Iris to Hypnos. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.623
Suppose you have survived your average 26-minute commute home, have listened calmly to the evening news (was it bad?), and have enjoyed a delicious, nutritious, stress-free family dinner. What other nighttime stresses might lie in wait for you? You might be one of "many millions" with insomnia, or one of 10 to 15 million more with sleep apnea, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).43 You can expect to get insufficient sleep, if the National Sleep Foundation is to be believed. Their exhaustive 2002 "Sleep in America" poll provides some of the data on the graphic above. Poll respondents slept an average of 6.9 hours on weekdays, although 33% reported less than 6.5 hours, and 27% felt sleepy at work. NIH sleep experts believe you should be getting somewhere in the range of 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night.
If you are one of 14.4 million people classified by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as a shift worker, you are likely to suffer from a different kind of sleep problem: Shift Work Sleep Disorder (SWSD), caused by fighting the internal clock that signals you to sleep at night. Jed Black of the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic estimates that 70% of shift workers suffer from SWSD. Many of them are working multiple jobs.
Australian/New Zealand researchers report that insufficient sleep can have some of the same effects as being drunk (it affects coordination, reaction time, and judgment). Consider this in light of the fact that shift workers include police officers and firefighters, doctors and nurses, and transportation and public utility workers. There's a stress- inducing concept!
Another reason for shift workers to feel stress: Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center report that women who work the "graveyard shift" (beginning at 11:00 p.m. or thereabouts) may have an increased risk of breast cancer ranging from 60% to 130%. A study in Antarctica suggests that night shift workers are at increased risk of developing heart disease.
Worker fatigue is blamed for an estimated $18 billion each year in lost productivity. The destruction of the space shuttle Challenger, the Chernobyl radiation disaster, the nuclear reactor accident at Three Mile Island, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill have all been linked to worker fatigue. But rest easy. Researchers are studying whether a drug called modafinil might benefit shift workers by allowing them to go 40 hours without sleep.44
We have seen that there are plenty of exposures to potential stressors in a 24-hour-day. Ready for a vacation?
Sources: Graphic: National Sleep Foundation, 2002 "Sleep in America" Poll, nationally representative telephone survey of 1,010 adults living in households in the continental United States, http://www.sleepfoundation.org/; and U.S. Department of Labor, "Full- time wage and salary shift workers by reason for working a non-daytime schedule, May 2001," http://www.bls.gov/news.release/. "Stanford researchers study drug to help shift workers stay focused and rest easy," Stanford Hospital & Clinics news release, November 26, 2001, http://www.stanfordhospital.com/. "Sleep deprivation as bad as alcohol impairment," CNN.com health, September 20, 2000, http://www.cnn.com/2000. Warren King, "Graveyard shifts may raise risk of breast cancer, October 17, 2001, http://seattletimes.nwsour. "Shift work link to heart disease," BBC News, December 27, 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk. Jan Ehrman, "A Good Night's Sleep? Merely a Dream for Millions," http://www.nih.gov/news/WordonHealth/jun98/story02.htm. All data retrieved August 13, 2002.
User Comments Add a comment…