Steps for Having a Good Day Sleep for Night Shift Workers

Night shift workers frequently experience symptoms similar to that of jet lag.

They will have a disrupted or less sleep due to the adjusting to changing work shifts, sleeping in a brighter room than normal, external noise, and daily life going on around them.

According to sleep experts, no one ever totally adjusts to frequent shift changes.

Day sleep after night work will result in two hours shorter than night sleep. Deep sleep does not appear to be affected. Many workers make up at least some of their lost sleep time on their days off.

Permanent Night Workers

Permanent night workers, i.e. people who work for five consecutive nights in a row are probably better off than somebody alternating shifts because they can stay on the same eating and sleeping rhythms even on their days off.

Even though this may be ideal in physiological terms, in social and family terms that kind of discipline is hard. The significant thing is to stay with the same eating rhythms and try to sleep the usual length of time.

Going to bed everyday at the same time is particularly essential for graveyard workers, whose attempts to fall asleep and stay asleep are harder than it is for conventional sleepers.

Tips for Daytime Sleepers

Below are tips to help daytime sleepers fall asleep and stay asleep:

• Go to bed as soon as possible after returning from work.
• Be careful what you eat before going to sleep. Choose something fairly light and digestible. Follow a diet high in carbohydrates and protein, and low in fried, fatty foods, or anything that is hard to digest.
• Try to get your brain to stop responding to strong “wake-up” daylight signals by wearing sunglasses on the way home and darken your bedroom before going to bed.
• Block out street traffic, and other environmental noise by running a fan or keeping the radio on turned down low. Keep your answering machine on and the ringing on your phone muted.
• Wear an eye mask.
• Avoid any caffeine such as tea, coffee, or chocolate for four hours between finishing work and going home for bed. [Caffeine and Sleep Problems]
• A short-acting sleeping pill can help reset your circadian rhythms if you’re on changing shifts. It may be useful to break a sleep disordered cycle, as long as you don’t get dependent on it. Remember, sleeping pills lose their effect in a few weeks anyway. Be careful not to mix them with alcohol or antihistamines.
• Take Valerian. It is available in health food stores and a lot cheaper than sleeping pills.
• Don’t smoke. Nicotine is a strong stimulant. Aside from other health reasons for not smoking, studies have shown that smokers sleep 30 minutes a night less than non-smokers. So given that shift workers sleep five to seven hours less a week anyway, if you are a shift worker and a smoker, you are more vulnerable to sleep deprivation.