Around the world, millions of people work at night, which there is not much official data about, but according to a Princeton University study, between seven and 15 percent of the workforce in industrialized countries is involved in some kind of night work, despite evidence of its harmful effects on health. BBC.
"The key problem is our internal biological clock that is set to the outside world, that is, exposure to cycles of light and dark," says Russell Foster, an expert on sleep problems and a professor at Oxford.
He explains the mechanism of action of the biological clock in humans and says that neglecting it activates the stress mechanism. Stress raises blood sugar and blood pressure as the body prepares to respond to a potential threat "that doesn't really exist — we're just at work," Foster points out.
A high level of stress can also lead to cardiovascular diseases or metabolic abnormalities such as type 2 diabetes. Stress also makes the work of the immune system difficult, which is a good basis for higher rates of colon cancer or breast cancer.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified night work as a possible cause of cancer. These are long-term consequences, but lack of sleep also causes acute ones. The most visible is fatigue, which is why we don't receive information in the right way, misinterpret social signals and lose the ability to empathize.
Shift workers also suffer from heart problems caused by continuous work that is in conflict with biological rhythms.
And in addition, as anyone who has worked night shifts knows, it's not easy to keep your fingers away from junk food after them. There are studies that say that carbohydrate consumption goes up by 35 to 40 percent after just four to five days of reduced hours of sleep at night due to increased levels of the hormone ghrelin that regulates our hunger. It makes us hungry and encourages us to consume sugar and carbohydrates.
"Ultimately, it's not really good for the line or conditions like type 2 diabetes," Foster said.
In addition to more frequent health check-ups, those who work at night should have healthy food, especially fruit, close at hand due to the risk of cardiovascular diseases and metabolic disorders such as diabetes.
Marko Hafner from the Rand Europe research institute says that governments are becoming increasingly aware of the problem, which is why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US has declared insufficient sleep a public health epidemic. So there is a growing awareness that lack of sleep is a public health problem.
Since there is so much evidence about the health risks of night shifts, the question arises as to why people choose them: while some have no choice, some prefer them.
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