A new study from the University of Toulouse suggests that an extended period of time working anti-social hours doing shift-work can actually damage your brain. Working for a decade or longer in a shift pattern can lead to loss of memory and a lesser ability to think, according to the research, because your brain ages at a faster rate. But it's not all bad news - the damage is reversible, apparently. However, recovery is slow and can take a minimum of five years to undo all the ageing your brain has endured.
So all in all, not great.
It's to do with a mix of disrupting your body clock, which causes extra stresses that can affect the functionality of the brain; and also the lack of vitamin D a person is exposed to when they sleep all day and work when it's dark at night, which causes a weaker mental proficiency.
Over 3,000 workers were assessed for the study over a course of ten years, with around one-fifth of them working shift patterns ranging between mornings, afternoons and nights. It was found that the shift workers produced lower average scores for processing speed, memory and overall brain function compared to the subjects who worked the standard nine-to-five pattern.
So basically, if you still want a sound mind in the latter half of your life, it's probably ideal to avoid prolonged periods of shift-work. Not that that's always possible. Nurses, for example, as well as hospital doctors, police, firemen and numerous other important professions are required to work shift patterns, so hopefully the findings in this study don't always apply.
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