UNHOLY HOURS

I have a classmate who works in a call center. She is always coughing and is often late for our class which starts at 2:30 p.m. She says her work skeds are erratic -- sometimes in the daytime, other times at night time. Nothing fixed. 

Call centers are now the number one employer for the Filipino people. These are foreign-owned as the companies have left their western countries due to the high cost of salaries there. So the Filipino workers here can be cheaply-hired and then thrown from one work sked to another? Here is a write-up about the effects of shifts in working hours: (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/288310.php)

Medical News Today have reported on various studies associating shift work with an increased risk of certain health problems. These associations have ranged from the somewhat predictable to the surprising.

In July 2014, a meta-analysis published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine suggested that shift workers face an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. In particular, people working rotating shifts face an increased risk of 42%.

A 2014 study suggested shift work may raise the risk of type 2 diabetes.

The authors theorized that rotating shifts made it more difficult for workers to maintain a regular sleep-wake cycle, negatively affecting sleep quality and potentially weakening insulin resistance.

Then, in November 2014, another study published in the same journal suggested that shift work could impair the functioning of the brain.

Study participants who were currently working or had previously worked shifts scored lower in tests assessing memory, processing speed and overall brain power than participants working traditional daytime hours.

"The cognitive impairment observed in the present study may have important safety consequences not only for the individuals concerned, but also for society as a whole," wrote the study authors, "given the increasing number of jobs in high hazard situations that are performed at night."

More recently, a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine reported that female nurses working rotating night shifts for 5 or more years could be at an increased risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality.

In addition, working rotating night shifts for 15 years or more was found to potentially raise the risk of lung cancer mortality.

A quick perusal of these studies indicates another factor that shift workers are likely to have in common - disruptions to the sleep-wake cycle. Shift work can lead to workers sleeping at strange or varying times of day, potentially resulting in reduced amounts of sleep.

But how much of an impact can sleep disruption have on an individual's health?