Telling people that I work night hours usually gets me a lot of emphatic looks as people immediately connect the graveyard shift with loss of all the social opportunities that are available to people who work days. Everyone knows that working the night shift sucks. And I get why people would think that. Working nights is a challenge.
But can working the night shift actually hurt you physically?
According to studies working the night shift is detrimental to your health. You will gain weight, suffer from lack of sleep and be more prone to cancer.
That being said, I have been at this for several years now and have found ways to mitigate challenges of working overnight.
How to deal with a lack of sleep while working the night shift?
When you work during the night you will be fighting your natural sleep cycle. Circadian sleep cycle, as it is also known, is our body’s tendency to wake up when the sun is up and to go to sleep when it goes down. It is a biological mechanism that, for most of the people out there, makes sense. For example, our eyes have developed to see in a spectrum of light that is only present during the daylight. Bats, who don’t use vision as their primary sense but sound, have no trouble navigating in pitch black.
You, my friend, are not a bat.
Sure, you might think that it will not be a problem (hey, I practically lived like that during my late teenage years anyway!) but you will crash and burn if you don’t get proper sleep. Getting that sleep during the day is going to be a problem. It will be and even bigger problem if you have noisy neighbours or small kids.
The amount of noise that is needed to wake me up during the day is minuscule. If I sleep during the day I can sleep through blaring horns and cannon barrages. During the day things are different – I was once woken up by a flock of nosy birds that flew over my house. Yes, it can get that ridiculous.
The sun is not your friend during this time as well. Every ray of light is trying to find your face and a crack in the shades will fall square on your eyes while leaving the rest of the room in total darkness.
You can deal with it though.
The longer you work the night shift the better sleep will you get during the day. The first few days will not be pleasant, there is no way around that that I have found. But, more tired you get more will your body start to realize that it has no choice but to find rest where it can get it. And you will wake up one day(night) and realise that you had a very good nap. Simply put, when it comes to your body you will just have to give it a bit of time. After that first week of readjusting to the night shift schedule I am back on my day sleep rhythm without issues.
How to block distractions while sleeping during the day?
To ensure that you do get good sleep you will have to block distractions.
I am of a school of thought that doesn’t like to terrorize my neighbors with my sleep schedule. I do know people who will put up notes warning the entire building that they are “working the night shift please keep quiet”. I think that approach is not only ineffective but even detrimental. I also think it is rude! Kids are supposed to be loud, the neighbor has to maw his lawn. Life goes on.
So, what do you do then?
Answer is quite simple, actually.
Eye covers and shutout blinds are your friend
Quality eye covers will block any light coming to your eyes without causing the strain on them. Stay away from the cheap ones as they will have the elastic part go over your nose and eyes and will start irritating them. They might help in a pinch but after a few days you will throw them in the trash. A set of good eye covers will work wonders as you can even open your eyes while wearing them. You just won’t be able to see anything!
For me, they were a gamechanger.
A set of shut out blinds could be the way to go as well. I don’t use these as my wife has a normal day rhythm so I don’t want to inconvenience her. But, if your spouse doesn’t mind or if you live alone, these are even better that eye covers. Once you set them up they will block the sun from entering the room and give you a very good illusion of a pitch black night. You will have a feeling like it’s sleepy time when you go to bed.
Don’t be mad at the noise, get some earplugs!
Another problem is the sound. I can deal with the sound in the area I live at right now but I do have a set of ear plugs that come in handy. I use them when I know that some work is going on down the street or if the windows are open. They do the job but my ears are very sensitive so I only use them occasionally.
My wife says it’s because of all the hot air coming out!
Some of my collogues use them every night and swear by them. Smart thing to do, if you just started working the night shift, is to get some sort of ear plugs and see how your ears behave after wearing them. It’s better to have them and not need them.
Is lack of Vitamin D a problem?
A big health problem for working the night shift is the lack of the Sun vitamin. Vitamin D is naturally created in the skin under exposure to the Sun. If you don’t get enough Sun, there is no vitamin D.
I cannot stress enough how dangerous this is. Lack of vitamin D is vital for many processes in the body, especially for men as vitamin D is a component of testosterone. Without testosterone you will start losing muscle, your mood will be affected and a great number of crucial processes in the body will get disrupted.
Let me tell you what happened to me when I started suffering from lack of vitamin D. First of all, it crept on me. I didn’t feel any sudden shift in my mood. What did happen is that after several months of night shift I found myself depressed, unmotivated, unable to move. The change was so slow, like that story of a frog in a pot of water. “They” say that if you put a frog in a pot of water and heat it up the temperature will rise so slowly that the frog will not be able to notice the
difference and will end up cooked as you keep increasing the temperature to the boiling point! “They” are wrong, by the way. The story is myth. If you are not sure who to trust, I suggest putting a frog in a pot and see how it goes.
How lack of Vitamin D affected me
My health was saved by an overworked doctor in a walk-in clinic that I ended up in for something completely different. He ran some blood tests and came back with a worried look on his face. According to him I was running on vitamin D fumes. He basically told me to go to Walmart and get a pack of vitamins and start chugging.
So chug a did.
The feeling I had after only four days of drinking the vitamin D supplement is hard to describe. I felt like myself again. I was no longer depressed, I wanted to clean the whole house I was so energetic! It was unbelievable! From that day forward my house always has a stack of vitamin D.
I have heard people saying that supplements are “not the real thing”. I am not so sure of that as my experience is different. The problem may rise in the prescribed dose as many doctors, and the packaging itself, will tell you to take a pill or two a day. That is bad advice. I take a small fistful of pills every day. No, you will not have any bad effects. The worst that can happen is that you will get rid of any excess amount of vitamin when you go the bathroom. In fact, effects of lack of vitamin D are still not very well known.
Everyone is eyeballing it as proper studies are few and far between. Don’t allow yourself to be a Guinea pig. Get some vitamins.
Keeping fit while working the night shift
The problem of lack of fitness with people who work the nights shift is widespread. People who work these odd hours are by and large… very large. Shift work will do that to you. Almost everyone I know that works the night shift will chug on their lattes to keep themselves awake. What they are usually not considering is the amount of sugar they are taking into their bodies as they are drinking their Timmy’s or Starbucks.
Do yourself a favour and stop drinking sugar. Drop the pop/soda and drink your coffee black, no sugar. It that is not to your taste use some of those artificial sweeteners. They are not ideal but will spare you the calories.
Fix your nutrition and start working out
Here is a likely scenario: On the days you are working you will go home and sleep, without even thinking of going to the gym. On the days you are off you will be running around trying to accomplish everything you were not able to do while you were working! It’s a vicious cycle.
I’m not going to tell you to grit your teeth and just go to the gym. If you can afford it and if you have the time you should do it. But I understand if you can’t.
What I will tell you to do is much simpler than that.
You have to start eating right. A proper nutrition will help you keep your health and will make you lose those inches around your waist without you doing much of anything! The problem I had was finding the time to actually do all the cooking. Sure, all you have to do is to prepare the food but then you have to stay awake so you can turn off the stove and actually get everything ready.
Fight obesity with slow cooking
What you need is a slow cooker. The crockpot, as it is sometimes called, is a wonderful invention. The principle is simple. You put your food into the crockpot, you turn the knob and you go to bed. When you wake up the food will be ready! That’s it!
You don’t have to buy an expensive model. The one I had cost me about $30 and is still going strong, years later. Today I use a more advanced model that my mother-in-law gave us but that is only because the capacity is larger.
These days you can even get an Instant Pot, a gadget that combines the crockpot and a pressure cooker into one neat package.
A balanced, low carb diet is going to do miracles for your waist and your overall health and put you miles ahead on the road to health. Once you are ready you should invest in the gym membership or, if that is not practical for you, a home workout program. And if that is not practical for you try walking and running.
Just don’t stand still!
Does working the night shift cause cancer or heart disease?
A study has shown that working the night shift will lead to increase of risk of cancer. Specifically, research done at West China Medical Center at Sichuan University in China showed that women are 20% more susceptible to breast cancer because they are working the night shift. 3,909,152 participants from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia gave researches enough data to find a link associated with developing 11 different types of cancer.
Most distressing finding is that women who work night shift have a 41% greater risk of skin cancer, 32% greater risk of breast cancer and 18% greater risk of gastrointestinal cancer.
Each additional half a decade of working the night shift equaled an increase of 3.3% in risk of getting breast cancer.
The reason for this increase is not yet known but it is suspected that it is connected to hormonal imbalance caused by an interrupted sleep cycle.
The same reason is cited as the reason for a 15% increase in heart disease for women working the night shift. Women’s Hospital in Boston, that lead the study, found the increase in heart problems even after they made sure that causes were not related to smoking, obesity and other usual suspects. Data was gathered from two studies that have been tracking 300,000 nurses from 1976.
Study also found that the risk will drop if a person starts working days.
Personally, I would trust that the good doctors know what they are talking about. That being said, more studies are needed before I will lose any (much needed) sleep over it.
Bringing it all together
To avoid negative effects of working the night shift you should do the following:
- Get good sleep – You will need shutout blinds or eye covers to do this. Earplugs will also help.
- Eat healthy – I had best results by using a crockpot and bringing my own food to work.
- Stop drinking calories – Your waist will thank you.
- Move – If going to the gym is not an option for you go for a walk or a run.
- Risks are still present – studies link working the night shift with coronary disease and cancer.