Irregular working is so bad for your health later in life

It has long been known that working outside normal office hours, and especially night shifts, is bad for your health. According to a 2017 Health Council advisory report, long-term night work even increases the risk of sleep problems, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

Thislooked at the effect of irregular working over a much longer period of time among workers between the ages of 22 and 50. There was data from more than 7,000 Americans, of whom more than 60 percent (mostly) had normal working hours.

Long-term irregular working

Almost 30 percent initially worked during office hours but later switched to evening or night shifts or variable hours. The results were crystal clear: the irregular workers slept less and worse and were more often depressed when they were data library of telegram approaching 50. The fatigue and psychological complaints made it more likely that people would start living unhealthy. Moreover, it added up over the years.

The biggest impact was on those who worked regular hours in their twenties and only switched over a decade later. That was just as bad for their health as not having a high school diploma. Irregular shifts are unfairly distributed across society.

Unfairly distributed

For example, black Americans were much more likely to work irregular hours and therefore had poorer health. Irregular work therefore contributes to health inequality.

We talked about it EngageBay vs HubSpot: tirgus līderis vai topošais spēkstacija? with Wen-Jui Han from New York University. “A job where the hours constantly change between daytime, evening, night and irregular times can have a huge impact on the daily routine. It affects when someone sleeps, eats and has social contact,” he explains to ar numbers Scientias.nl. “But these changing working hours include night shifts. So it is possible that part of the health consequences come from that. If people have to be awake while the body actually needs rest, it disrupts the biological clock and therefore the sleep, including the quality of sleep.”