Working the Night Shift? Here’s How to Take Care of Yourself.

When Samantha Shaw took a new job as a research technician for a sleep-related study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2021, she was excited to work on a cause that felt personal.

Since high school, she said, she had trouble falling and staying asleep, so she jumped at the chance to work with experts in the field.

The researchers were looking into whether a medication could help with excessive daytime sleepiness in people who worked night shifts, often in transportation or construction, that started between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m.

Ms. Shaw, 27, found the work enjoyable. She also became a shift worker herself — often clocking in between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., heading home in the early afternoon and then slinking into bed around 6 p.m. Despite her exhaustion, she’d struggle to fall asleep, sometimes getting fewer than four or five hours before it was time to wake up. She began drinking up to six cups of coffee a day, developed frequent colds and had little time to make friends.

Insomnia, poor sleep quality and short sleep duration are common among the 11 million people in the United States who work night shifts, according to federal officials. And shift workers often struggle to follow healthy diets or maintain relationships with family and friends.

That can have serious long-term consequences for health, said Jeanne F. Duffy, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who co-led the study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

---

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

---

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.