I’ve been part of the
Nurse’s Health Study since 1989.
The Nurses’ Health Studies are among the largest and longest running investigations of factors that influence women’s health. Started in 1976 and expanded in 1989, the information provided by the 238,000 dedicated nurse-participants has led to many new insights on health and disease. While the prevention of cancer is still a primary focus, the study has also produced landmark data on cardiovascular disease, diabetes and many other conditions. Most importantly, these studies have shown that diet, physical activity and other lifestyle factors can powerfully promote better health. The NHS is just one of many that’s studied the effects of working the night shift only to find there is a strong link between obesity, cancer, reproductive health problems, mental illness and gastrointestinal disorders and working the graveyard shift.
Big surprise? Not to me.
I’ve linked my working the graveyard shift to my development of CFS. If you read my book,
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Fighting Fatigue or this blog you know that I believe it’s the cumulative effect of
stressors over time that so weakens and disrupts your central nervous system, your adrenals, and your immune system that you’re unable to cope with any demands and you essentially crash and burn.
Working the graveyard shift is an enormous unnatural stressor due to the disrupted circadian rhythms and chronic sleep deprivation.
Because the evidence for an increased cancer risk is so strong, in December 2008 the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a unit of the World Health Organization, declared that shift work is "probably carcinogenic to humans."
Graveyard work is now in the same category as carcinogens like diesel engine exhaust, anabolic steroids, and ultraviolet radiation. We’re not meant to be exposed to light at night because it suppresses the physiologic production of melatonin, a hormone that has antiproliferative (cells that grow wildly out of control) effects on intestinal cancers. The lack of endogenous melatonin is also related to Alzheimer's disease, glucose intolerance, and
impaired immune function.
Animals that have their light-dark-day-night schedules switched develop more cancerous tumors and die earlier. Now we know that women working the night shift over many years are more prone to breast cancer and there’s evidence that men working at night may have a higher rate of prostate cancer.
People used to think it was a ridiculous notion that smoking caused cancer. Today people are failing to connect other unnatural stressors and toxins like sleep deprivation, the obsessive use of fragrance and chemicals so widely used in personal care and household products, and the chemicals and other biologically injurious substances added to processed foods to illness and disease. They don't see how you can't stress the body in unnatural ways year after year without terrible consequences.
I WISH that someone would have told me years ago when I was valiantly trying to work nights and not getting any sleep that it would lead to my CFS and my having to exit my work and my life. I didn’t know that I couldn’t mind over matter it. Yes I was SICK with sleep deprivation but I thought if I could just get through it I could move on when I got off of nights. But that stressor was so enormous to me that it caused an ingrained and lasting sleep disorder and it was an added weight on top of all my other stressors.
I can't tell you how many doctors I told, "I used to do 50 mile bike rides and then go work a double shift in intensive care." I was trying to emphasize to them how healthy I had been and how it didn't make sense that I had gotten so ill. I also talked about my inability to sleep and working the night shift. Although on top of this I was very thin NO BELLS AND WHISTLES WENT OFF and I never had a doctor sit me down and tell me how my behaviors and lifestyle were the cause of my illness because doctors aren't looking at imbalance. Instead they look at things like your labs and listen to your breath sounds and heart in order to determine if you're sick. If someone came to me now and told me any of that I would tell them, "You have sleep deprivation, you are obsessively exercising in a way that is unhealthy, you are too thin to be working that hard both exercising and at work. Those are the reasons you are sick." Then I would tell them what to do to get well.
If you work nights and you are suffering with chronic fatigue, continual disrupted sleep patterns even while not on the night shift, and you begin to feel unable to deal with other stressors its time for you to re-evaluate whether whatever work you’re doing is worth the risk of developing CFS.
Cancer aside, CFS takes away your life and is extremely difficult to recover from. Working nights is hazardous to your health and like all things if the risks outweigh the benefits then it’s not worth it.
IF YOU'RE SICK -- HOW MUCH ARE YOU
STRESSING YOUR BODY?
The Nurses’ Health Studies are among the largest and longest running investigations of factors that influence women’s health. Started in 1976 and expanded in 1989, the information provided by the 238,000 dedicated nurse-participants has led to many new insights on health and disease. While the prevention of cancer is still a primary focus, the study has also produced landmark data on cardiovascular disease, diabetes and many other conditions. Most importantly, these studies have shown that diet, physical activity and other lifestyle factors can powerfully promote better health.
The NHS is just one of many that’s studied the effects of working the night shift only to find there is a strong link between obesity, cancer, reproductive health problems, mental illness and gastrointestinal disorders and working the graveyard shift.
Big surprise? Not to me.
I’ve linked my working the graveyard shift to my development of CFS. If you read my book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Fighting Fatigue or this blog you know that I believe it’s the cumulative effect of stressors over time that so weakens and disrupts your central nervous system, your adrenals, and your immune system that you’re unable to cope with any demands and you essentially crash and burn.
Working the graveyard shift is an enormous unnatural stressor due to the disrupted circadian rhythms and chronic sleep deprivation.
Because the evidence for an increased cancer risk is so strong, in December 2008 the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a unit of the World Health Organization, declared that shift work is "probably carcinogenic to humans."
Graveyard work is now in the same category as carcinogens like diesel engine exhaust, anabolic steroids, and ultraviolet radiation. We’re not meant to be exposed to light at night because it suppresses the physiologic production of melatonin, a hormone that has antiproliferative (cells that grow wildly out of control) effects on intestinal cancers. The lack of endogenous melatonin is also related to Alzheimer's disease, glucose intolerance, and impaired immune function.
Animals that have their light-dark-day-night schedules switched develop more cancerous tumors and die earlier. Now we know that women working the night shift over many years are more prone to breast cancer and there’s evidence that men working at night may have a higher rate of prostate cancer.
People used to think it was a ridiculous notion that smoking caused cancer. Today people are failing to connect other unnatural stressors and toxins like sleep deprivation, the obsessive use of fragrance and chemicals so widely used in personal care and household products, and the chemicals and other biologically injurious substances added to processed foods to illness and disease. They don't see how you can't stress the body in unnatural ways year after year without terrible consequences.
I WISH that someone would have told me years ago when I was valiantly trying to work nights and not getting any sleep that it would lead to my CFS and my having to exit my work and my life. I didn’t know that I couldn’t mind over matter it. Yes I was SICK with sleep deprivation but I thought if I could just get through it I could move on when I got off of nights. But that stressor was so enormous to me that it caused an ingrained and lasting sleep disorder and it was an added weight on top of all my other stressors.
I can't tell you how many doctors I told, "I used to do 50 mile bike rides and then go work a double shift in intensive care." I was trying to emphasize to them how healthy I had been and how it didn't make sense that I had gotten so ill. I also talked about my inability to sleep and working the night shift. Although on top of this I was very thin NO BELLS AND WHISTLES WENT OFF and I never had a doctor sit me down and tell me how my behaviors and lifestyle were the cause of my illness because doctors aren't looking at imbalance. Instead they look at things like your labs and listen to your breath sounds and heart in order to determine if you're sick. If someone came to me now and told me any of that I would tell them, "You have sleep deprivation, you are obsessively exercising in a way that is unhealthy, you are too thin to be working that hard both exercising and at work. Those are the reasons you are sick." Then I would tell them what to do to get well.
If you work nights and you are suffering with chronic fatigue, continual disrupted sleep patterns even while not on the night shift, and you begin to feel unable to deal with other stressors its time for you to re-evaluate whether whatever work you’re doing is worth the risk of developing CFS.
Cancer aside, CFS takes away your life and is extremely difficult to recover from. Working nights is hazardous to your health and like all things if the risks outweigh the benefits then it’s not worth it.
IF YOU'RE SICK -- HOW MUCH ARE YOU STRESSING YOUR BODY?