Posts tagged sleep health
How can we protect sleep and our body's internal rhythm when we end up in hospital?

When we are admitted into hospital our sleep-wake patterns worsen for reasons including disease itself, an unusual and noisy environment, and modified light, food, and activity cues. As a result, inpatients tend to experience shorter and poorer night sleep, several night awakenings, and daytime sleepiness. This may affect prognosis, also in terms of duration of the inpatient stay. However, it may now be possible to do something about it!

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Improving sleep quality for rotating shiftworkers

The 24/7 operations at oil refineries require continuous coverage of nights, weekends and holidays, adding hardship to this demanding work schedule.  Process operations at refineries are typically staffed by rotating shiftworkers, most of whom transitioned to two 12-hour shifts on rapid rotation schedules in the 1990s.  The 12-hour shift, originally proposed as a compressed work week, provides little recovery time when an additional shift or two is added each week.  How have these schedule changes influenced worker health and well-being? 

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Who is looking after our student-athletes?

In the world of collegiate athletics this year, there are major shifts occurring in the alignment of Athletic Conferences: e.g., the Big 10 now includes 14 teams from coast to coast.  In the reporting about these discussions, deals, and decisions there has been no public consideration of the consequences for the student-athletes.  With the initial announcement in June 2022 that USC and UCLA were joining the Big10, many of us sleep and circadian rhythm scientists and clinicians were concerned about the negative effects of increased cross time-zone travel on the health and performance (athletic and academic) of the student-athletes. 

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