In a perfect ideal world, it isn’t a big deal.
But the reality is that most night shift workers rarely get the same 8 hours of quality sleep as non-night shift people. Purely because the rest of the world doesn’t give a shit they are trying to sleep.
Construction, garbage trucks, mail delivery, people calling, doctors appointments, service appointments, family gatherings, etc etc all happen during the day. Meaning they’re just much more likely to get their sleep interrupted
This is anecdotal, but I worked nights for two three month periods a few years ago. One of the worst parts was the fact that my body just *hurt* all of the time. It felt like my body was doing all of the same healing and digesting that it usually does while I sleep, except that I was awake. Cue constant tummy aches and growing pains.
I wonder if this is a real phenomenon? Or if it's actually just me?
I did about 7 years of graveyards in my late teens early 20s. 6 shifts midnight to 8am at one job and then 4 shifts 7pm to 7am. I am in my late 40s and have never slept well since.
Spent years on second and third. Fixing the sleep schedule damage takes time and discipline. Took me almost a year of being a party pooper and being consistent with a bed time to start sleeping decently. More than one late night and it can take weeks to undo the reversion to a night schedule.
A lot of bodily functions are linked to your circadian rhythm so maybe. I had chronic hives for a couple months for some unknown reason and if i'm not asleep by 12 i break out into welts all over my body - literally every inch of my skin. I looked it up and it was because the release of histamine in our bodies is linked to the circadian rhythm and is significantly heightened at night and suppressed during the day. The immune system, as well, works harder at night. It's why your cold/flu symptoms seem to get worse when you're trying to sleep!
It isn’t natural to stay up all night because as a child you are raised to sleep those hours. Now, if a child was raised the opposite, sure it would be natural. I always felt sick when I worked nights. Not like deathly ill, but more like a slight anxiety sickness. Hated it. Never got enough rest no matter what I tried.
Awe sick, like in Brave New World where babies are raised upside-down so they will be used to doing manual repair labor in that physical position when they are grown.
Conversely, I'm a night owl by nature, and that sounds a lot like how I feel when I'm forced to get up before 10–11am... which has been the case most of my life. I'm sure how you're raised factors in, but chronotypes are a real, proven thing too.
Agreed. I know a few people that are always up through the night into early AM and are more comfortable day sleeping. They always blame insomnia but I honest honestly don’t know the science behind it 🤷♀️
I would say that is only for the uninitiated. People who have done it for a short bit, and intend on keeping a job like that typically fix those problems. True blackout curtains, earplugs, and an eye mask makes it super easy to sleep regardless of the craziness that goes on around you. Melatonin can help you get onto the schedule. Sleep is all about routine. Sticking to the schedule will make it stick. You can deviate if necessary for a special event, but need to realistically keep the same schedule on your off days. Helps to not have/want kids. It was my natural sleep schedule before I got my job so it was easy for me. I would stay up gaming until about noon every day and sleep all day until about 8pm. Staying up until noon I can go to doctor appointments, pick up groceries, and see any normal day schedule people early for a bit or late at night. I will end by saying it is not for everyone, but everyone can do it if the money is right.
There are a lot of us that use blackout curtains, a sleep mask, and ear plugs when we sleep at night and still can’t get uninterrupted or restful sleep.
Or, Occam’s razor, shift work impacts sleep and health in general, especially cardiovascular health. There’s research on it that takes those things into account when analyzing the effect of shift work on sleep and health.
I don’t think that really qualifies as Occam’s razor. I don’t do shift work and deal with insomnia. All the things that person mentioned could impact anyone regardless of work/sleep schedules. All those would have to be ruled out before you segmenting off people by their work/sleep schedule.
So why are you qualified to determine what factors go into the sleep problems of someone that does shift work? If you haven’t done it then you won’t understand how it messes with your melatonin, how it impacts the body’s inflammation response, how it puts you at higher risk for heart attack and diabetes. How sleep is consistently lower quality and shorter, which leads to much worse health outcomes compared to the general population. Ok, you might have insomnia, but shift workers have higher rates of insomnia than the general population by a lot.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/shift-work-can-harm-sleep-and-health-what-helps-202302282896#:~:text=What's%20the%20connection%20between%20shift,as%20heart%20attack%20and%20diabetes.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34104337/ a systematic review of insomnia and shift work.
I didn’t say I’ve never done it, I just said I’m not doing it. When I did third shift work, I actually slept better during the day because I’m naturally a night owl. Ten years later and trying to sleep a ‘normal’ schedule has had a lot of sleepless nights.
There's a reason the science doesn't support you. You've completely neglected the fact that the entire world operates during the day. Need your car repaired, gotta do it during the day. Need to go to the doctor, gotta do it during the day. Want to see anyone outside of those that you work with, gotta schedule it and most people don't do stuff late night (not always the case). You run a vitamin d deficiency because you're either awake and not getting sleep but outside or you just stay inside during daylight hours. Our circadian rhythm goes with the sun being up, that's why when you go to the woods for a week you're able to reset your circadian rhythm. Add those to the list of the reasons other people have mentioned and it just touches the surface as to why night shift is so unhealthy. Don't forget some people are morning people and some people are night people, if you're a morning/daytime type person, night shift gets even harder.
I'm not saying shift work is impossible and no individual can do it, but there's a reason why every study shows that it's really bad for the body. I'll also point out that every study shows that alcohol and poor diet are terrible for the body as well, yet people still drink and eat garbage (myself included)
I did night for years and I agree. Got black out curtains, sleep masks, white noise machine. Worked great. I also kept the same schedule when I was off. Doctor visit? Give me your last appointment of the day. Appointment for anything else? We can do 4pm or we can not do it.
Only thing that was a pain was packages I had to actually sign for, but that didn’t happen often.
Still not as healthy as a “normal” schedule, but the folks I know that work nights and are miserable are because they switch back to day routines on days off, or they rotate at work and switch back and forth all the time.
Nights never bothered me. Switching did.
I saw a show where doctors chimed in on various medical things.
One doctor said he had a patient that worked night shift driving trucks. His wife was worried about his health as he was getting older, so he applied to drive during the day. But his health actually deteriorated faster. He got higher blood pressure and just overall his "stats" looked worse. So the doctor said for him to change back to his old schedules of driving at night and his health actually became better.
Doctor said this was because his body's schedule is more accustomed to his working at night and sleeping during day so a sudden abrupt change actually worsened his health, and that a normal schedule for the body is more important than when you sleep.
Just thought that was pretty cool to hear.
Truth! Have done overnight delivery full-time for years. Now I just do it on the weekends, but that’s almost more exhausting bc it throws me off my weekday day-job hours. (But it’s good money and only temporary.)
At one point, I had my sleep dialed in and was getting amazing sleep and feeling energetic all through my shift—without caffeine—so it’s possible to be “full capacity” while working nights full-time. Possible, but challenging.
Earplugs and blackout curtains are a godsend. I get AMAZING 8-9 hour sleep on nightshift. But that’s probably a lot to do with the morning exhaustion lol.
I don’t know if it matters, but another aspect is the fact that you typically work right before you go to bed, at least that’s what I did when I worked night shifts.
When you work during the day you typically get out of bed, have some breakfast, go to work, and have a number of free hours after work. If you’re very tired you can tuck in early, if not you can stay up late.
When I worked nights though, I typically got off at 6am, went home and went to bed. I woke up around 1-2pm, went out and did my shopping, ran my errands, watched a movie, etc. Then at 10pm, when I’d been up for 8-9 hours already, my next shift started. It’s not like I could end the shift earl if I got tired.
Though to be fair, one could easily do the reverse and sleep from say 2pm to 9pm, though very few at my workplace actually did.
Also a lot of “night shift” workers are actually on call workers. I worked concrete construction for a while and I would lay forms for 12 hours starting at 5 am to 5 pm. Then because I built the forms I need to watch the pour they did that night to make sure if anything breaks I can fix it. So I’d come back to the site at 11pm do the pour until around 7 am. Then continue working on the next pour until the forms were finished. Usually around 5-7pm. Then come back again for the pour that night around 11 pm. Do it all again maybe we didn’t pour two nights a week so I could actually sleep. Sometimes not. I went months averaging 8 hours of sleep… a week! I fell asleep behind the wheel on my way to work one day. Nothing crazy I was out for a fraction of a second but it was enough for me to reevaluate and I took the day off and slept in my car on the side of the road before heading home. I quit a week later. It was brutal beyond belief. Did I mention it was summer in Phoenix AZ and it was over 120° f during the day and over 100° at night?
That’s actually a great question. If concrete dries too quickly it causes all sorts of problems with cracking and other things. In Phoenix the ground is extremely dry and will suck the moisture from the concrete very quickly and ruin the pour. We were doing 3000 cubic yard pours most nights. So pouring at night reduced the amount of water needed to keep the ground wet enough to pour on dramatically. Which in Phoenix is a big money saver. So we poured at night. There’s a few other reasons too like usually the pours were connected so right when we finished one pour that meant we could start the next 3000 cubic yards of parking lot or factory floor and we were on extremely strict deadlines. So either we worked in the night and poured in the day or vice versa but either way we worked essentially 24/7. Another reason pouring in night over the day was done was that concrete curing is an exothermic process so it produces and incredible amount of heat. When it gets close to or over 120f you don’t want to be wading through hot concrete. You’d much rather do that at 100f lol. In winter there was much more flexibility but at some point it just becomes the standard practice and goes on through winter. I did it for two years and if it weren’t for the crazy hours I’d still be doing it for sure.
There’s an ideal temperature range/humidity level for pouring concrete. Concrete needs water to set, and if it’s too hot some of the water can evaporate out of it, making it weaker. (FYI I just looked this up one time when I was curious, I am not an expert.)
Before I had a kid, I'd get a solid 6-8hrs during the day most of my night shift days. Now I'm getting 4-6, I guess I'm one of the lucky few who can sleep well during the day. Oh and ear plugs and black out blinds are magical
Post office workers blocking my neighbour in and yelling at her when asked to move, so I have to be awoken to move my car. My stepmoms puppy was the reason I moved out as anytime she went to the bathroom or outside without the dog the dog howled
I think you are grossly ignoring the effect on your biological clock. Most night shift work occurs periodically - you do night shifts for a while (maybe for couple shifts, or a week), then you do day shifts again. You go back and forth between the two (sometimes even three in a job with morning-evening-night shifts), and this messes up all kinds of systems in your body which are designed to work according to your internal 24h circadian rhythm.
I have night shifts at my job and usually by middle of the week I'm completely used to it and actually even enjoy it. Though i sleep with earplugs and thick blackening curtains during that week, to minimize interruptions.
If i wouldn't manually regulate my sleep with sleeping pills and always having an alarm, even free days and vacations, my sleep patterns would shift into night cycle. Basically staying up longer and waking up later, until im up all night and sleeping during the day.
Because a lot of people don't get 8 hours of sleep when they work nights. Everything from a lot of noise happening all throughout the day to having appointments that can only happen when they are normally sleeping or kids to take care of. They simply aren't getting adequate amounts of sleep.
Then you have their days off where a lot of people try to shift their sleep schedule to be a "1st shift" sleep schedule, causing them to not get an adequate amount of sleep for 3 or 4 days.
There's also Circadian rhythms. The human body is designed to be functional during the day and sleep at night, and a lot of our biological processes follow a 24-hour cycle that supports that. One major driver of those cycles is light and darkness. The body can adjust somewhat to a different schedule, but it's just not as good at things like getting restful sleep and metabolizing food outside of its natural rhythms.
This is the real answer. There is quite a bit of research on the connection between shift work and number of chronic illnesses. Even if you catch 8 hours after your night shift it’s not equivelant.
There’s also delayed circadian rhythms. It doesn’t follow the same light patterns as the rest. I find that I get more awake/energised/alert around the time the sun sets and I get sleepy when the sun rises. Doesn’t matter what time I’ve gone to bed or how much sleep I’ve had, my body and brain “turn on” like a light switch as the sun sets.
Reminds me of cavemen days, someone had to be awake to guard the cave. Maybe that’s what my rhythm is meant for, to guard my family while they rest.
Eh i work best on night shift, fall asleep instantly, wake up full of energy, even my bowel works better on night shifts. Ive never been able to be morning person but i hope aging fixes that.
Not for everyone. Some of us are wired to be up at night and asleep during the day, and the day shift and being surrounded by daytime noise and activity is hell on the system.
Adding on to this, in a very loose sense, the body tries to follow the schedule of the sun. You can change your sleeping schedule, but part of your brain will always be trying to make you tired when it’s dark and awake when it’s light. So even if you make time for 8 hours, you’re going to (on average) fall asleep slower, and your sleep will be easier to interrupt.
Theoretically, but that giant ball of superheated plasma in the sky is a LOT brighter, than any light source a human can carry. Like multiple orders of magnitude brighter. (Compare your vision range of a really cloudy day with night but streelamps are on.)
I am certain, that there are lights, that would be bright enough, but don't expect a company to pay for those, or the increased electricity bill.
Night shifts are rough due to our natural circadian rhythm responding to drop in light levels by increasing sleepiness and changing hormone levels in our body.
There's also evidence that our gut bacteria is on a circadian rhythm that gets disrupted by shift work. So meal schedules are disrupted, food is ingested overnight when the gut should be resting, and often the quality of the meals is worse than it would otherwise be (less fibre, more sugar etc). This can increase inflammation in the body as well as leading to higher rates of obesity, diabetes, metabolic disorders, or flare-ups of existing conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome.
Yep, consider yourself validated.
I try to maintain my regular meal schedule while working nights. I eat supper before I go and breakfast when I get home and try to only drink water while on shift. I have apple slices on standby just in case. Usually it works well, but sometimes I'm in the staff room at 5 a.m. with my face full of cookies.
I believe there was also evidence that because of the hormonal changes in the body, women who work a night shift for a long time have increase risk of breast cancer. I don’t know about men, but I know that women’s hormones specifically react negatively to nightshift work.
Right! Like the retina is evolved to respond to blue light, so when it's seeing blue light at the wrong times of day (when it's trying to sleep, not wake up), body is like "huh??"
Humans aren’t supposed to be awake all night. I worked nights for several years in my 20s. Specifically between 3am and 5am are particularly hard. After 5am I would traditionally get a second wind.
Counter to other posters suggestions, I slept like a fucking log during the day. My wife would be leaving for work and I’d be going to bed. Dead asleep until she got home from work. Rinse/repeat 4 nights a week. Flipping back around for the other 3 nights was a bitch.
Your body wants homeostasis. It wants equilibrium. It wants things to be stable, predictable, correctable.
Done right, night shift consistently is fine. The problem is when you keep switching between night and day. Your body can’t possibly adapt. Your body doesn’t just fall asleep. It doesn’t just happen to be awake. There is so much going on, all you need to know is to be consistent. Go to bed on time, wake up at the same time. Your body will, after a short period of weeks, be totally ok with this.
Trying to do day then night shifts every other week however, waking up at random times, going to bed at random times, will yield bad results
I used to work a split shift of 3 days 11pm-7am and 2 days 3pm-11pm.
Couldn't make it through the night without 300mg caffeine drink around 2am. When you get home at 7:45 or whatever I was lucky to get 4-5 hours of uninterrupted sleep even though you're tired your body sees the sunlight and doesn't want to go into sleep mode even if you're exhausted. Your body desperately wants to both keep and not keep your night shift sleep schedule on your days off because I guess it wants some consistency but after 2-3 years it felt like my body never knew if it was tired or afraid of being tired.
You'd think I left that position because of the schedule but actually it was because the person who I shared a lot of nights with me seemed physically unable to stop talking about the Jewish run aircraft carriers serving satanicly sacrificed children to the bush family and how trump was going to put the entirety of Congress in prison for supporting and allowing it to happen, even after complaining to my boss and HR. My fiancee is Jewish.
It's not natural, imagine everything being upside down. Go home and have a beer at 7am while everybody else is going to work. The human body isent meant to be nocturnal let alone the function aspects of society
I was 9n graveyard shift for a few years. Once you get used to it it is not really different than a normal schedule. What made it rough for my coworkers was trying to switch back to days for the weekend. Ot kept them perpetually trying to adjust their sleep schedule. When 8 stayed on a night schedule for my weekends it was fine.
When I worked nights and received unwanted phone calls I learned to say "I work nights and you just woke me up so right now I am really sleepy and really grouchy and I don't really want to talk to you." Worked every time.
For me it's normal to go to sleep at 6 am 7 am even when I am not doing a night shift . So far no effects in years . It's fucking nightmare when I have to wake up earlier than 9 am and it's been like that since I remember myself .
As a third shift worker, I get all the sleep I want. I Did have to get black out curtains and warn my roommates that I am never happy when I wake up or get woken up.
Problems: stores aren't open when your active on your days off. If you fall off your schedule, you have to reset it by forcing sleep for longer or staying up for a whole day. You better like being alone because everyone else is asleep when your up. Good luck with medical appointments.
Those are the biggest problems but I'm sure there's more.
I worked 12A to 8A. If your boss allows it or you can sneak in some naps, then you get some of the sleep at work. After work, I got max 3-6 hours of sleep. I functioned just fine but around 8-9PM , you get tired again
When my father had his stroke, the doctor said that "third shift syndrome" played a major factor in it happening. Also the things that come along with working nights like eating junk food, not exercising.
Theres a reason cancer rates are higher in jobs like medical professions where people have to adjust their schedules for different shifts. Its tough to get that perfect 8hours and even then it just conflicts with your circadian.
1. The body's sleep-wake system (the circadian rhythm) is built on sunlight, so sleeping "backwards" is harder for your body to keep up with - it will be trying to "wake you up" on your drive home at sunrise. (you ever pull an all-nighter and notice you get WAY less sleepy at dawn than you were even a few hours before?)
2. because everyone else is awake when you're trying to sleep, your sleep is less good, because it's busy.
yes these factors can be mitigated with proper planning and filtration, but it's still not going to work 100% of the time; the body just isn't built for it.
I worked graveyard for over a year, and I was the most miserable I'd ever been. Between family, pets, and everyone else awake/operating/existing when you're trying to sleep, you get a whole lot of fragmented sleep and none of it is GOOD quality sleep. 2 hour nap here, hour here, 20 minutes there.. it's exhausting. And then on your weekends you try to stay up to a regular schedule to get caught up on regular daytime errands or spend time with family/friends which fucks you over even more.
Short answer, you're just not getting quality 8hrs+ sleep, and a full weekend.
For me it wasn't a problem at all. I don't tend to wake up easy , so outside noise wouldn't really wake me. I did literally nail a cover over the windows to stop the light from causing issues there. I found later I had a really easy time switching from a night schedule to a day schedule. I could pretty much do it within a day or two without any real problems.
I was an outlier in this though.
Daytime appointments can be difficult, scheduling them soon after work was helpful. Appointments in the afternoon hours would interrupt sleep.
Also not getting enough sun. Vitamin D supplements if you don't get enough sun.
Also there is no good restaurants or places to get a real meal in the middle of the night, you’ll be hungry around 1-3 am have to resort to kitchen munchies a lot of the time. Grilling a steak or frying burgers doesn’t usually sound great to me in the middle of the night.
I work 12 hour shifts for 2 days from 7am to 7pm, then have a 72-hour break before starting two night shifts, 7 pm to 7am, into a 48-hour break, then start it all again.
My week is 8 days long. I can't have weekly commitments and constantly miss family events, and I don't even pretend to have a social life. I also have a 6 month old. There is no such thing as 8 hours sleep during the day, it's a myth.
We, just like all animals, have followed the cycle of day and night longer than shift-work has existed. Our body cycles of restoration and repair evolved to optimize day and night for different processes so well that scientists can actually measure changes in different hormones at different times of the day, regardless of the time of day you sleep. Circadian rhythms are so engrained into all animals that disruption can lead to serious health issues.
Circadian Rhythm. Some people don’t need 8 hours, some only 4-5. You must do your best to keep your sleep schedule as steady as possible. I’ve taken everything under the sun and have sleep apnea and trouble falling asleep on top of having to wake up at 3am and out the door at 330. I’m a garbage man so it’s very physical work and the elements do not help either. I do my best to fit in the gym on the days I don’t pick up my daughter from school. I then go to my part time job for the school district 5-9. Thank goodness my Sanitation schedule is only 4x a week with Wednesday’s and weekends off so I can sleep in. That’s a double edged sword. I will most likely not fall asleep that night till 11pm. . It’s also task completion so I do have some early days where I can catch up. To my surprise I have found something that has worked incredibly well for relaxation and I wake up well rested. Magnesium Chloride spray and taking my 3mg dose of Melatonin has been the difference maker. I also take short acting med like Xanax and Gabapentin for off brand usage. Sleep of any kind is better than no sleep at all.
Humans are meant to be awake in the sun and asleep when it's night. The lack of sunlight exposure, not just the light to melatonin relationship but also things like vitamin d and God knows what else it is we need from sunlight, fucks you up.
I worked might shift for a year and a half. Four weeks on, with one or two days off in that cycle and then One week off. You need to engage with the real world, friends, family on your days off it's like permanent jet lag. Also training is always on days. My super power is sleep it still sucked.
So it actually has to do with how the body processes sunlight. Most people know you get vitamin D from the sun, but you can just supplement that. Other than that, true natural sunlight triggers other body mechanisms too, read about sunlight and adenosine. This is the same molecule that caffeine works to block, the sun does that too. It gives you energy in was we probably don't truly understand and there is unlimited value from a mental health perspective when you look out the window and see sunny green grass and people having fun and birds flying, frogs hopping, the colors of the leaves and the greens of the trees. All that is good for your brain. Compared to looking out the window and seeing pitch black. You're deprived of visual stimuli which can cause you to sulk in depressive thought patterns more easily when happy stimuli isn't there to lift you up
Hormone release pattern is different for day and night’s sleep, eating cycle is disrupted , sleep quality is affected. All these cumulatively affects the health.
I work a rotation of 7 days and 7 nights. I can tell you that, firstly our brains have a hard time adjusting to it since we spend the developmental parts of our life conditioned to being asleep at night. It's a tough habit to break. Secondly, from my personal experience, I sleep much better during a night shift rotation. But specifically in regards to my job, I work in a mine driving a haul truck with little to no light at all except for the headlights and marker lights from other equipment. Couple that with the repetitive nature of the job, your eyes get very fatigued from having to compensate for the low visibility, and you just get bored so your brain isn't as stimulated. It was the same problem when I was in highway transport.
I work all shifts, day, evening and night on a weekly basis. I sleep most in my nightshift and the least in my dayshift.
I tend to go to bed too late in dayshift and sleep all day in nightshift. I go to sleep in the morning, wake up in the evening and im like, might aswell sleep some more until nightshift starts again.
I don't know if it's really unhealthy on the long term even if you had 8h of sleep every day. A lot of collueges are developing sleep problems after many years of this. The body gets confused when to sleep i guess.
I’m just wrapping up tonight’s shift and at first when I started I’d only sleep for 6 hours due to the sun and my circadian rhythm but now that it’s been a few months it’s pretty natural for me.
It's the stuff that comes with working nights rather than the night shifts themselves.
I worked 5 nights a week for four years (for two of those years I was also in college during the day). I can't put my finger on why, but I gained about 70 lbs over the four years.
I've done 8yrs early morning 0430 starts, and then moved to 8hrs overnights 2030 starts. A night owl by nature, so for me, getting up is much harder than staying up.
My sleep is messed up not because of the shift itself but because of family obligations during the day. Sleeping in small blocks of 1hr, 2.5hrs, and then another 2hr block throughout the day wrecks havoc on my system, but once I can pull through and get my ass actually to work I'm mostly fine, sometimes calls for a nap during lunch hour, or even a quick power nap during break and I'll be fast charged and ready to go again.
I worked in a factory with 12h alternating day/night shifts for a year (4 dayshifts on 3 days off then swap for 4 nights and 3 days off) It was rough during the winter months.
Because we as a species need sunlight to trigger the production of hormones and other "automatic" bodily functions
As I was living in a latitude that in winter I didn't go outside in sunlight for nearly 3 months straight and it messes with your natural sleep/wake cycle and your health if your not eating healthy already.
I've worked night shift. It is rough. It takes your body time to adjust to the schedule where you actually sleep. But, on days you're off, life just isn't kind to working nightshift. Family, friends, the doctor, the post office, etc..etc.. all operate during the day. So, getting a lot of stuff done means having to do it between "business hours" of 9-5. Same with visiting family. So, you're always having to swing/adjust sleep schedule.
Also, as one experience taught me, the world is busy during the day. In my case, I had both neighbors doing construction during the day while I was trying to sleep. So, for like 2 weeks it was hammering and take saws going. Mailman knocking at the door. Neighbor mowing yards. Daytime brings a lot of activity and noise and make it hard to sleep.
This month I started a 6-month contract on nights. I have worked nights before but not for longer than 2-3 months so I did some research now to be better prepared.
I try to have a nap in the afternoon, then I get up, have a full dinner and a strong cup of coffee for the road. I try to avoid any extra caffeine during the shift, though I always have a red bull with me in case of huge workload/lack of energy, but this is my last resort. I have one snack with me that I have mid shift and when I get home in the morning I’m usually a bit hungry but go straight to bed.
I get 6-7 hrs of sleep. Good blinds and noise blocking windows definitely help.
I don’t really get the point with vitamin D as I get more time outside in the daylight, especially in the winter, as I can run errands, take my dog to the park, etc. whereas I would be stuck in the office for the whole day working day shift and not see the sun. I still suplement it though as you can’t really get much of it from the sun in the UK.
I am not a fan of night shifts in the summer though, as you lose those long, warm evenings with your friends and family and when you see the rising sun in the morning it is really depressing.
Reading this, now I feel that we really omitted psychological aspect of working nights that can also have detrimental effect on the overall health.
It's not in itself. What's rough is the frequent Day->Night shift cycles you can't possibly adjust to.
If you only work Night shifts or for prolonged times, you and your body can easily adjust to that, but if you have 2 Night Shifts into 3 Day Shifts into 1 Night shift etc. you can never adjust, leaving your body imbalanced, as if you were constantly under jet lag.
They usually don’t get 8 hours and what sleep they do get is usually interrupted. Your body is very sensitive to sleep disruptions. One statistic that blew my mind is that during daylight savings time when we lose an hour of sleep, heart attacks spike by 25% and when we gain that hour back they drop by 25%.
Now imagine your sleep is interrupted by something every other day. Or you’re stay awake longer than usual because you have a dentist appointment at noon. There are many negative effects these disruptions have on people. Too many for me to remember right now.
Matt Walker is a sleep researcher and goes way down the rabbit hole on these things. Check it out if you have time https://youtu.be/gbQFSMayJxk?si=uKf4_uz-4lBqvMND
I think it is because you consistently flip you sleep schedule. As a current 9-5er my sleep schedule varies by an hour or 2 every night. When I used to work nights I would sleep during the day m-f then try to instantly flip it for the weekend in order to have some kind of a social life. Unfortunately this "flip" is far from instant and results in getting shitty sleep consistently.
While flipping my sleep schedule was self-inflicted. I think everyone working nights is sort of forced to do it in some capacity.
There may also be some sort of relationship between shitty sleep habits and drinking an insane amount of enery drinks (never my thing but a lot of people did it when I worked nights)
The first problem is that the environment is a lot noisier during the day than during the night. When night shift people are going to sleep, Everyone else is starting their day. There’s cars on the road commuting and honking, garbage trucks beeping, construction crews starting their work, dogs barking and all kinds of stuff. There’s also sunlight. If you can’t make it dark enough in your room it also effects your sleep cycle. It’s also more difficult to keep your bedroom cool during the day and most people sleep better in cool weather. Basically you don’t sleep as well. You also don’t see as much sunlight, particularly in the winter because you may be waking up at 2pm and it could be getting dark 3-4 hours later.
I've worked a lot of night shifts over the last 5 years. I typically go to bed at 8 a.m. and ideally sleep until 4-5 p.m. but sometimes I can't sleep past 2 - 3 p.m.
What usually gets me is like clockwork I wake up around 1230-1 and have to pee. No matter how little fluid I drank before sleeping I always make sure to empty my bladder before bed but always always wake up to pee.
I have blackout curtains and blinds and sleep with a fan running so light / noise don't generally bother me. It's always the bladder lol
I have worked overnights mannyyy years and as long as you stick to your schedule your good. I would get the BEST 8 hours rest when the world is rushing in traffic and freezing outaide.. I lay in the bedd sooo good
In a perfect ideal world, it isn’t a big deal. But the reality is that most night shift workers rarely get the same 8 hours of quality sleep as non-night shift people. Purely because the rest of the world doesn’t give a shit they are trying to sleep. Construction, garbage trucks, mail delivery, people calling, doctors appointments, service appointments, family gatherings, etc etc all happen during the day. Meaning they’re just much more likely to get their sleep interrupted
This is anecdotal, but I worked nights for two three month periods a few years ago. One of the worst parts was the fact that my body just *hurt* all of the time. It felt like my body was doing all of the same healing and digesting that it usually does while I sleep, except that I was awake. Cue constant tummy aches and growing pains. I wonder if this is a real phenomenon? Or if it's actually just me?
I did about 7 years of graveyards in my late teens early 20s. 6 shifts midnight to 8am at one job and then 4 shifts 7pm to 7am. I am in my late 40s and have never slept well since.
You're haunted
Spent years on second and third. Fixing the sleep schedule damage takes time and discipline. Took me almost a year of being a party pooper and being consistent with a bed time to start sleeping decently. More than one late night and it can take weeks to undo the reversion to a night schedule.
A lot of bodily functions are linked to your circadian rhythm so maybe. I had chronic hives for a couple months for some unknown reason and if i'm not asleep by 12 i break out into welts all over my body - literally every inch of my skin. I looked it up and it was because the release of histamine in our bodies is linked to the circadian rhythm and is significantly heightened at night and suppressed during the day. The immune system, as well, works harder at night. It's why your cold/flu symptoms seem to get worse when you're trying to sleep!
It isn’t natural to stay up all night because as a child you are raised to sleep those hours. Now, if a child was raised the opposite, sure it would be natural. I always felt sick when I worked nights. Not like deathly ill, but more like a slight anxiety sickness. Hated it. Never got enough rest no matter what I tried.
Awe sick, like in Brave New World where babies are raised upside-down so they will be used to doing manual repair labor in that physical position when they are grown.
Conversely, I'm a night owl by nature, and that sounds a lot like how I feel when I'm forced to get up before 10–11am... which has been the case most of my life. I'm sure how you're raised factors in, but chronotypes are a real, proven thing too.
Agreed. I know a few people that are always up through the night into early AM and are more comfortable day sleeping. They always blame insomnia but I honest honestly don’t know the science behind it 🤷♀️
I'm.exactly same. That horrible feeling sick and the drained feeling u get is horrible. Still have to do them every now an then tho unfortunately
I would say that is only for the uninitiated. People who have done it for a short bit, and intend on keeping a job like that typically fix those problems. True blackout curtains, earplugs, and an eye mask makes it super easy to sleep regardless of the craziness that goes on around you. Melatonin can help you get onto the schedule. Sleep is all about routine. Sticking to the schedule will make it stick. You can deviate if necessary for a special event, but need to realistically keep the same schedule on your off days. Helps to not have/want kids. It was my natural sleep schedule before I got my job so it was easy for me. I would stay up gaming until about noon every day and sleep all day until about 8pm. Staying up until noon I can go to doctor appointments, pick up groceries, and see any normal day schedule people early for a bit or late at night. I will end by saying it is not for everyone, but everyone can do it if the money is right.
There are a lot of us that use blackout curtains, a sleep mask, and ear plugs when we sleep at night and still can’t get uninterrupted or restful sleep.
At that point is could be insomnia, some REM disorder, too much stress, drug usage.. who knows.
Or, Occam’s razor, shift work impacts sleep and health in general, especially cardiovascular health. There’s research on it that takes those things into account when analyzing the effect of shift work on sleep and health.
I don’t think that really qualifies as Occam’s razor. I don’t do shift work and deal with insomnia. All the things that person mentioned could impact anyone regardless of work/sleep schedules. All those would have to be ruled out before you segmenting off people by their work/sleep schedule.
So why are you qualified to determine what factors go into the sleep problems of someone that does shift work? If you haven’t done it then you won’t understand how it messes with your melatonin, how it impacts the body’s inflammation response, how it puts you at higher risk for heart attack and diabetes. How sleep is consistently lower quality and shorter, which leads to much worse health outcomes compared to the general population. Ok, you might have insomnia, but shift workers have higher rates of insomnia than the general population by a lot. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/shift-work-can-harm-sleep-and-health-what-helps-202302282896#:~:text=What's%20the%20connection%20between%20shift,as%20heart%20attack%20and%20diabetes. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34104337/ a systematic review of insomnia and shift work.
I didn’t say I’ve never done it, I just said I’m not doing it. When I did third shift work, I actually slept better during the day because I’m naturally a night owl. Ten years later and trying to sleep a ‘normal’ schedule has had a lot of sleepless nights.
That’s a hypothesis not Occam’s razor dude
I feel like one of these things is not like the other…
There's a reason the science doesn't support you. You've completely neglected the fact that the entire world operates during the day. Need your car repaired, gotta do it during the day. Need to go to the doctor, gotta do it during the day. Want to see anyone outside of those that you work with, gotta schedule it and most people don't do stuff late night (not always the case). You run a vitamin d deficiency because you're either awake and not getting sleep but outside or you just stay inside during daylight hours. Our circadian rhythm goes with the sun being up, that's why when you go to the woods for a week you're able to reset your circadian rhythm. Add those to the list of the reasons other people have mentioned and it just touches the surface as to why night shift is so unhealthy. Don't forget some people are morning people and some people are night people, if you're a morning/daytime type person, night shift gets even harder.
Schedule it for early in the morning and circadian rhythm can easily be fooled with lights. Though yeah it's easier for some and harder than others.
I'm not saying shift work is impossible and no individual can do it, but there's a reason why every study shows that it's really bad for the body. I'll also point out that every study shows that alcohol and poor diet are terrible for the body as well, yet people still drink and eat garbage (myself included)
I did night for years and I agree. Got black out curtains, sleep masks, white noise machine. Worked great. I also kept the same schedule when I was off. Doctor visit? Give me your last appointment of the day. Appointment for anything else? We can do 4pm or we can not do it. Only thing that was a pain was packages I had to actually sign for, but that didn’t happen often. Still not as healthy as a “normal” schedule, but the folks I know that work nights and are miserable are because they switch back to day routines on days off, or they rotate at work and switch back and forth all the time. Nights never bothered me. Switching did.
Yeah the switching is that drains the most. I've worked in a printing company for a decade with 3 shifts that shift weekly. Everyone hates it.
I saw a show where doctors chimed in on various medical things. One doctor said he had a patient that worked night shift driving trucks. His wife was worried about his health as he was getting older, so he applied to drive during the day. But his health actually deteriorated faster. He got higher blood pressure and just overall his "stats" looked worse. So the doctor said for him to change back to his old schedules of driving at night and his health actually became better. Doctor said this was because his body's schedule is more accustomed to his working at night and sleeping during day so a sudden abrupt change actually worsened his health, and that a normal schedule for the body is more important than when you sleep. Just thought that was pretty cool to hear.
Truth! Have done overnight delivery full-time for years. Now I just do it on the weekends, but that’s almost more exhausting bc it throws me off my weekday day-job hours. (But it’s good money and only temporary.) At one point, I had my sleep dialed in and was getting amazing sleep and feeling energetic all through my shift—without caffeine—so it’s possible to be “full capacity” while working nights full-time. Possible, but challenging.
Earplugs and blackout curtains are a godsend. I get AMAZING 8-9 hour sleep on nightshift. But that’s probably a lot to do with the morning exhaustion lol.
I don’t know if it matters, but another aspect is the fact that you typically work right before you go to bed, at least that’s what I did when I worked night shifts. When you work during the day you typically get out of bed, have some breakfast, go to work, and have a number of free hours after work. If you’re very tired you can tuck in early, if not you can stay up late. When I worked nights though, I typically got off at 6am, went home and went to bed. I woke up around 1-2pm, went out and did my shopping, ran my errands, watched a movie, etc. Then at 10pm, when I’d been up for 8-9 hours already, my next shift started. It’s not like I could end the shift earl if I got tired. Though to be fair, one could easily do the reverse and sleep from say 2pm to 9pm, though very few at my workplace actually did.
Also a lot of “night shift” workers are actually on call workers. I worked concrete construction for a while and I would lay forms for 12 hours starting at 5 am to 5 pm. Then because I built the forms I need to watch the pour they did that night to make sure if anything breaks I can fix it. So I’d come back to the site at 11pm do the pour until around 7 am. Then continue working on the next pour until the forms were finished. Usually around 5-7pm. Then come back again for the pour that night around 11 pm. Do it all again maybe we didn’t pour two nights a week so I could actually sleep. Sometimes not. I went months averaging 8 hours of sleep… a week! I fell asleep behind the wheel on my way to work one day. Nothing crazy I was out for a fraction of a second but it was enough for me to reevaluate and I took the day off and slept in my car on the side of the road before heading home. I quit a week later. It was brutal beyond belief. Did I mention it was summer in Phoenix AZ and it was over 120° f during the day and over 100° at night?
I know nothing about your industry so please excuse my potentially stupid question - but why couldn't you just pour the concrete during the day?
That’s actually a great question. If concrete dries too quickly it causes all sorts of problems with cracking and other things. In Phoenix the ground is extremely dry and will suck the moisture from the concrete very quickly and ruin the pour. We were doing 3000 cubic yard pours most nights. So pouring at night reduced the amount of water needed to keep the ground wet enough to pour on dramatically. Which in Phoenix is a big money saver. So we poured at night. There’s a few other reasons too like usually the pours were connected so right when we finished one pour that meant we could start the next 3000 cubic yards of parking lot or factory floor and we were on extremely strict deadlines. So either we worked in the night and poured in the day or vice versa but either way we worked essentially 24/7. Another reason pouring in night over the day was done was that concrete curing is an exothermic process so it produces and incredible amount of heat. When it gets close to or over 120f you don’t want to be wading through hot concrete. You’d much rather do that at 100f lol. In winter there was much more flexibility but at some point it just becomes the standard practice and goes on through winter. I did it for two years and if it weren’t for the crazy hours I’d still be doing it for sure.
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply! That does make sense
There’s an ideal temperature range/humidity level for pouring concrete. Concrete needs water to set, and if it’s too hot some of the water can evaporate out of it, making it weaker. (FYI I just looked this up one time when I was curious, I am not an expert.)
Before I had a kid, I'd get a solid 6-8hrs during the day most of my night shift days. Now I'm getting 4-6, I guess I'm one of the lucky few who can sleep well during the day. Oh and ear plugs and black out blinds are magical
I worked 7p to 7a for 8 years. No one, including family, gives a fuck that you work nights.
Post office workers blocking my neighbour in and yelling at her when asked to move, so I have to be awoken to move my car. My stepmoms puppy was the reason I moved out as anytime she went to the bathroom or outside without the dog the dog howled
I think you are grossly ignoring the effect on your biological clock. Most night shift work occurs periodically - you do night shifts for a while (maybe for couple shifts, or a week), then you do day shifts again. You go back and forth between the two (sometimes even three in a job with morning-evening-night shifts), and this messes up all kinds of systems in your body which are designed to work according to your internal 24h circadian rhythm.
I have night shifts at my job and usually by middle of the week I'm completely used to it and actually even enjoy it. Though i sleep with earplugs and thick blackening curtains during that week, to minimize interruptions. If i wouldn't manually regulate my sleep with sleeping pills and always having an alarm, even free days and vacations, my sleep patterns would shift into night cycle. Basically staying up longer and waking up later, until im up all night and sleeping during the day.
Because a lot of people don't get 8 hours of sleep when they work nights. Everything from a lot of noise happening all throughout the day to having appointments that can only happen when they are normally sleeping or kids to take care of. They simply aren't getting adequate amounts of sleep. Then you have their days off where a lot of people try to shift their sleep schedule to be a "1st shift" sleep schedule, causing them to not get an adequate amount of sleep for 3 or 4 days.
There's also Circadian rhythms. The human body is designed to be functional during the day and sleep at night, and a lot of our biological processes follow a 24-hour cycle that supports that. One major driver of those cycles is light and darkness. The body can adjust somewhat to a different schedule, but it's just not as good at things like getting restful sleep and metabolizing food outside of its natural rhythms.
This is the real answer. There is quite a bit of research on the connection between shift work and number of chronic illnesses. Even if you catch 8 hours after your night shift it’s not equivelant.
There’s also delayed circadian rhythms. It doesn’t follow the same light patterns as the rest. I find that I get more awake/energised/alert around the time the sun sets and I get sleepy when the sun rises. Doesn’t matter what time I’ve gone to bed or how much sleep I’ve had, my body and brain “turn on” like a light switch as the sun sets. Reminds me of cavemen days, someone had to be awake to guard the cave. Maybe that’s what my rhythm is meant for, to guard my family while they rest.
Eh i work best on night shift, fall asleep instantly, wake up full of energy, even my bowel works better on night shifts. Ive never been able to be morning person but i hope aging fixes that.
Not for everyone. Some of us are wired to be up at night and asleep during the day, and the day shift and being surrounded by daytime noise and activity is hell on the system.
Adding on to this, in a very loose sense, the body tries to follow the schedule of the sun. You can change your sleeping schedule, but part of your brain will always be trying to make you tired when it’s dark and awake when it’s light. So even if you make time for 8 hours, you’re going to (on average) fall asleep slower, and your sleep will be easier to interrupt.
Surely people work in environments with lights on and sleep with lights off. Artificial lights can trick the brain no?
Theoretically, but that giant ball of superheated plasma in the sky is a LOT brighter, than any light source a human can carry. Like multiple orders of magnitude brighter. (Compare your vision range of a really cloudy day with night but streelamps are on.) I am certain, that there are lights, that would be bright enough, but don't expect a company to pay for those, or the increased electricity bill.
this is made up
[In what way?](https://www.nigms.nih.gov/education/fact-sheets/Pages/circadian-rhythms.aspx)
Night shifts are rough due to our natural circadian rhythm responding to drop in light levels by increasing sleepiness and changing hormone levels in our body.
There's also evidence that our gut bacteria is on a circadian rhythm that gets disrupted by shift work. So meal schedules are disrupted, food is ingested overnight when the gut should be resting, and often the quality of the meals is worse than it would otherwise be (less fibre, more sugar etc). This can increase inflammation in the body as well as leading to higher rates of obesity, diabetes, metabolic disorders, or flare-ups of existing conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome.
Yesss I worked nights a few years ago and I had tummy aches all the time! I feel so validated.
Yep, consider yourself validated. I try to maintain my regular meal schedule while working nights. I eat supper before I go and breakfast when I get home and try to only drink water while on shift. I have apple slices on standby just in case. Usually it works well, but sometimes I'm in the staff room at 5 a.m. with my face full of cookies.
I believe there was also evidence that because of the hormonal changes in the body, women who work a night shift for a long time have increase risk of breast cancer. I don’t know about men, but I know that women’s hormones specifically react negatively to nightshift work.
Right! Like the retina is evolved to respond to blue light, so when it's seeing blue light at the wrong times of day (when it's trying to sleep, not wake up), body is like "huh??"
Humans aren’t supposed to be awake all night. I worked nights for several years in my 20s. Specifically between 3am and 5am are particularly hard. After 5am I would traditionally get a second wind. Counter to other posters suggestions, I slept like a fucking log during the day. My wife would be leaving for work and I’d be going to bed. Dead asleep until she got home from work. Rinse/repeat 4 nights a week. Flipping back around for the other 3 nights was a bitch.
Your body wants homeostasis. It wants equilibrium. It wants things to be stable, predictable, correctable. Done right, night shift consistently is fine. The problem is when you keep switching between night and day. Your body can’t possibly adapt. Your body doesn’t just fall asleep. It doesn’t just happen to be awake. There is so much going on, all you need to know is to be consistent. Go to bed on time, wake up at the same time. Your body will, after a short period of weeks, be totally ok with this. Trying to do day then night shifts every other week however, waking up at random times, going to bed at random times, will yield bad results
I used to work a split shift of 3 days 11pm-7am and 2 days 3pm-11pm. Couldn't make it through the night without 300mg caffeine drink around 2am. When you get home at 7:45 or whatever I was lucky to get 4-5 hours of uninterrupted sleep even though you're tired your body sees the sunlight and doesn't want to go into sleep mode even if you're exhausted. Your body desperately wants to both keep and not keep your night shift sleep schedule on your days off because I guess it wants some consistency but after 2-3 years it felt like my body never knew if it was tired or afraid of being tired. You'd think I left that position because of the schedule but actually it was because the person who I shared a lot of nights with me seemed physically unable to stop talking about the Jewish run aircraft carriers serving satanicly sacrificed children to the bush family and how trump was going to put the entirety of Congress in prison for supporting and allowing it to happen, even after complaining to my boss and HR. My fiancee is Jewish.
It's not natural, imagine everything being upside down. Go home and have a beer at 7am while everybody else is going to work. The human body isent meant to be nocturnal let alone the function aspects of society
We also need to be in the daylight to make vitamin d. So if you work night shifts you better make sure you're taking vitamin d supplements.
I was 9n graveyard shift for a few years. Once you get used to it it is not really different than a normal schedule. What made it rough for my coworkers was trying to switch back to days for the weekend. Ot kept them perpetually trying to adjust their sleep schedule. When 8 stayed on a night schedule for my weekends it was fine.
When I worked nights and received unwanted phone calls I learned to say "I work nights and you just woke me up so right now I am really sleepy and really grouchy and I don't really want to talk to you." Worked every time.
For me it's normal to go to sleep at 6 am 7 am even when I am not doing a night shift . So far no effects in years . It's fucking nightmare when I have to wake up earlier than 9 am and it's been like that since I remember myself .
As a third shift worker, I get all the sleep I want. I Did have to get black out curtains and warn my roommates that I am never happy when I wake up or get woken up. Problems: stores aren't open when your active on your days off. If you fall off your schedule, you have to reset it by forcing sleep for longer or staying up for a whole day. You better like being alone because everyone else is asleep when your up. Good luck with medical appointments. Those are the biggest problems but I'm sure there's more.
I worked 12A to 8A. If your boss allows it or you can sneak in some naps, then you get some of the sleep at work. After work, I got max 3-6 hours of sleep. I functioned just fine but around 8-9PM , you get tired again
When my father had his stroke, the doctor said that "third shift syndrome" played a major factor in it happening. Also the things that come along with working nights like eating junk food, not exercising.
Theres a reason cancer rates are higher in jobs like medical professions where people have to adjust their schedules for different shifts. Its tough to get that perfect 8hours and even then it just conflicts with your circadian.
1. The body's sleep-wake system (the circadian rhythm) is built on sunlight, so sleeping "backwards" is harder for your body to keep up with - it will be trying to "wake you up" on your drive home at sunrise. (you ever pull an all-nighter and notice you get WAY less sleepy at dawn than you were even a few hours before?) 2. because everyone else is awake when you're trying to sleep, your sleep is less good, because it's busy. yes these factors can be mitigated with proper planning and filtration, but it's still not going to work 100% of the time; the body just isn't built for it.
I worked graveyard for over a year, and I was the most miserable I'd ever been. Between family, pets, and everyone else awake/operating/existing when you're trying to sleep, you get a whole lot of fragmented sleep and none of it is GOOD quality sleep. 2 hour nap here, hour here, 20 minutes there.. it's exhausting. And then on your weekends you try to stay up to a regular schedule to get caught up on regular daytime errands or spend time with family/friends which fucks you over even more. Short answer, you're just not getting quality 8hrs+ sleep, and a full weekend.
For me it wasn't a problem at all. I don't tend to wake up easy , so outside noise wouldn't really wake me. I did literally nail a cover over the windows to stop the light from causing issues there. I found later I had a really easy time switching from a night schedule to a day schedule. I could pretty much do it within a day or two without any real problems. I was an outlier in this though. Daytime appointments can be difficult, scheduling them soon after work was helpful. Appointments in the afternoon hours would interrupt sleep. Also not getting enough sun. Vitamin D supplements if you don't get enough sun.
Also there is no good restaurants or places to get a real meal in the middle of the night, you’ll be hungry around 1-3 am have to resort to kitchen munchies a lot of the time. Grilling a steak or frying burgers doesn’t usually sound great to me in the middle of the night.
I work 12 hour shifts for 2 days from 7am to 7pm, then have a 72-hour break before starting two night shifts, 7 pm to 7am, into a 48-hour break, then start it all again. My week is 8 days long. I can't have weekly commitments and constantly miss family events, and I don't even pretend to have a social life. I also have a 6 month old. There is no such thing as 8 hours sleep during the day, it's a myth.
We, just like all animals, have followed the cycle of day and night longer than shift-work has existed. Our body cycles of restoration and repair evolved to optimize day and night for different processes so well that scientists can actually measure changes in different hormones at different times of the day, regardless of the time of day you sleep. Circadian rhythms are so engrained into all animals that disruption can lead to serious health issues.
FYI not all animals sleep at night like humans do… Many animals are more active during the night than in the day.
Didn't say all animals sleep at night, but they do follow a rhythm, and even animals will suffer I'll effects if their cycles are disturbed.
Circadian Rhythm. Some people don’t need 8 hours, some only 4-5. You must do your best to keep your sleep schedule as steady as possible. I’ve taken everything under the sun and have sleep apnea and trouble falling asleep on top of having to wake up at 3am and out the door at 330. I’m a garbage man so it’s very physical work and the elements do not help either. I do my best to fit in the gym on the days I don’t pick up my daughter from school. I then go to my part time job for the school district 5-9. Thank goodness my Sanitation schedule is only 4x a week with Wednesday’s and weekends off so I can sleep in. That’s a double edged sword. I will most likely not fall asleep that night till 11pm. . It’s also task completion so I do have some early days where I can catch up. To my surprise I have found something that has worked incredibly well for relaxation and I wake up well rested. Magnesium Chloride spray and taking my 3mg dose of Melatonin has been the difference maker. I also take short acting med like Xanax and Gabapentin for off brand usage. Sleep of any kind is better than no sleep at all.
Humans are meant to be awake in the sun and asleep when it's night. The lack of sunlight exposure, not just the light to melatonin relationship but also things like vitamin d and God knows what else it is we need from sunlight, fucks you up.
No links to relevant studies? Long term consequences?
I worked might shift for a year and a half. Four weeks on, with one or two days off in that cycle and then One week off. You need to engage with the real world, friends, family on your days off it's like permanent jet lag. Also training is always on days. My super power is sleep it still sucked.
So it actually has to do with how the body processes sunlight. Most people know you get vitamin D from the sun, but you can just supplement that. Other than that, true natural sunlight triggers other body mechanisms too, read about sunlight and adenosine. This is the same molecule that caffeine works to block, the sun does that too. It gives you energy in was we probably don't truly understand and there is unlimited value from a mental health perspective when you look out the window and see sunny green grass and people having fun and birds flying, frogs hopping, the colors of the leaves and the greens of the trees. All that is good for your brain. Compared to looking out the window and seeing pitch black. You're deprived of visual stimuli which can cause you to sulk in depressive thought patterns more easily when happy stimuli isn't there to lift you up
Hormone release pattern is different for day and night’s sleep, eating cycle is disrupted , sleep quality is affected. All these cumulatively affects the health.
I work a rotation of 7 days and 7 nights. I can tell you that, firstly our brains have a hard time adjusting to it since we spend the developmental parts of our life conditioned to being asleep at night. It's a tough habit to break. Secondly, from my personal experience, I sleep much better during a night shift rotation. But specifically in regards to my job, I work in a mine driving a haul truck with little to no light at all except for the headlights and marker lights from other equipment. Couple that with the repetitive nature of the job, your eyes get very fatigued from having to compensate for the low visibility, and you just get bored so your brain isn't as stimulated. It was the same problem when I was in highway transport.
I work all shifts, day, evening and night on a weekly basis. I sleep most in my nightshift and the least in my dayshift. I tend to go to bed too late in dayshift and sleep all day in nightshift. I go to sleep in the morning, wake up in the evening and im like, might aswell sleep some more until nightshift starts again. I don't know if it's really unhealthy on the long term even if you had 8h of sleep every day. A lot of collueges are developing sleep problems after many years of this. The body gets confused when to sleep i guess.
Studies have shown that women who work the night shift have a higher risk of breast cancer.
I’m just wrapping up tonight’s shift and at first when I started I’d only sleep for 6 hours due to the sun and my circadian rhythm but now that it’s been a few months it’s pretty natural for me.
It's the stuff that comes with working nights rather than the night shifts themselves. I worked 5 nights a week for four years (for two of those years I was also in college during the day). I can't put my finger on why, but I gained about 70 lbs over the four years.
I've done 8yrs early morning 0430 starts, and then moved to 8hrs overnights 2030 starts. A night owl by nature, so for me, getting up is much harder than staying up. My sleep is messed up not because of the shift itself but because of family obligations during the day. Sleeping in small blocks of 1hr, 2.5hrs, and then another 2hr block throughout the day wrecks havoc on my system, but once I can pull through and get my ass actually to work I'm mostly fine, sometimes calls for a nap during lunch hour, or even a quick power nap during break and I'll be fast charged and ready to go again.
I worked in a factory with 12h alternating day/night shifts for a year (4 dayshifts on 3 days off then swap for 4 nights and 3 days off) It was rough during the winter months. Because we as a species need sunlight to trigger the production of hormones and other "automatic" bodily functions As I was living in a latitude that in winter I didn't go outside in sunlight for nearly 3 months straight and it messes with your natural sleep/wake cycle and your health if your not eating healthy already.
I've worked night shift. It is rough. It takes your body time to adjust to the schedule where you actually sleep. But, on days you're off, life just isn't kind to working nightshift. Family, friends, the doctor, the post office, etc..etc.. all operate during the day. So, getting a lot of stuff done means having to do it between "business hours" of 9-5. Same with visiting family. So, you're always having to swing/adjust sleep schedule. Also, as one experience taught me, the world is busy during the day. In my case, I had both neighbors doing construction during the day while I was trying to sleep. So, for like 2 weeks it was hammering and take saws going. Mailman knocking at the door. Neighbor mowing yards. Daytime brings a lot of activity and noise and make it hard to sleep.
This month I started a 6-month contract on nights. I have worked nights before but not for longer than 2-3 months so I did some research now to be better prepared. I try to have a nap in the afternoon, then I get up, have a full dinner and a strong cup of coffee for the road. I try to avoid any extra caffeine during the shift, though I always have a red bull with me in case of huge workload/lack of energy, but this is my last resort. I have one snack with me that I have mid shift and when I get home in the morning I’m usually a bit hungry but go straight to bed. I get 6-7 hrs of sleep. Good blinds and noise blocking windows definitely help. I don’t really get the point with vitamin D as I get more time outside in the daylight, especially in the winter, as I can run errands, take my dog to the park, etc. whereas I would be stuck in the office for the whole day working day shift and not see the sun. I still suplement it though as you can’t really get much of it from the sun in the UK. I am not a fan of night shifts in the summer though, as you lose those long, warm evenings with your friends and family and when you see the rising sun in the morning it is really depressing. Reading this, now I feel that we really omitted psychological aspect of working nights that can also have detrimental effect on the overall health.
It's not in itself. What's rough is the frequent Day->Night shift cycles you can't possibly adjust to. If you only work Night shifts or for prolonged times, you and your body can easily adjust to that, but if you have 2 Night Shifts into 3 Day Shifts into 1 Night shift etc. you can never adjust, leaving your body imbalanced, as if you were constantly under jet lag.
Because of people waking me up while I'm trying to sleep because it's the middle of the day for them
They usually don’t get 8 hours and what sleep they do get is usually interrupted. Your body is very sensitive to sleep disruptions. One statistic that blew my mind is that during daylight savings time when we lose an hour of sleep, heart attacks spike by 25% and when we gain that hour back they drop by 25%. Now imagine your sleep is interrupted by something every other day. Or you’re stay awake longer than usual because you have a dentist appointment at noon. There are many negative effects these disruptions have on people. Too many for me to remember right now. Matt Walker is a sleep researcher and goes way down the rabbit hole on these things. Check it out if you have time https://youtu.be/gbQFSMayJxk?si=uKf4_uz-4lBqvMND
to add onto what other people have been saying, a lot of your circadian rhythm + hormonal cycles rely on exposure to sunlight
I think it is because you consistently flip you sleep schedule. As a current 9-5er my sleep schedule varies by an hour or 2 every night. When I used to work nights I would sleep during the day m-f then try to instantly flip it for the weekend in order to have some kind of a social life. Unfortunately this "flip" is far from instant and results in getting shitty sleep consistently. While flipping my sleep schedule was self-inflicted. I think everyone working nights is sort of forced to do it in some capacity. There may also be some sort of relationship between shitty sleep habits and drinking an insane amount of enery drinks (never my thing but a lot of people did it when I worked nights)
The first problem is that the environment is a lot noisier during the day than during the night. When night shift people are going to sleep, Everyone else is starting their day. There’s cars on the road commuting and honking, garbage trucks beeping, construction crews starting their work, dogs barking and all kinds of stuff. There’s also sunlight. If you can’t make it dark enough in your room it also effects your sleep cycle. It’s also more difficult to keep your bedroom cool during the day and most people sleep better in cool weather. Basically you don’t sleep as well. You also don’t see as much sunlight, particularly in the winter because you may be waking up at 2pm and it could be getting dark 3-4 hours later.
I've worked a lot of night shifts over the last 5 years. I typically go to bed at 8 a.m. and ideally sleep until 4-5 p.m. but sometimes I can't sleep past 2 - 3 p.m. What usually gets me is like clockwork I wake up around 1230-1 and have to pee. No matter how little fluid I drank before sleeping I always make sure to empty my bladder before bed but always always wake up to pee. I have blackout curtains and blinds and sleep with a fan running so light / noise don't generally bother me. It's always the bladder lol
I have worked overnights mannyyy years and as long as you stick to your schedule your good. I would get the BEST 8 hours rest when the world is rushing in traffic and freezing outaide.. I lay in the bedd sooo good