Are night shifts killing me?

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Are night shifts killing me?

27 July 2015

Magazine

There has been a steady stream of

studies over recent years that suggests
long-term night-working is extremely bad
for your health. It's a sobering thought for
those who have to work at night, writes
Sarah Montague.

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I've been getting up in the dead of night to go

to work for years. It's the price for presenting
the Today programme - and one I'm happy to
pay.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33638905

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But I've always wondered whether there is a

longer term cost. Could my early rising, when
my body is screaming at me to go back to
sleep, be doing more serious and permanent damage than can be
reversed by a good night's sleep?
I'm just one of 3.5 million people in the UK who do shift work. Many
are on much longer hours and work through the night.
It's not just night workers. Fifty years ago adults typically had eight
hours sleep. Now the average is 6.5 hours.
Too many of us think of sleep as an indulgence. W hen my alarm clock
goes off at 3.25am, I always promise myself I'll catch up later. After all,
I'm only tired.

But sleep is as essential as breathing and eating. It's when our brains
process what we've done during the day and lay down memories. And
when our bodies carry out some basic maintenance.
We've now learned that even when night-workers get plenty of sleep,

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it's at the wrong time.

It had always been assumed that our body
clock would adapt to the demands of working
at night, but as one of Britain's leading sleep
experts, Prof Russell Foster, from Oxford
University, says "the really extraordinary
finding across a whole range of different
studies, is that you don't adapt".

Find out more

Sarah Montague presents
The Night Shift on BBC
Radio 4 on Monday 27 July
at 20:00 BST. You can catch
up via the BBC iPlayer.

And that means those working at night for

long periods are more likely to get a range of serious diseases from
type 2 diabetes to coronary heart disease and cancer.
Some scientists believe that anyone arriving at work at 4am - as I do has an ability to process information that is as bad as if they'd had a
few whiskies or beers.
It's not as much fun as being drunk but it is a struggle to think straight.
That's when the amount we have to read and write in the two hours
before we go on air has a welcome sobering effect.

When we say those first few words of the programme at 6am, I often
think of those whose slumber we are breaking. Why is it so much

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easier if you set your alarm at 6am than 4am? Why are those extra two
hours of night-time sleep so much more valuable than snatched day
time hours?
The answer lies in a few thousand cells in a primitive part of the brain the location of our main body clock or suprachiasmatic nucleus.
It controls everything about when we go to
sleep, when we wake up, when our liver
produces enzymes to digest food. And it
changes our heart rate, increasing it in the
morning when we wake up and ensuring it
declines in the evening.

Night shift workers are

about one-and-a-half
times more likely to get
heart disease than those
who work in the day

Prof Michael Hastings, from Cambridge

University, who has spent 20 years working on circadian clocks, says:
"All of our organs are running to this pre-programmed genetic pattern to
make them do certain things at one time of day and different things at
another."
It's a fantastic piece of engineering, the result of evolution, and makes
perfect sense for a Neanderthal caveman, but not a 21st Century
nightshift worker.
Eat a triple chocolate muffin in the middle of the night, as I have often
done, and the sugar and fat hang around in your bloodstream for longer
than if you'd eaten it during the day.
High blood sugar levels can lead to type 2 diabetes, the raised fat
levels can cause heart disease. That's why nightshift workers are about
one-and-a-half times more likely to get heart disease than those who
work in the day.
It may also explain the high levels of obesity in those working at night.
There's also a link with cancer. In 2007 the World Health
Organisation said night shifts were a probable cause of cancer.
Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, it is a depressing enough list.
But there's another one to add. Recent research showed the brains of
workers who'd done 10 years of night shifts had aged by an extra
six-and-a-half years. They couldn't remember as much or think so

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quickly.
A massive study in the US has been following 75,000 female nurses
who work shifts over the past 22 years. It has shown that one in ten of
those who have worked rotating shifts for six years will die early.
It's not just the harm we're doing to ourselves - in some jobs we put
others at risk.
I spoke to someone who spends his nights as a cleaner. Instead of
sleeping when he gets home, he says that, after a shower, he goes on
to another job driving big trucks around the country. He does that six
days a week, on only three hours sleep.

There are rules in place to limit the hours truck drivers can work. What
they don't appear to monitor is what a driver is doing in his supposed
"rest" time.
There are no specific health and safety laws
on shift working in the UK but employers do
have a duty of care. And some companies
and governments are starting to take the
issue more seriously - not least because of
the threat of legal action. The Danish

The evidence of the

price our bodies are
paying for that trade-off
is piling up, but so too
is our understanding of

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how the body clock

government has given compensation to
works
women who developed breast cancer
after long periods of night shifts. In Korea,
electronics workers on long-term night-working who contracted
diseases have also received compensation.

There are ways of mitigating some of the damage. A trucking company

in America had three fatalities within a few weeks. They changed their
shift patterns to stop rotating shifts - that is "flip-flopping" between days
and nights - and they ensured drivers had two consecutive days off.
Now they have one of the best safety records in the US.
There are huge upsides to working at night. A DJ I spoke to described
the joy of watching the dawn and seeing wage slaves scurrying to train
stations. For me, it's being able to pick my children up from school.

The evidence of the price our bodies are paying for that trade-off is
piling up. But so too is our understanding of how the body clock works.
And with that comes the possibility that we can manipulate it - turn the
hands forward or back.
The Wellcome Trust has given Prof Russell Foster and his team at
Oxford University 3m to investigate a relatively new discovery -

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something that has been called the sleep "switch".

The VELPO, or ventral lateral pre-optic nuclei, turns on or off the whole
neural system that keeps us awake. It raises the possibility of
developing a drug to allow our bodies to ignore the light/dark cycle.
Until then our night working puts us out of kilter with our biology.
I've been obsessed by sleep for years. And it has been depressing
having it spelt out just what damage I'm doing to my body and brain.
So what do I do about it? Let me sleep on that.

The myth of the eight-hour sleep

We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it
could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science
and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.
The myth of the eight hour sleep
Which five things ruin a good night's sleep?

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