone for their thoughts is hypocritical.
Judging people based on this faulty logic is the beginning of false beliefs and assumptions made about the other, that lead to terrible decisions that can hurt people.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 23 2022, @06:15PM
"Don't let a competent person tell you what you can do. You'll never hear the end of it."
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by VLM on Saturday July 23 2022, @07:56PM
This seems to be a Stealth Anti-Immigration article. If you think about it, a dude from China living in the west and working during the day is "working when his body thinks he's supposed to be asleep".
Obviously people's bodies magically know when they're supposed to be asleep in their homeland, so immigration to the west or east violates their human rights to a good night's sleep. I guess north-south immigration is still permissible.
We can all come together across political spectrum to declare daylight savings time to be a crime against humanity.
Its not a work problem but a family problem. I had no trouble shift working as a single guy in a quiet apartment. It would be impossible with a family living day shift lives while I'm trying to sleep.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Saturday July 23 2022, @09:05PM (1 child)
This is oft' repeated. So it may be like beating off a dead horse, but humans evolved to do things during daylight and then sleep at night.
People CAN work at night but it is going to have some effects on their life. They should be paid significantly extra accordingly for the stress they are going to put on their life, not just because the shift may be undesirable.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2022, @04:27AM
> They should be paid significantly less
FTFY
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Sunday July 24 2022, @12:01AM (1 child)
That's weird set of shift definitions. Are they referring to hospital workers?
Production line workers frequently have first shift 8:00-16:00, second shift 16:00-0:00, third shift 0:00-8:00. For workers without children, second shift can be quite advantageous, allowing normal sleep 1:00-9:00 and an active free daytime while shops are open.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2022, @06:03PM
They did study hospital workers for this, but the 7-3, 3-11, and 11-7 shifts were the ones I've always known about. It might sound familiar to me because I have some nurses in my family, but even when I was a teenager working at a 24-hr gas station, those were our shifts as well.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by jman on Sunday July 24 2022, @12:32PM
I was on the "graveyard" shift for four years in USAF, and prior to that was definitely a night person, much preferring to be up with the sun, than get up with it.
7:30 AM was "quitting time", and by 2pm or so I'd need to be napping so I could get my six hours and be back up and presentable for duty at 22:30.
Since we night shift people were in the minority on base, the chow hall didn't have what I'd call a decent "evening" meal at 7:30 AM. Eggs, bacon, toast. Coffee. Seriously? One day I realized the literal interpretation of "breakfast" was to break one's fast, and still call every meal "breakfast".
These days, I still get the six hours, but am more likely to be up and about between 4 to 6 AM, though every now and again I'll get lost coding or something, looking up to realize it's almost time to get up and start my day. Still need the six hours, though, so hopefully staff won't call with issues for a bit. Hard to think with coffee grounds in your brain, as opposed to your stomach.
I wonder if all these later years of being a "morning person" have had a negative affect?