Work Schedules and Sleep Deprivation

Whether you work 9 to 5 or around the clock, chances are you're not getting the sleep you need. Here are the scary consequences of sleep deprivation, and tips to help you cope.

By Ellen Michaud with Julie Bain

From Sleep to Be Sexy Smart and Slim

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How Work Schedules Effect Sleep

Studies show that 85 percent of police officers, 80 percent of regional pilots, and 48 percent of air-traffic controllers nod off on the job. And a frightening 41 percent of medical workers admit they’ve made fatigue-related errors. In one survey alone, 19 percent report “worsening” a patient’s condition. What’s more, the Exxon Valdez grounding, the space shuttle Challenger accident, and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident have all been blamed, at least in part, on fatigue related to sleep loss.

Besides the negative consequences resulting on the job, shift workers are feeling the effects of their schedules. A study of 437 day workers and 246 rotating shift workers at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina found that shift workers have seriously lower levels of serotonin, a hormone that plays a role in regulating sleep and mood, than their day-working counterparts. Unfortunately, lower levels of serotonin are associated with anger, depression, and anxiety, as well as poor sleep. Another study, conducted by Harvard Medical School—this one of more than 78,000 women who worked rotating night shifts over a 10-year period—found that shift work significantly increased a woman’s risk of breast cancer.

A second team of Harvard researchers studied the same group, and they found that women who worked a rotating night shift at least three nights per month for 15 or more years had an increased risk of colorectal cancer.

And a third team of Harvard researchers studied more than 53,000 women who worked rotating shifts and found that night work increased the women’s risk of endometrial cancer by 47 percent—and actually doubled the risk of endometrial cancer in obese shift workers.

It’s this type of research that led the World Health Organization late in 2007 to classify shift work as a “probable” cause of cancer—a position that the American Cancer Society indicates it is likely to follow.

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— Hans Christian Andersen

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