'Evening shifts can be bad for you but night owls might have protection'
![Many people thrive working nights, while others suffer (Image: Getty Images)](/upload/news/2023/05/08/48838.jpg)
Are you a morning or an evening person? If you’re a night owl you’re well equipped to be a shift worker, particularly night shifts.
If you’re not, research from Oxford University suggests you should be cautious about taking a job where you work through the night.
It seems some people have a genetic predisposition to being a night owl, and research led by Oxford University ’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science finds this protects regular night-shift workers against the health risks that result from sleeping less.
This is important stuff because up to a quarter of public-sector employees in the UK do some form of night work.
About the same numbers in other countries are shift workers.
![Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade qhiqhhieuiqkeinv](/upload/news/2023/02/01/1_m.jpg)
But increasing evidence shows night work and persistent disruption of the body clock is a serious risk factor for health and may lead to conditions such as depression, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
Using the UK Biobank database, the Oxford University researchers looked at 53,211 workers between 2006 and 2018 to investigate if they had a genetic propensity to “eveningness”.
Their study found night work is linked to significant sleep penalties, the greatest of which were in people who work constant nights.
According to the study: “This is given the fact sleep plays an essential role for physical and mental health”.
The researchers found, in general, people who work nights more frequently sleep less. Regular night-shift workers self-reported 13 minutes less sleep a night, compared to those who never worked through the night.
But the research also shows having this higher genetic propensity to “eveningness” has a strong protective effect, reducing the sleep penalty by up to nearly a third.
Dr Evelina Akimova, lead author, said: “What we found particularly exciting is that we were able to use multiple measures of eveningness including genetic, self-reported, and accelerometer measures to advance our knowledge of sleep penalties among night-shift workers.”
Professor Melinda Mills, lead senior author, added: “There are health implications for night-shift workers, but our study shows that these vary between individuals dependent on their chronotype, and that should be considered when designing interventions.”
These findings go a long way to explaining why some people can’t cope with night shifts while others thrive.
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