Shift Work Is A Major Cause Of Insomnia
Never take your sleep for granted because in today's world there is a huge population that has to endure the hardships of doing shift work.
Doctors, nurses, firefighters, airline pilots, policemen, grocery store stockers, and the store clerk at your local 24 hour gas station are among the millions of people that work long and hard into the late night hours.
Unfortunately, these people are more susceptible to insomnia and many other health problems because of the demands of their schedule.
The biggest reason for this is because working at night makes the internal body clock out of balance.
The human body is designed to stay awake during the day and sleep at night.
There are chemical reactions that go on to aid in this process.
For example during the darkness hours the brain automatically produces the sleep chemical melatonin.
You also have to take into consideration that our bodies depend on a sleep schedule.
When this becomes out of balance, insomnia can result because your brain doesn't know when to tell your body to fall asleep .
You might have experienced automatically waking up at nearly the same time every morning.
Often I'll wake up at 8 am like clockwork during the weekends, because I'm so used to my alarm ringing at 8 am for the week days.
My body is basically trained to wake up at a certain time because I've maintained a consistent sleep schedule.
Now imagine if I suddenly changed my work shift.
Now my sleep schedule causes confusion with my bodies sleep schedule.
Instead of waking up at 8am, I may automatically wake up during the middle of my new sleep schedule required for the new shift work demands.
The truth is, it can take weeks before your body becomes accustomed to the new sleep schedule.
If your job requires you to change shift schedules frequently, there's no chance for your body to become accustomed to this new schedule and sleep disorder will result, along with a myriad other dangerous health problems.
Ideally if you can't avoid shift work, make sure the scheduling department schedules the shift-work hours for months at a time instead of a few weeks so you'll have a chance to adjust to the new schedule before changing to a different schedule.
Doctors, nurses, firefighters, airline pilots, policemen, grocery store stockers, and the store clerk at your local 24 hour gas station are among the millions of people that work long and hard into the late night hours.
Unfortunately, these people are more susceptible to insomnia and many other health problems because of the demands of their schedule.
The biggest reason for this is because working at night makes the internal body clock out of balance.
The human body is designed to stay awake during the day and sleep at night.
There are chemical reactions that go on to aid in this process.
For example during the darkness hours the brain automatically produces the sleep chemical melatonin.
You also have to take into consideration that our bodies depend on a sleep schedule.
When this becomes out of balance, insomnia can result because your brain doesn't know when to tell your body to fall asleep .
You might have experienced automatically waking up at nearly the same time every morning.
Often I'll wake up at 8 am like clockwork during the weekends, because I'm so used to my alarm ringing at 8 am for the week days.
My body is basically trained to wake up at a certain time because I've maintained a consistent sleep schedule.
Now imagine if I suddenly changed my work shift.
Now my sleep schedule causes confusion with my bodies sleep schedule.
Instead of waking up at 8am, I may automatically wake up during the middle of my new sleep schedule required for the new shift work demands.
The truth is, it can take weeks before your body becomes accustomed to the new sleep schedule.
If your job requires you to change shift schedules frequently, there's no chance for your body to become accustomed to this new schedule and sleep disorder will result, along with a myriad other dangerous health problems.
Ideally if you can't avoid shift work, make sure the scheduling department schedules the shift-work hours for months at a time instead of a few weeks so you'll have a chance to adjust to the new schedule before changing to a different schedule.