What are the challenges of shift-work sleep?
Shift work presents a serious obstacle to good sleep. You can’t enter a good, restorative sleep on command. That’s because of the circadian rhythm, which is the body’s internal 24-hour clock that regulates sleep-wake cycles. If you change your sleep and wake times, it takes several days for the circadian rhythm to adapt. That’s why shift workers often get to bed when their bodies are not ready for sleep, and they stay up way past their bedtime. It results in more sleepless bedtimes and also in worse sleep quality.
“Shift workers often experience sleep disruptions because they are unable to allocate a constant and specific time for sleeping, and their body clock is often not adjusted for this. If you are working the night shift, it requires you to go to bed at a time when your brain and body usually are awake and set to function,” said lead author PhD candidate Philipp Beranek.
Data from previous studies show that shift workers get anywhere from 5 hours and 32 minutes to 6 hours and 19 minutes of sleep. And that’s desperately insufficient for the vast majority of people.
“Fly-in, fly-out workers have long shifts, yet they are still required to do all the normal things as well, like having dinner, washing their clothes, doing exercise or even commuting from the mine site. It makes it difficult to manage sufficient sleep within that 24-hour period,” Beranek added. Why does sleep hygiene matter?
Sleep hygiene […]
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