Odd working hours: harmful to humans?

While merrily engaged in chat tonite, I ran across a bit of a conundrum for me. I work what is considered “odd” hours. I get up a bit later than most folks and retire a bit later.

The person I was chatting with was convinced that this is ‘bad for my health’. I pressed for a scientific reason and all they could offer was an argument for humans needing to be in the sunlight for a certain number of hours a day.

Is that true at all? If so, what happens to ‘night shift’ people? Are they all doomed to a shortened life span? Should I go back to a ‘day’ job?

Thanks in advance ~

90

Sunlight helps you create Vitamin D. Maybe that’s what the reasoning was.

Wikipedia Shiftwork covers the basics. People not working during the day are less healthy, die younger and have more accidents.

Si

Are there any other sources for this? That article is pretty suspect.

Maybe, but I can say it feels like shit to work odd hours, even after you’ve gotten used to it. It cannot be good for you. I always said, it’s better to get 5 hours of sleep at night then to get 8 hours of sleep during the day.

Oh, I work the graveyard shift, so I’m all too familiar with the sleep issues caused by working abnormal hours. Which is also why I’m curious if studies have produced anything substantial on potential health effects.

I often work 12 hour shifts and mostly at night. Just when I get used to it, they throw a few day shifts in there. At least twice a week I’m up for over 24 hours because of my work “schedule”.

It took some getting used to but I don’t get sick any more often than I had in the past and I don’t fatigue as easily as I used to.

This provides a some backup…

Also here(PDF Alert).

I always considered that the risks and longterm impacts of shift-work were well accepted - certainly by the medical profession. A quick google seems to back this up. Some shift patterns are better than others. Lots of research is going on to “narrow the gap” between day workers and shift workers in terms of health impacts.

Si

Note that some people are nocturnal, though. I’ve had to live my life on “the night shift” because for my body, sleep time is from 7am to noon.

From which I can say that, yes indeed, it feels like shit. But given as I’m 27 and for the most part healthy, you can definitely do it for protracted periods of time.

I have to say that if I could have it my way I’d work all hours of the night and sleep during the day. I hate the daytime. people, congestion, distractions. On top of that, I don’t think my internal clock was happier than when I had reversed out scheduels for extended periods of time while in the military.

The night time is the right time.

I was always a night person anyway (staying up until 04:00 and sleeping until noon or later was common for me), but as I get older (I’m 26 btw), I find that I’m going to have to start looking for a healthier time frame of work. No way am I going to want to do this after 30.

I’ve just started into being self-employed so that I don’t have to work a day schedule. I suspect that regardless of anything you’re best to stick with what doesn’t feel like shit to do every day. I couldn’t say whether you tend to stay up because your body wants to be awake at those times, or if it’s because you’re just a wild and crazy guy. But I can say that if after 27 years of trying to live on a day schedule and your body still hasn’t adjusted, it ain’t gonna.

My usual work schedule is: Tuesday 2PM-10PM, Wednesday 5:30PM-9:30PM, Thursday 6AM-2PM, Friday 6PM-6AM, Saturday 6PM-6AM, Monday off.

I tell ya, this is the least healthy I have ever been. I never quite sleep right. I’m lucky if I can get my body to sleep for a 5 hour block at a time, and I never know when that time might be. I definitely feel more accident prone and exhausted, frequently sick too.

I am enjoying the links posted in this thread.

There are treatments for this, though - modafinil, for instance.

When I was a lowly fast food restaurant manager I had schedules all over the clock. One day I would work 3:00PM to midnight (or whenever the closers finished their work), then the next day work 11:00AM to 8:00PM, and then 6:00AM to 3:00PM the day after that. I’m just glad they weren’t open 24 hours at the time, or I probably would have gotten stuck on the overnight shifts, too. This irregular schedule always left me feeling tired. I was in my early 20s at the time. Today I actually feel better and more alert, and I’m 37.

My best friend worked the third shift doing customer service for a phone sex company. Basically he dealt with angry wives calling up and asking why they were slammed with a $900 bill for “teleconferencing.” The wife would deny that such a call was made, then my friend would have to play a recording for her in which her husband was feverishly moaning about how he liked to sucked dick. The wife would cry, my friend would be miserable.

In addition to the miserable job (he said it paid well and allowed him to go to school), the third shift hours were very obviously taking a serious toll on his psyche. he swooped between manic periods and falling asleep constantly unless we were actively doing something that involved moving around. He’d fall asleep on the phone. And he was getting more and more depressed and unpredictable every day.

He ended up quitting the job because he wound up spending some time in a mental hospital. Then two years later he killed himself :frowning:

Wow - thanks for all the replies.

I work from 10 am or so to 10 pm or so; with breaks for meals and errands. I go to bed around 2 am. I feel fine - I’m not sickly or depressed. I sleep about 8 hours, and feel refreshed. This schedule doesn’t seem to be such a bad thing, for me; I am still curious as to whether or not it’s unhealthy. I’m 47, BTW.

Uh-oh. I’m about to graduate from nursing school and already have a job lined up at a hospital working night shifts: 7 PM to 7 AM. I like to think I’ll have an easier time with that than I would with the reverse; I’m a night person, and simply cannot sleep before midnight or 1 AM anyway. I hate mornings with a passion. This will only be three nights a week – will that be better or worse than if it were more frequent?

I am a night person and I would kill for a job that ran from 6pm-2am. I cannot fall asleep before 2 am for any reason and given a few days to sleep whatever hours I like I naturally sleep from 4 am to about 1 or 2 pm. I have worked odd shift jobs and they are great except for the fact that most odd shift jobs are crap work (collections, billing, etc) and since the rest of the world runs on a day shift it makes it more difficult to get groceries and things like that. I tend to be sick more often when working a regular 9-6 shift than I ever was working later hours.