Working day and night can easily lead to morbid obesity and diabetes

People who work day and night shifts feel most deeply how painful it is to want to sleep but not be able to sleep. A recent survey showed that "irregular working hours" is one of the biggest sources of pain in the workplace, including administrators, nurses, police officers who work the night shift, as well as pilots and flight attendants who "run around the world" all the time. The compressed sleep time and disrupted biological clock result in reduced immunity. A recent paper also showed that these people are also prone to morbid obesity and even type 2 diabetes, making their health condition even worse.

A study from the UK and the US pointed out that working day and night for a long time will not only cause a sharp increase in weight, but also increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes! (Photo/taken from the American "ABC TV")

The British National Broadcasting Station "BBC" reported today that British and American scholars recently conducted a small study of 21 people, simulating the life and work schedule of pilots, including an average of only 5.6 hours of sleep a day, irregular sleep schedules, and long-term exposure to sunlight. After 3 weeks, the hormones in the subjects' bodies began to become abnormal, resulting in reduced insulin secretion, and blood sugar levels after meals failed to drop for a long time. In more serious cases, signs of diabetes (pre-diabetic condition) even appeared. In addition, the subjects' metabolic capacity decreased by an average of 8%, which caused their weight to gradually increase. If they maintained this lifestyle for as long as one year, it is estimated that they would have at least 5 kilograms of extra fat, which is quite shocking. The paper was published in the latest issue of Science Translational Medicine.

Another paper published in the December 2011 issue of the journal PLoS Medicine also came to a similar conclusion. The authors stated that since night shift workers are often extremely tired, they need to use "eating" to distract their attention. However, few restaurants are open late at night, so most people will go to 24-hour fast food restaurants or vending machines to buy high-sugar and high-calorie foods to fill their stomachs. Coupled with the lack of proper exercise, their bodies will naturally develop problems in the long run. The survey found that the rate of type 2 diabetes among medical staff who work at night and hide during the day was 11% higher than that of the control group working the day shift, which is closely related to the working environment they are in.

Experts recommend that everyone should sleep at least 8 hours a day, but this is a great luxury for busy office workers. In addition, overtime work is becoming more and more common nowadays, which leads to compressed time for eating and sleeping. The harm to the body is definitely no less than that of working night shifts. In particular, the blood sugar level in the body is in a cycle of sudden ups and downs for a long time, and diabetes will naturally come knocking over time.