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Circadian Rhythm Disorders: Health Consequences and Treatments

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What is life like when you cannot sleep well? People with circadian rhythm disorders know all too well. These types of sleep disorders can affect every aspect of a person’s life and even have a crucial effect on the risk for serious diseases such as heart disease and cancer.

Circadian Rhythm Disorders: More Than Insomnia

While nearly everyone will suffer from insomnia at some point in their life, circadian rhythm disorders are more serious and more difficult to treat. In these disorders, the patient’s body is not releasing hormones for sleep, wakefulness and other daily activities at the right time. The result is that people can feel tired when they are supposed to be working, or they are wide awake when it is time to sleep. This can lead to fatigue, depression and a variety of health effects.

The mechanism of these disorders is generally not well known, but researchers have identified several genes behind circadian rhythm disorders. In a healthy person, the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus processes information such as light levels and temperature. Hormones are released to make the person sleepy, more awake, hungry, or whatever is needed at that time in the day. In a person with these disorders, these hormones are released at the wrong time, in the wrong amounts, or not at all.

Types of Circadian Rhythm Disorders

Circadian Rhythm Disorders: Health Consequences and TreatmentsThere are multiple types of circadian rhythm disorders, each requiring different treatments and a unique approach. The two most common, shift work disorder and jet lag, are a result of a person’s lifestyle conflicting with their circadian rhythm. In shift work disorder, people who work nights or other odd hours begin to have trouble falling asleep or staying awake when needed because they do not sleep and wake at “normal” times. In jet lag disorder, a person who travels to a new time zone may have physical effects such as fatigue and memory loss due to the shift in environmental cues such as light.

There are circadian sleep disorders that are not caused by the environment as well. Delayed phase sleep disorder is common in teens and young adults. In this disorder, the timing of the circadian rhythm is shifted so that people cannot go to sleep until very late at night. If they cannot also sleep late, they will suffer the effects of insomnia and fatigue. Advanced phase sleep disorder is just the opposite. In this sleep disorder usually seen in the elderly, people feel sleepy very early in the evening and wake up early in the morning. There are even non-24-hour sleep-wake disorders in which the internal clock is not set to the normal 24 hours.

Treating Circadian Rhythm Disorders

Circadian sleep disorders can make you tired, overemotional and even disrupt your thinking. In addition, they can increase your risk of developing serious diseases as you age. However, there are many approaches to treating these disorders. Many people can get a better night’s sleep by taking a melatonin supplement. Because melatonin is the hormone released to make people sleepy, taking this supplement can help people who have trouble falling asleep when it is time. Bright light therapy during the day also has been found to be helpful. Certain wavelengths of light tell your brain that it is daytime, which encourages making wakefulness hormones.

People who have circadian rhythm disorders were once considered lazy or even mentally ill. However, modern medicine recognizes these disorders as a physical disease with a variety of successful treatments. Getting treatment for a circadian rhythm disorder allows many people to reclaim high energy and good overall health.

Night Shift Work Linked to Increased Risk of Heart Disease

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Night shift work can make you very tired and interfere with your sleep cycles. Alarmingly, a growing body of research suggests that it can also contribute to heart disease.

Anyone who has ever performed night shift work knows that it can have immense effects on your schedule as well as your general feelings of well-being. When you work the night shift, it can be difficult to maintain a schedule, get adequate sleep and avoid feeling fatigued all the time. Sleeping at odd hours, especially during the day, is a challenge for many. The result is fatigue, fuzzy thinking and other complaints. However, the effects of night shift work are not a mere inconvenience. Not only can working nights mess with your sleep and energy, but it can affect your cardiovascular health as well.

How Does Night Shift Work Affect Your Heart?

The Nurses’ Health Study has been following a huge population of nurses(more than 100,000 people) for several decades. One surprising discovery is that people who work the night shift or are on-call at night have an increased risk of mortality by 11 percent. In addition, these workers are between 19 and 23 percent more likely to die of cardiovascular illness. The increased incidence of heart disease and cardiovascular-related death is present even when other variables are the same.

The Physiology of Night Shifts and Heart Disease

Medical researchers have identified a few ways that night shift work can contribute to heart disease. One study found that even a short-term disruption of a person’s natural circadian rhythm can lead to higher blood pressure and increased inflammation, both of which are important risk factors for heart disease.

Another study looked the effect of working irregular hours in health care workers and found that these people have more activity in the sympathetic nervous system. This system is associated with both emotional and physiological stress, the creator of what we call the “fight or flight response.” Health care workers who miss sleep for work have more physiological stress hormones. In addition, they have thickening of the carotid arteries and other signs of developing cardiovascular disease.

Healthcare workers are not the only population where shift work can affect heart health. The CDC and WHO consider shift work a major cause of occupation-related illness due to several studies finding a significant increased risk. Working the night shift is simply not healthy for most people.

New Discoveries, New Approaches

We will always need night shift workers to staff hospitals and in other fields that don’t close down for the night. However, there are ways that knowledge of the link between heart disease and night shift work can be used to improve health. People who work odd hours can be screened earlier and more carefully for cardiovascular problems like high blood pressure to allow early detection and treatment. In addition, melatonin and other supplements may help to prevent cardiovascular disease by helping workers to get adequate rest and maintain a healthy circadian rhythm. Fields where night work is not necessary may consider changing hours so workers can keep a more natural circadian rhythm.

Sleepless nights affect people more than we often realize. New studies are constantly linking surprising diseases with disruptions in the circadian rhythm. Regular sleep of high quality is very important to good health, even if modern life often makes it difficult.