Night Work Steals Part Of My Life
The great poet Ovid once said: “The night is sadder than the day”. Looks like he wasn’t entirely wrong. Know that for many people who work nights, this phrase is true. Their jobs could rob them of a part of their life.
This is confirmed by a study carried out within the University of Surrey and in collaboration with other institutions. Night work has a direct impact on the quality of life of those who do it. So, it’s curious how those hours that we often associate with love and romance can actually be quite harmful. Even if of course, being with your partner at night is not the same as working …
“The night is beautiful, it is naked, it has no limits or barriers.”
-Jose Hierro-
The problems of night work
Studies showing that night work is unhealthy are popping up everywhere. Research has been carried out in particular on nurses in South Korea. Others on Chinese employees who worked in the automotive sector in shifts and who are retired as well as on French workers were also carried out.
The main problem arises from the lack of sleep or the change in rest schedules. We live in a society focused on the day and the light. Thus, people who work at night must adapt their life to this schedule. Otherwise, they accumulate fatigue and sleep and are rarely able to recover it.
In all of the research, data has been found that directly affects a person’s health. And in each, we also found negative effects of different kinds. For example :
- Among nurses in South Korea, those who work at night are much more prone to obesity.
- Among retired Chinese employees, diabetes and high blood pressure were found to be higher than average.
- The French workers analyzed showed statistically significant cognitive deterioration. In fact, their results indicated that their condition was equivalent to having aged between 5 and 10 years older than the others.
Night work affects rest
As we have said, night work directly affects the lack of rest. When we work in shifts and we are not really adapted to the schedule, our biological rhythms are completely unstructured.
Thus, the internal mechanisms responsible for sleep and wakefulness are completely upset. The body of a person who works at night suffers from severe dissonance. For example, she feeds when it’s not the time and tries to sleep when she doesn’t feel tired.
Ultimately, all of these misalignments lead to a worrying lack of sleep. This worker profile does not get enough sleep. This is the big problem. And his body is continually tired.
In addition, there are other factors that also affect night workers. For example, food. Not only do they not eat at the right times, but they have more difficulty finding healthy products and therefore consuming them. Many are content with fast food, which deteriorates their cognitive and physical capacities more quickly.
What to do when you have to work at night?
There is no easy solution for night workers. As we have explained, the ideal is to adapt your life to the work schedule. But weekends are a problem because on free days it is very difficult not to return to a daytime rhythm. So our body is always subject to changing rhythms, very bad.
In addition, many people vary in their night shifts. A day’s work week and a night’s work week. It is terribly harmful to the body. The body never manages to adapt definitively to any of these schedules. According to experts, one of the groups that adapt well to night shifts is that of oil rig professionals. Since they do not have free weekends and sleep in rooms without windows, they do not suffer from the feelings of those who live in towns or villages.
It is obvious that work is necessary today to live. If you have to do night turns, you will adapt, but your physical and cognitive health will be affected. And there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem, but you’ve taken the first step: you know it’s not good. The next step would be to do everything you can to maintain consistent schedules and to stick to a minimum number of hours of rest each day.
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