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The Effects of Working Night Shift

Working the night shift can be an attractive option to anyone looking to free herself from the 9-to-5 routine. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that many workers who work such shifts do so because of personal preference, the desire to attend classes during the day, or the needs of family life. A nocturnal working life is not without drawbacks, however. Studies have shown that alternate-shift work can have an adverse effect on your health, with a shift that consists mostly of nighttime hours, whether late into the night or overnight, being especially bad.

  1. Digestive Problems

    • The Centers for Disease Control says that some research has shown that constipation, ulcers and other stomach problems appear more frequently in shift workers than in those who work day schedules. Digestion follows a circadian rhythm, or the body's internal clock, and shift work can interfere with those patterns by forcing you to do things like eat and use the bathroom at times that aren't part of your body's normal rhythms. Stomach and digestive problems can also occur at night because often vending machine food is all that's available.

    Diabetes and Obesity

    • A study by the Harvard and Brigham's Women's Hospital in Boston found that with test subjects eating and sleeping on a night shift schedule and eating identical meals, three out of eight participants began to show insulin resistance and blood sugar increases commonly found in diabetics or prediabetics. The study also found that leptin, the hormone that aids in calorie burning, decreased in its effectiveness, which, in the long term, increases the risk of weight gain.

    Cancer

    • In 2007, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a subsidiary of the World Health Organization, classified shift work as a probable carcinogen. Scientists said the night shift causes cancer because it disrupts the body's natural light-and-dark cycle. The hormone melatonin is produced at night and is thought to prevent tumor development, but too much light can stop production of the hormone and enable tumor growth.

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