Sleep Studies Will Kill You

            Haven’t you heard? Shift work leads to higher incidence of diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and premature death. There have been many studies done on the subject and all of them conclude with bad news for your health. I used to love hearing about stories like this when I worked as an overnight news producer. The advise from the scientist in charge of the research is always to get off the schedule. As if I was on the schedule out of my own desire. It was also greatly frustrating when a friend would say to me, “we’ve got to get you off that shift.” If it were that easy I would have done it long ago. Actually, I never would have been put on this shift if I had some control over it.

            In my opinion and observations, people who do shift work are sick more often, do not function as well, are not able to convert information to memory, and have shorter attention spans. One organization my station worked closely with employs an alternate plan to cover the overnight shift. They rotate workers so each person within the division takes a six-month turn on the overnights and then is rotated out and back to a normal schedule. This makes more sense to me because the workers are more refreshed, sharper, and able to do their jobs more quickly.

            I am incredibly thankful I no longer have to operate on an upside-down sleep schedule. I used to sleep from around 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and sleeping during the day can be incredibly difficult. I would never tempt fate by staying up too late or drinking too much caffeine for fear that I would miss my sleep opportunity and then spend the rest of the day rolling around in bed praying for some shut-eye. I was addicted to sleeping pills. Okay, so maybe I wasn’t addicted. I was able to give them up cold turkey as soon as I was finished with that job, but when I was on that schedule it felt like I was addicted. I am thankful I am no longer putting my health at the increased risk. So now, I can just worry about diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and premature death from normal societal causes. Whew, what a relief!