Working Nights

Can Music Calm a Shift Worker’s Soul – and Improve Sleep as Well?

Where can you find Coldplay, Betty Buckley, The Beastie Boys, Bruce Hornsby, and Vanessa Carleton all working together? Seems like an unlikely group, doesn’t it?

These musicians and many other creative types are big supporters of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF). Created in 1995, IMNF was founded “to restore, maintain and improve people’s physical, emotional and neurologic functioning through the systematic use of music.” IMNF collaborates with researchers and practitioners around the world to advance the understanding and application of the power of music to promote healing and wellness. Some of IMNF’s most significant research and startling findings are in the areas of music and its impact on language, memory, and recovery from nerve injury.

How does music affect shift workers? Should it be listened to at work? Does it help you fall asleep? Can it lower stress when coping with variable schedules?
Read this article…

November is National Heartburn Month! Is this Something to Celebrate?

Do you feel bloated?  Is your stomach is churning day and night?  To alleviate your heartburn and acid indigestion, do you regularly pop antacid pills?  If your answers are yes, you’re not alone.  People who work shifts often suffer from gastrointestinal (GI) disease.  In fact, up to 75% of night workers have G.I. problems – and peptic ulcers are up to 5 times more frequent.  Nearly 40% of shift workers report taking antacids several times a month.[i]  According to the National Heartburn Alliance (NHBA), over 25 million Americans suffer from heartburn on a daily basis and most of them attribute it to the foods they eat.    

So, if you’re one of the 25 million, or your best buddy or spouse is, what can you do to get help? 

Read this article…

Working Nights Featured in Corporate Wellness Magazine’s September Issue

Health care reform is on everyone’s mind. Corporate Wellness Magazine, written for employers, unions, government agencies, consultants and insurance companies, has two health related articles by Working Nights featured in this months magazine. They include:

The Cost of Pharmaceutical Products used by Shift Workers
In 2007 the total U.S. health care bill came to $2.3 trillion—more than we spent that year on food. The United States spent approximately 16 percent of its 2006 gross domestic product on healthcare, up from eight percent in 1975. This article looks at pharmaceutical products and how much we spend on ailments affecting shift workers.

Lowering Stress and Anxiety for Shift Workers
When faced with the anxiety that sometimes accompanies working shift work, many people turn to tobacco, drugs (both pharmaceutical and illegal ones) and alcohol as coping mechanisms. While these substances may bring some calm in the short term, they tend to heighten stress and anxiety over the long term. This article includes valuable tips to help shift workers better manage work/life balance.

Hope you enjoy these featured articles!

©2009 Circadian Age, Inc. – ‘Working Nights”

Be Careful When and What You Eat, When Working Shift Work – No Greasy Fries and Burgers Anymore! Sorry!

Our bodies circadian rhythms regulate when we should eat, sleep, and be active. However, when we work shift work we don’t allow our bodies to adhere to these regulations, especially when we are working nights. We run around working, when we should be sleeping and inactive, and we eat at night when our bodies are normally shut down and not focused on digestion. We all know it doesn’t help us to maintain our weight when we eat junk food at night while sitting in front of the television. But what causes the problem? Is it the calories in the junk food? Would it make a difference if we chose to nibble on carrots and celery instead? Or is it because we’re eating late at night? A recent study in the journal Obesity, has found that when we eat may be more of a driver of weight gain than what we eat. This obviously has significant impact for shift workers.
Read this article…

Are We Breaking the Health Care Bank for Shift Workers?- Controlling the Rising Cost of Health Care

Long nights, little sleep, changing shifts- the collision of stress and exhaustion can cause other types of collisions for shift workers, such as collisions between cars with tired drivers, collisions in the arteries that cause heart attacks and strokes, and a whole host of other worries. Night work and shift jobs cause a huge variety of health problems for shift workers, problems that can rip chunks out of struggling checking accounts. Rising health care costs become a concern for managers, who have to shoulder a good deal of the cost with insurance, and for workers, who not only have to deal with their illness or injury but with the stress of paying for it. No one wants to choose between their salary and their health, or their job and their life. Management needs to spend money efficiently to keep everyone going strong. Zeroing in on extended hours workers will provide an employer more bang for their health care buck. Read this article…

Running on Empty- Safe Driving on a Shift Work Schedule

While people worry about the dangers of sky diving, bungee jumping, and other death-defying activities, in fact one of the most dangerous things you can do is turn that little metal key in your car every day. In the U.S., someone dies in a car accident once every 13 seconds. Since shift workers experience many of the symptoms that are the most frequent causes of car crashes- fatigue and drowsiness, nodding off from lack of sleep, drug use, and use of sleep aids- driving safety is especially important from shift workers. The perils of a commute after a long day (or especially after working nights) can be deadly.
Read this article…

Shift Workers May Need to Pay Special Attention to Sodium and Potassium Levels

Fast and processed food pumps more sodium into our diet every day than our body was meant to handle. For shift workers that rely on the comfort and reliability fast food offers on the way to or from a shift, sodium sneaks in and can wreak havoc on a body throughout the years. Many people think that if they avoid sprinkling too much salt on their meals, sodium won’t be a problem, but unfortunately this is not the case. Shift workers face additional challenges from the normal fast food-eater, since the high levels of caffeine many shift workers drink reduces hydration, further throwing off the sodium balance, and many effects of too much sodium such as weight gain, low energy, aching muscles, and chronic fatigue are already felt by shift workers for other job-related reasons. Your body relies on potassium to balance out sodium content, a goal that is clearly extremely important for extended hours workers. This article will show you how to tell if you have a problem, and lay out tips for keeping you body balanced and what foods to eat to increase potassium levels. Read this article…

Restless Legs Syndrome and Its Connection to Shift Work

For shift workers slumping into bed after a long night shift or extended hours work day, a pain that feels like a burning iron on your leg is not the feeling you were hoping for. Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS), a chronic problem sometimes unnoticed by health care, affects almost 10 percent of the population, yet it is still a misunderstood and often forgotten disorder. A shiftwork lifestyle causes workers to face a much greater risk for Restless Leg Syndrome than the normal population. Restless Leg Syndrome often goes undiagnosed for up to twenty years after it rears its ugly head, causing pain, lack of sleep, and irritation, but people can work their way towards recovery. It is important for shift workers to arm themselves with knowledge of RLS and its symptoms, so that they can avoid unnecessary harm. Read this article…