![]() Waking up around the same time every day is also important even for shift workers, because it’s a strong signal for our circadian clock. They can try things like taking melatonin to try to go to bed earlier, or exposure to bright lights to try to shift their clock earlier. They’ve got to go to bed earlier than normal, which can induce insomnia. Those are the early morning shift workers, people who start work before 7 am. There’s also a huge population of shift workers that we tend not to focus on. That will get you closer to that seven or eight hours of recommended sleep. And then you take about a two-hour nap before you go back to work. So what we what recommend is you get that five or six hours. And then they wake up, because the clock in their brain tells them it’s time to be awake, not because they got enough sleep. What I mean by that is, say after a night shift a worker goes home, is awake for a little bit, and then goes to sleep. One of them is to try to maximize your 24-hour total sleep time. But there are specific tips that we can give to people who do shift work. Wright: Shift work is a challenge because it really goes against our fundamental biology. NIHNiH: What advice do you give to people who work the night shift or other shifts that could throw off their biological clocks? And when I say lead to, I mean it’s going to impact a lot of those fundamental processes in the body that contribute to these disorders. It can lead to type 2 diabetes, it can lead to heart disease and stroke. It can lead to the development of depression or worsening of it. Wright: Long-term disruption of circadian patterns can lead to weight gain, to obesity. NIHNiH: What kinds of problems can disrupting your circadian clock cause? We can show that if you don’t get enough sleep, or if your circadian clock is disturbed, that system will be dysregulated in one way or another. That’s one example, but the same goes for any system in our body. And if we eat during that time, that is associated with impairments in our blood sugar. So when we don’t get enough sleep, we are awake when melatonin levels are high. Humans are not meant to be eating when melatonin levels are high. And high levels of melatonin signal our biological night. Our clock tells the body when to produce melatonin. For humans, our bodies are programmed to eat food during the daytime, not at nighttime, and be physically active during the daytime and not at nighttime.įor example, look at a hormone called melatonin. These include when you choose to eat and when you choose to be active. That biological clock controls the timing of a lot of our behaviors. Wright: The circadian system is our biological clock. NIHNiH: What is the circadian system? And why is it disrupted by shift work, such as working the night shift? Kenneth Wright, Jr., an NIH-funded expert on sleep at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Wright, Jr., PhD, Professor of Distinction, Director, Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory, University of Colorado BoulderĮxcerpts from our conversation with Dr. ![]()
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