http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/29/barbara-ellen-plight-of-shift-workers?cat=commentisfree&type=article
Is the night shift a sociopolitical
issue? Findings printed in the
British Medical Journalfrom
teams of researchers in Canada
and Norway might suggest so. In
the largest analysis of shift work
and heart risk to date, involving
34 studies and more than two
million people, while there was
mainly judged no direct link to
mortality, working shifts was
discovered to raise the chances of
a heart attack by more than a
fifth, with the risk of a stroke
rising by 5%. The sharpest
increase for coronary events was
with night shifts.
Previously, shift work has also
been linked to conditions such as
diabetes, high blood pressure and
long-term disruption of sleep
patterns and body clocks. Experts
say that this could be resolved by
workers being given adequate
time (two nights minimum) to
recover properly between shifts.
Great. Problem solved. But who's
going to ensure that this is
happening?
It seems that the night-shift
worker must contend with
working in a state akin to
constant debilitating jetlag.
Furthermore, a night-shift
worker is quite probably
navigating an unregulated, or
scantily regulated, work
environment, where nobody
needs to care very much about
their basic human needs for a
minimum of two lovely big sleeps
between shifts.
Lower socioeconomic status was
taken into account in this study,
as well as poor diet and other bad
lifestyle choices, but there seems
to be no overstating the high
probability that these may be
directly related to shift work.
Shift workers are going to be
exhausted, therefore they're
going to eat like tired people
(poorly); exercise like tired
people (who's going for a jog
after a night shift?); and even, as
another study found, drive like
tired people (erratically). So, hey,
maybe they should stop doing
these terrible shifts. Silly people –
they are ruining their health!
Well, it would be nice if they
Is the night shift a sociopolitical
issue? Findings printed in the
British Medical Journalfrom
teams of researchers in Canada
and Norway might suggest so. In
the largest analysis of shift work
and heart risk to date, involving
34 studies and more than two
million people, while there was
mainly judged no direct link to
mortality, working shifts was
discovered to raise the chances of
a heart attack by more than a
fifth, with the risk of a stroke
rising by 5%. The sharpest
increase for coronary events was
with night shifts.
Previously, shift work has also
been linked to conditions such as
diabetes, high blood pressure and
long-term disruption of sleep
patterns and body clocks. Experts
say that this could be resolved by
workers being given adequate
time (two nights minimum) to
recover properly between shifts.
Great. Problem solved. But who's
going to ensure that this is
happening?
It seems that the night-shift
worker must contend with
working in a state akin to
constant debilitating jetlag.
Furthermore, a night-shift
worker is quite probably
navigating an unregulated, or
scantily regulated, work
environment, where nobody
needs to care very much about
their basic human needs for a
minimum of two lovely big sleeps
between shifts.
Lower socioeconomic status was
taken into account in this study,
as well as poor diet and other bad
lifestyle choices, but there seems
to be no overstating the high
probability that these may be
directly related to shift work.
Shift workers are going to be
exhausted, therefore they're
going to eat like tired people
(poorly); exercise like tired
people (who's going for a jog
after a night shift?); and even, as
another study found, drive like
tired people (erratically). So, hey,
maybe they should stop doing
these terrible shifts. Silly people –
they are ruining their health!
Well, it would be nice if they
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