How bad is shift work for your health?
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What personal experiences do the hosts share about night‑shift mishaps?
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Norman, I am guessing that both as a journalist and a doctor you have done your fair share of shift work over the years.
I have, but it was a long time ago when I was a pediatric registrar in Sydney. And I didn't take to it very well. There was one infamous night where and think I think it might have been Christmas night. I was on night duty and I heard banging on the door of my apartment. Basically one of my colleagues thought I died because I hadn't turned up for work. And I was sound asleep because of the shift worker. My alarm hadn't gone off.
I think every shift worker has at least one story of them or a colleague just not showing up because the alarm the alarm let you down.
Or you l or you're paranoid about it, that's right. And so you don't sleep very well anyway. So that's you know, I have done a I have done a bit of shift work.
Can relate to the not sleeping because I'm preparing for my alarm to go off. Anyway, shift working is what we are talking about today here on What's That Rash.
The show where we answer the health questions that everyone is asking.
Well, I mean, I could have written some some questions into us on shift work, having done a fair bit of it myself over the years, but I didn't have to because Brooke and Allison have both emailed in. Brooke says, I have been listening to your podcasts about jet lag and sleep as a shift worker in the emergency department. Currently, having just completed a run of night shifts, Brooke asks, What is your best advice for managing night shifts? Sleep, eating, when to exercise, have caffeine, etc., particularly around transitioning into them and then also back to daylight hours afterwards. And Alison says, Do you have any tips for shift workers? What is the best way to navigate getting reasonable sleep before a night shift and recovering afterwards?
Shift work seems to be associated with a number of adverse health outcomes. Is there anything to be done to minimize the risks. Well, Norman, you have shared your nap secrets before. You have shared your jet lag secrets before. I'm wondering if you have any other regular sleep pattern tips up your We've talked about your insomnia before. We know a lot about your sleep moments.
That's right.
What's your what are your shift work tips then?
Look, I didn't do enough of it to really make a sensible comment. And then well at least in those days, you either rotated between day work and night work and you didn't so often shift workers will do eight hours, a morning shift, an afternoon shift, and a night shift. In medicine it's usually day or night. And a lot of this has got to do with are you doing it all the time? Are you changing shifts? How does your employer change shifts? Do they do it sensibly according to the science? Or is it random? So there are a lot of things involved in shift work. But there's not a lot of good to be said about it. Um and we need shift workers. We need people who are working through the night. We need our airlines to be doing this, we need our police to be doing it, our ambulance services, we need people to do shift work.
But it's not necessarily good for you.
It's actually quite a large proportion of the population that's involved in shift work as well. So in industrialized countries, it's estimated fifteen to twenty percent of workers are shift workers, which is up to a fifth of the population. And it does strike me that as soon as you have some people working shifts, you need other people working shifts. So as soon as you've got people awake and driving around at night, they want to be fed. And so you have twenty-four-hour fast food restaurants and you need people on the roads as ambulance officers and police officers because there are people driving and potentially getting into car crashes and that sort of thing at that time.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What personal experiences do the hosts share about night‑shift mishaps?
0:00–5:04
2
How does the body’s circadian clock get disrupted by shift work?
5:04–11:16
3
What are the major health risks linked to long‑term shift work?
11:16–18:28
4
How strong is the evidence that shift work increases cancer risk?
18:28–22:13