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Tip on how to overcome Night Shifts?

  • 18-09-2006 8:57am
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,399 ✭✭✭


    Does anyone have any tips on how one might overcome the blues of working nights.

    Meaning cant sleep during the day, only for a couple of hours on and off and cant eat properly at night only ceral and toast.

    Meaning they cant adjust there body clock to a night shift.

    Does anyone know of how this maybe done.

    GF must work a week of nights (7 days) and is then off for a week (7 days) and then works two weeks on days. But she cant do the nights. She will get up at 10 Monday monring and be awake her nearly 24 hours. No talking to her.

    Is there anyone here that works nights and how do they find it or cope with it.

    Personally I would love those hours, having a week


Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 33,754 ✭✭✭✭Princess Consuela Bananahammock


    kluivert wrote:
    Does anyone have any tips on how one might overcome the blues of working nights.

    Meaning cant sleep during the day, only for a couple of hours on and off and cant eat properly at night only ceral and toast.

    Meaning they cant adjust there body clock to a night shift.

    Does anyone know of how this maybe done.

    GF must work a week of nights (7 days) and is then off for a week (7 days) and then works two weeks on days. But she cant do the nights. She will get up at 10 Monday monring and be awake her nearly 24 hours. No talking to her.

    Is there anyone here that works nights and how do they find it or cope with it.

    Personally I would love those hours, having a week

    I never really had a problem with it, but ideas I heard about were

    1)Try and have an active day before you start the week of night shifts.
    2) Hypnotic meditation CDs worked wonders for two people I worke dwith.

    Everything I don't like is either woke or fascist - possibly both - pick one.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,399 ✭✭✭kluivert


    Thanks for the tip ill pass it on.

    Surely there is a way that people can swap around without feeling sick the day after nights.

    I use to work Night Shift in a factory for a summer and had no problems sleeping during the day time getting up around 4pm getting breakfast head to work for 11pm getting dinner around 1.30am and back to bed for 8.30am.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 23,212 ✭✭✭✭Tom Dunne


    It's been a long time since I worked nights, but here's what I found helped:

    Go to bed the minute you get in. No messing around, straight to bed.

    I never ate after 2:00am, shift finished at 7:00am, just drank plenty of water.

    Say you finish shift on a Saturday morning, 6:00am. Go to bed for only 4-5 hours. You will be utterly wrecked and should therefore sleep that night, kicking your system back into rythm (hopefully).

    Alcohol is a shift workers medicine. If you are having trouble getting out of nights, a few scoops will always help. Likewise, if you are back on days and find yourself awake at 3:00am, a glass or two of wine will get you back. But make sure to set an alarm, so you get up at, say, 8:00am or 9:00am.

    Generally speaking, I had no trouble switching from nights to days. We did it every four weeks.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,399 ✭✭✭kluivert


    She cant drink either lol.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,788 ✭✭✭Vikings


    Ive been working purely nights for 11 months now... and it doesnt get any better.

    4 nights a week, every second weekend so at most im left with 3 nights off in a row. (on my 3rd of 7 in a row tonight) Since ive started ive had to put up with between 3 and 5 hours of sleep a day. Finish at 8, asleep by 10 and up by 3 most days, and weekends are the worst. Dont want to give up the social life so go without sleep regularly to 'enjoy' the weekends with friends and going out. Ive 'had' to go 40 hours without sleep on a few occasions to keep up appearances.

    Its tough, i find the trip home wakes me up so I put the heating on full in the car, keeps me kind of tired so I can get in to bed straight away sometimes. Total quiet and darkness is needed for a good sleep, invest in some black out curtains!

    There are no ready solutions though, takes getting used to the lack of sleep as its very tough to overcome


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,029 ✭✭✭shoegirl


    kluivert wrote:
    Does anyone have any tips on how one might overcome the blues of working nights.

    Meaning cant sleep during the day, only for a couple of hours on and off and cant eat properly at night only ceral and toast.

    Meaning they cant adjust there body clock to a night shift.

    Does anyone know of how this maybe done.

    GF must work a week of nights (7 days) and is then off for a week (7 days) and then works two weeks on days. But she cant do the nights. She will get up at 10 Monday monring and be awake her nearly 24 hours. No talking to her.

    Is there anyone here that works nights and how do they find it or cope with it.

    Personally I would love those hours, having a week

    Well I did a combination of day and night 12 hr shifts for a year. It was trying and you never really adjust 100% to it, but I found that the big thing was getting a decent nights sleep in.

    There are two problems - light and noise. I found that totally blacking out the bedroom helped "fool" my brain into thinking it was night. Secondly, I found that going to bed straight after coming home after a long shift was the only way - if I stayed up I only adjusted to the daylight and then couldn't sleep. You've probably spent 20+ years living this way so you have to trick the brain to change the pattern. I basically slept from 8am to about 3.30pm (no later than 4.30pm anyway) and this more or less worked.

    Secondly I never ate anything less than 3 hrs before bedtime - strictly. I reversed my eating habits, and so ate "dinner" at 5-6pm, a light "lunch" around midnight to 1am, and then a "breakfast" between 3 and 5am. I also spent my official lunch time in the gym (we had only 30 minutes anyway) and ate at my desk. I was tired enough to sleep then.

    Lastly I think what also helped was not falling into a habit of oversleeping during off days and so being too alert to sleep the night or two before starting a shift pattern.

    Its not too bad but you really need to make adjustments if you can. My patterns worked fine until some bitch in the ground floor apartment decided to get a dog and left it outside howling during the daylight hours (it started out with barking as they left it outside the apartment complex to wander around and fend for itself, but later they started tying the poor thing up to a drainpipe and it howled for hours on end. No doubt you would too I suppose). Noise is a real killer but most the time I usually managed to get 75% of a nights (days?) sleep anyway. You could have a real problem if there is a lot of building work going on around you.

    If she really can't cope then its worth looking at how much it really benefits her. I know the better companies pay 25-31% shift premium but some ****ty places like where I worked only gave us 16% and some pay even less, so it might not be worth the extra stress.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,399 ✭✭✭kluivert


    Thanks for all the advice.

    Shes a nurse so its the nature of her job that she do night shifts.

    I had a read of the sleep foundations website, some useful advice there as well.

    I have passed on all your tips and hints so see how she gets on.

    I think ideas like wearing sunglasses on the way home n having a dark room helps.

    Thanks again.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 923 ✭✭✭coolmoose


    i'm a nurse, done nights for the past 5 years on and off.

    i found that i you treat nights exactly like days you'll breeze through them. take regular breaks at the times you would during the day. eat the same types of foods. bring in salad or a dinner you can microwave for "dinner time". don't snack on chocolate or drink loads of coffee.

    the first night is always the worst, after that you get into them. don't take a nap on your breaks, you'll only feel worse.

    don't go to bed straight away when you get home at 8.15/8.30...you wouldn't go to bed at that time if you were on days. watch some tv, have a bowl of cereal or something.

    buy a good set of venetian blinds, or black out the room completely. turn off mobile phone!

    and the advice about keeping the heating on so you still feel tired while driving...what the f**k? windows down, cool air, stay awake and alert...you shouldn't feel tired while driving, do you have any idea how dangerous that is!? also the advice of drinking to help sleep...really wouldn't agree with that one!

    best of luck to her, she should get the swing of them quick enough!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 29,473 ✭✭✭✭Our man in Havana


    I work 4 nights Mon-Thurs 10 hour shifts.

    How I work the weekends is to come in on Friday morning and stay up for as long as possible say to 2pm, then go to bed for no more than 3 to 4 hours and get up. You will be wrecked by normal bedtime (midnight) and you will get a good nights sleep and be in sync for the weekend.

    On the mondays I try to get up as late as possible after 12 noon is best. If you get up any earlier you will run the risk of being up 24hrs + by the end of the first night shift. :(

    I have been doing this for the last 18 months and it has worked well for me.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,788 ✭✭✭Vikings


    coolmoose wrote:
    and the advice about keeping the heating on so you still feel tired while driving...what the f**k? windows down, cool air, stay awake and alert...you shouldn't feel tired while driving, do you have any idea how dangerous that is!?

    I suppose I didn't phrase that one all too well, its hard to explain. When I leave the office I am fully awake and aware, the blast of fresh cool morning air on the way to the car really opens the senses, I keep the heat on so im not wide awake as soon as I get home, going from a warm car to a warm house makes it slightly easier to fall asleep when you do get into bed I find. I dont feel tired while driving, just comfortable with the heat which makes me more relaxed. (not tired, and still fully aware)


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 923 ✭✭✭coolmoose


    I suppose I didn't phrase that one all too well, its hard to explain. When I leave the office I am fully awake and aware, the blast of fresh cool morning air on the way to the car really opens the senses, I keep the heat on so im not wide awake as soon as I get home, going from a warm car to a warm house makes it slightly easier to fall asleep when you do get into bed I find. I dont feel tired while driving, just comfortable with the heat which makes me more relaxed. (not tired, and still fully aware)

    well that makes more sense, know what you mean now! :D


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,441 ✭✭✭✭jesus_thats_gre


    Hmmm do some funky shifts myself... Do something like 70 hours over 7 nights. I get ready for nights in 2 ways.

    Sometimes I will stay up very late for a few nights before I start working and this gets my body used to it. When I do this, nights is a breeze and tiredness is not an issue at all. However, if I do this, it takes me longer to get to sleep in the morning, I sleep longer during the day (3/4/5pm) and it takes me along time to recover from nights as my body is very used to the hours at this stage.

    Or, I go to sleep at normal times coming up to nights. The result of this is that I am always tired when doing nights. I tend to get to sleep far far quicker when I get home form work. I tend to sleep less during the day also. It also take me less time to re-adjust to doing 5 weeks of day again.

    Sometimes my days are 7am to 3pm the Monday after I finish nights. Do nights from Wed to Wed.

    So.. If I get my body used to it, nights is breeze but getting back to normal sucks. If I do not get my body used to it, nights are very hard work but I get back to normal far easier.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 7,097 ✭✭✭Darragh29


    I worked nights for years and the things I found that helps more than anything else are:

    (1) Make your bedroom as dark as possible, blacken out the windows with black plastic bags or something similar for the best result. You want to get the room pitch dark

    (2) If there is noise from outside, traffic, kids playing, etc, get earplugs to blank this out until you get into a sleep pattern

    (3) When you get up, have a good long hot shower so you are fully aware when you step out of it.

    (4) What I used to do if I had a particularly stressful shift, was take a few herbal tablets called Kalms an hour before I left work, or else have a glass or two of wine or a can or two of beer to "step down" from the job when I got home, watch tele for an hour or read a book, just to get the stress of the last 12 hours off my mind.

    It's important that for waking up, you have a structure to it, say you are starting work at 9PM, you get someone to wake you at 8PM, get your shower, get something to eat and get to work and rinse lather, repeat until you are getting consistent days full of sleep. For me, the best thing I did was blacken out the room, then I slept like a log!


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