A man claiming to be a police officer wrote to me recently with an important question, one that’s applicable to all people who sleep:
Dr. Hamblin,
I’m a police officer who works a night shift. … A lot of police departments have a rotating schedule requiring officers to change from nights to days, and back to nights again.
My department keeps us on the same shift indefinitely unless we ask to change. Is there any research or medical opinion about working a rotating night-day schedule versus working a consistent night shift? ...
I know that is a broad question but any advice is appreciated.
Nic
Like most questions about bodies, there’s not one definitive answer that’s best for everyone. But I think Officer Nic is making the right call to stay on nights:
Night shifts are a health hazard in either case, but for different reasons.
Would it be better not to keep throwing your body back and forth from diurnal to nocturnal? Cleveland Clinic, for one, tells patients both to “avoid frequently rotating shifts,” and also to “decrease the number of night shifts worked in a row.”
What? That’s scary if you have to work nights. Newly discovered health risks of working night shifts keep coming out: higher risks of coronary artery disease, diabetes, weight gain, and some cancers. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has listed night shifts as “probably carcinogenic.” Among people who’ve worked a decade of shift work, their brains show cognitive decline years in advance.
[For more of this story, written by James Hamblin, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/he...ts-the-worst/504800/]
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