Surviving the Workday

I suspected that night shift work caused major body disruptions, but I didn’t link night shift work to cancer. Because I’m simply not that negative a person.

Next month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, will add overnight shift work as a probable carcinogen. The American Cancer Society says it will likely follow. Up to now, the U.S. organization has considered the work-cancer link to be “uncertain, controversial or unproven.”

And now the link is certain. Yikes. Jim worked the night shift, and one of his best friends did for years, both as part a clan of workers known as The Night Audit (if you know what the night audit does, you’re in a select group). And we have all sorts of sleep rituals because of the night shift: sleep in a dark room with a fan, drink no coffee 6 hours before bed, get lots of sun and exercise while awake.

But back to the science, because night shift work does not allow you to sleep at work (some of The Night Audit would disagree on this point), your body does not produce the same amount of melatonin as those of us who sleep at night. Yes, melatonin, which suppresses tumors. Hence the increased rate of cancer.

This entry was posted by Ms. Theologian on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 2:47 pm and is filed under news You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.