Aligning Work and Circadian Time in Shift Workers Improves Sleep and Reduces Circadian Disruption

Mar 17, 2015Current biology : CB

Matching work schedules with internal body clocks in shift workers improves sleep and lowers body clock disruption

AI simplified

Circadian Biology on OpenScience ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Abstract

A chronotype-adjusted shift schedule resulted in a significant increase in self-reported sleep duration and quality for extreme chronotypes.

Extreme chronotypes reported better sleep quality and longer sleep duration on workdays after the implementation of the adjusted shift schedule.
The new schedule decreased overall social jetlag by 1 hour for the extreme chronotypes.
No changes in stress levels were observed among participants.
Satisfaction with leisure time improved for early chronotypes under the new schedule.
Chronotype-based scheduling may help mitigate circadian disruption and enhance sleep quality.

AI simplified

Sleep loss and circadian disruption-a state of misalignment between physiological functions and imposed sleep/wake behavior-supposedly play central roles in the etiology of shift work-related pathologies [1-4]. Circadian entrainment is, however, highly individual [5], resulting in different chronotypes [6, 7]. Chronotype in turn modulates the effects of working times: compared to late chronotypes, earlier ones sleep worse and shorter and show higher levels of circadian misalignment during night shifts, while late types experience more sleep and circadian disruption than early types when working morning shifts [8]. To promote sleep and reduce the mismatch between circadian and working time, we implemented a chronotype-adjusted (CTA) shift schedule in a factory. We abolished the most strenuous shifts for extreme chronotypes (i.e., mornings for late chronotypes, nights for early ones) and examined whether sleep duration and quality, social jetlag [9, 10], wellbeing, subjective stress perception, and satisfaction with leisure time improved in this schedule. Intermediate chronotypes (quartiles 2 and 3) served as a control group, still working morning (6:00-14:00), evening (14:00-22:00), and night (22:00-6:00) shifts, with two strenuous shifts (out of twelve per month) replaced by evening ones. We observed a significant increase of self-reported sleep duration and quality, along with increased wellbeing ratings on workdays among extreme chronotypes. The CTA schedule reduced overall social jetlag by 1 hr, did not alter stress levels, and increased satisfaction with leisure time (early types only). Chronotype-based schedules thus can reduce circadian disruption and improve sleep; potential long-term effects on health and economic indicators need to be elucidated in future studies.

Full Text

Full text is available at the source.

View full text (XML) ↗View full text ↗

Aligning Work and Circadian Time in Shift Workers Improves Sleep and Reduces Circadian Disruption

Abstract

Full Text

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief

Abstract

Full Text

Related papers

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief