- Shift Work Sleep Disorder -
what can happen when you work in shifts?
Shift work sleep disorder is characterized by insomnia and daytime fatigue, due to a persistent work schedule that overlaps with a person's typical sleep time. In shift work disorder, the person continually struggles to remain awake during his night shift and to sleep during the day. If his internal biological clock does not shift with the work schedule, he remains in a perpetual state of imbalance.
This state of imbalance appear mostly in night shift, which can be dangerous, and excessive sleepiness on the job contributes further to this hazard. Early morning shift workers may have short schedules of sleep at night associated with early morning shift start times, and this may exhibit excessive sleepiness as well.
But what happens if people are experimentally deprived of sleep ?
Sleep deprivation upsets the body's physiologic system:- hormones
- immune system
- digestive system
- blood pressure regulation
- urine production
Sleeping and waking up in the morning are signals that our biological clock uses to keep those physiologic systems synchronized with each other.A person whose sleep schedule is irregular, does not have normal signals to reset his clock each day and keep things running smoothly. This may help to explain why disturbances of digestive system and headaches are more common in people who do shift work. Sleep deprivated people also may become irritable and disoriented, and may have dreamlike hallucinations. They suffer a gradual loss of ability to concentrate.Nine hours of sleep are needed, consistently every night, for reaction time of your movements to be at its best.
In conclusion, shift work deprived disorder is not fatal. However, it certainly causes fatalities when it interferes with a person's ability to perform normally.
When a truck driver falls asleep at the wheel and crashes, an average of four innocent victims die with him.
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