Eating at night... an occupational hazard?A recent editorial in the December research journal PLoS Medicine suggested that unhealthy eating by shiftworkers could legitimately be considered a new form of occupational hazard and that workplaces would wise to educate workers in better eating habits. Are they right?
Challenges of eating at night
When employees work shiftwork, there are many things they have to think about in a different way than if they had a regular 9-5 job. Diet and nutrition are a good example.
For instance, shiftworkers on the night shift face a problem with gaining weight because snacking is one of the natural behaviors that people use to try to stay awake and keep alert. Although snacking (eating) triggers one of the nine alertness switches, abuse of this switch to compensate for a sleep-deprived condition can lead to excessive weight gains and impaired health. And there’s new research (see “Sleep Less = Eat More” article) suggesting that being fatigued can trigger our appetite, further increasing the probability of overeating on the night shift.
Additionally, the ability to tolerate certain foods varies with the time of day because the biological clock controls intestinal absorption and the secretion of digestive enzymes. Fatty foods consumed late at night take much longer to digest and can result in gastric discomfort, and spicy or rich foods also may irritate the gastrointestinal system. Over time, ulcers and other serious gastrointestinal symptoms may result.
Shiftwork, Obesity, and Diabetes
In the December 2011 edition of the journal PLoS Medicine, a new study has shown that the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes is moderately higher the longer you work shifts. Researchers tracked 177,184 female nurses between the ages of 42 and 67 for 20 years. If they worked more than 3 night shifts per month, along with day and evening shifts, they were considered to be “rotating night-shift workers”.
The researchers believe that many of the lifestyle choices that shiftworkers make combine to create a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. But with improved education on nutrition, smoking, exercise, and maintaining a healthy weight, the risk of developing diabetes should drop.
What Should 24-Hour Operations Do?
To help shiftworkers understand and manage their diet, 24-hour operations should provide nutritional training for all shiftworkers, especially those people just starting out on shiftwork. The training should be highly practical, providing specific diet tips and recipes, and teaching alternative behaviors to snacking, or at the very least encourage healthier snacks. In this way you can help the shiftworkers at your facility head off some of the very debilitating, ill-health consequences of poor nutritional habits and chronic gastrointestinal stress. Many such nutrition programs can be intergrated into more general shiftwork and fatigue training and education programs.
Sources:
Pan A, Schernhammer ES, Sun Q, Hu FB (2011) Rotating Night Shift Work and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes: Two Prospective Cohort Studies in Women. PLoS Med 8(12): e1001141. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001141
Stein, Jennifer, Does shift work plus a poor diet equal an occupational hazard? Los Angeles Times, December 27, 2011
NEXT STEPS:
- Working Nights Health & Safety Guide: Years of shiftwork wisdom in 40 easy-to-read pages. The booklet covers major areas of interest for shiftworkers: nutrition, work performance and job safety, sleep, health problems and solutions, family and social life, understanding your circadian rhythms.
- Managing a Shiftwork Lifestyle: Live training sessions on Managing a Shiftwork Lifestyle are an excellent way to inform your employees about how to best adapt to shiftwork. Our consultants conduct a seminar and then answer your workers’ questions. We also encourage workers to bring their spouses to these sessions because having support from home is vital to shiftwork success.
- 2012 Working Nights Calendar: The calendar is a great resource and gift for shiftworkers and their families. The monthly calendar provides health and safety tips and includes color-coded scheduling stickers that helps the whole family easily track the work schedule.
- Shift Scheduling Homepage: Whether you're looking to evaluate your current shift schedule or are looking for a new one, CIRCADIAN's experts can help you with a variety of scheduling services.
- Fatigue Risk Management Tools: Learn about the 5 Defenses you need to successfully manage fatigue risk.
- Training Publications: In order for employees to perform at their best, they must have the right information at their fingertips. CIRCADIAN produces a range of training materials written to help shiftworkers adjust to the demands of working non-traditional hours.
- Fatigue Training Online: The premier online fatigue management training program for the 24/7 workforce. The web-based system offers specialized training programs to educate workers on how to maintain alertness and high performance on-duty and get better sleep off-duty.