Are Night Shifts Killing Me?

I work nights in IT and have done so for many years (more than a decade). It's finally begun to take its toll, especially since I have to move my sleep schedule around on my weekend to be able to do anything with my spouse, kid, or friends. For the past several weeks, I was working an afternoon/evening schedule instead of my usual overnight one and the sleep difference has been amazing. Even though I really like working nights--no managers around, slower pace, lights can be off in the ops bay--I'm probably going to switch shifts.

It surprised me how much different my sleeping was even after doing this for more than 10 years. You'd think, or I thought, that my sleep cycle would be adjusted by now but it wasn't. When I needed to go to bed at 2am to get up at 11am and be off to work for these past few weeks, no problem at all. No fatigue, no rolling around half-awake for an hour in the middle of my sleep, nothing.

The point that really hit me was about eating in the middle of the night, even when shift workers are supposed to be awake. I have a horrible diet, mostly McDonald's and whatever I bring from home since there's nothing open for food, and that struck hard that the consequences of this are even worse on my current shift.

I am really interested in sleep habits / performance as I often struggle to get to sleep and get up at 5:30-6 (mostly work but also kids!).

I personally find that if I meditate for at least 20 mins it is as if I have slept 8 hours, otherwise I am tired and useless.

I've been living in Thailand while I work on a startup, and the rest of my team lives in the US. I've been trying to maintain some overlap with US timezones, which means regularly staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning. I try to get at least 8 hours of sleep and don't set an alarm, but now this article has got me worried about the long term effects.

It's often difficult to stick to my schedule. Sometimes I can get very focussed on my work, and I look out the window to see that the sun has already come up. It only takes one mistake like this to throw out my schedule for the whole week, and I have insomnia if I try to fall asleep at the usual time. Often the only way to fix it is by forcing myself to wake up very early, so that I'm tired enough to fall asleep the next night.

So this article has been pretty eye-opening for me, and I'll be monitoring my routine more closely now.

While at unversity, I worked at a hospital in the pharmacy, often covering the 3rd shift (11pm to 7am). There were a number of employees who had worked 3rd shift for decades and as a running joke, they kept a bulletin board with every single study that showed the negative health impacts of night shifts -- literally dozens of scholarly articles about what they were doing to themselves.

The hospital maintained a decent premium (~15% IIRC) for night shift hours, but it was clear to the employees that they were making a tradeoff on their health to work at night. It's a tough problem since sick people don't wait for regular hours to crash or require care, so someone needs to be there. Maybe better coverage from split shifts?

As a former Nuclear Ops Engineer I used to rotate 12 hour shifts on a weekly basis.. Days, mids, and grave all in one month. We were paid very well, but I would get at least a head cold every week. I soon realized that nuclear operation is not worth my health. I quit my job and entered the IT / Start up world making much less… Even though I work more hours than before, the rotating schedule is gone and being sick is now a rare occurrence! The move was one of the best decisions I ever made and I love this article because it confirmed that decision I made so many years ago.

Does the article have different wording for U.S. readers? I'm curious, because I'm not used to the BBC referring to large vehicles used for hauling as "trucks" rather than "lorries".

see also http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783

Yes.

I tested this on myself (n=1), and I am convinced that it's super bad for you.

I had a graveyard shift job for a while in college, which alternated with swing shifts from 3pm till midnight a day or two each week, so I was not allowed to have a consistent sleep cycle. I taped aluminum foil over my bedroom windows and wore earplugs so I could sleep at any hour. I lived at a high latitude, about 60, in a city that received about 100 inches of rain per year.

During that winter I literally did not see the sun for several months. On many days I would try desperately to get out of bed before the sun sunk behind the mountains in the early afternoon, but I was constantly sleep deprived and I lacked the willpower. Every afternoon was a bitter disappointment when I slept through sunset, and in the morning between a graveyard shift that ended at 7am or later, and a swing that started at 3pm, insomnia would segue into panic as I watched the clock tick past 10 and 11 am, and thought of my next shift starting in 4 hours. At that point I would be reduced to drinking and/or "borrowing" some pills from a friend, setting three alarm clocks, and showing up with a hangover, which was bad for productivity, but less debilitating then no sleep at all.

It was generally understood that graveyard shift guys got a little more slack about being late now and then, but calling in "sick" for a whole shift was not tolerated. My boss kept telling me that he would put me on full time graveyard, and stop making me cover day shifts (and also take me off the “training wage”) any day now, but the day never came.

I gained 20 pounds in 9 mounts. I became profoundly addicted to nicotine patches because I didn't have time to smoke, and didn't have the willpower or lifestyle health to quit. But the most pernicious effects were on my judgment, mood, and executive abilities. It's almost impossible to create and execute long term plans when you are exhausted all the time, can't think clearly and all of the will power you can muster is devoted to not over-sleeping through your obligations. I was a full time student at the beginning of this, with the intention of completing a CS degree but I had trouble focusing on the work.

As I write this now, it sounds melodramatic, but I thought at the time that it wasn't a big deal and I just needed to “tough it out” to work my way through college. In retrospect, I can see that routine insomnia and panic are not normal, that I made all kinds of bizarrely bad decisions that I only noticed later, and did a shitty job at school. It was only possible to sustain that lifestyle because I lived with my parents, who took care of all the household responsibilities while I was at work or school or sleeping through alarms, and because I mortgaged my health.

Finally, when it came time to register for a fall semester my boss put off a conversation about scheduling for so long that I registered for a full load of day classes without his permission rather than miss the registration deadline. I showed him my schedule and told him that if he couldn't accommodate it and also stop putting me on graveyard shifts, I would have to look for work somewhere else. He relented, rather than fire me. After that, I quit nicotine, started running, lost 30 pounds, and started spending more time outside. It almost seemed easy once I was sleeping 8 hours every night (Ok, except for quitting nicotine). I also started noticing all the bad decisions I had made once I could think clearly enough not to put off hard problems.

I think if I had been 53 instead of 23 it might have actually killed me. Just don't do it.

If you do it anyway, please be realistic by discounting your wage against harm to your health and judgment, and to your future earnings. For example, I set back my college career by doing this. Insist on a consistent schedule, and don't be afraid to threaten to quit to get it. It doesn't need to be a bluff because the opportunity cost of not sleeping is so high; your net wealth will probably increase either way in the long run, even if you do get fired.

Also I think the harm can be partly remediated with a gym membership. If you can't exercise outside during daylight, this is far better then nothing. Sleep deprivation is shown to cause weight gain and to have a detrimental effect on mood, so exercise is a good way to partially compensate, but it's sort of a chicken and egg kind of problem because adequate sleep and a consistent sleep rhythm are prerequisites to exercise, at least for me. I tried to do it without those preconditions, but I lacked the willpower to consistently exercise while exhausted.

Ultimately, I would not consider night shifts again unless I were guaranteed 1) a near term end date, 2) a consistent schedule, and 3) a VERY large wage premium that served a life changing goal.

An interesting case where Betterridge's Law of Headlines doesn't hold true.