Study: Working shifts has an impact on sleeping patterns
10/06/2010
Day shifts enable people to get more sleep than they would if they worked during the night, a new study has revealed.
Experts at the Sleep and Performance Research Center at Washington State University Spokane found that anyone who does have to work throughout the night should start after 0:00 (local time).
They found that workers who got the most sleep started work at either 9:00 or 14:00 (local time), as this is when the lowest level of job-related fatigue sets in.
"Our most interesting finding was that shifts beginning between 20:00 and midnight yielded consistently poorer predicted performance and less-than-adequate predicted total sleep per 24 hours," commented lead author Angela Bowen.
Additional findings show that shifts starting before midnight generally do not allow workers to get some sleep before they start work, as it disrupts their body''s circadian rhythm.
Dr Nerina Ramlakhan, author of Tired But Wired, recently told the Independent that people should consider the quality rather than the quantity of the sleep they are getting.
Posted by Elizabeth Mewes
