Research shows working overnight shifts messes with your body

CINCINNATI (WKRC) - A breakthrough study on work and sleep might explain a few things for you.

The study says that working nights is bad for your gut and bad for your brain after the study took a closer look at the body's natural rhythms.

A study on work shifts published in proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found three night shifts in a row is enough to throw the body's natural rhythms out of balance so much that your brain and your digestive system are way out of kilter.

If you've worked nights for any length of time, you likely already know how that feels.

It means if you work nights you likely can suffer everything from stomach pain to gut problems while your body is trying to adjust.

You also may experience that if you cross time zones or mess with your sleep cycle in a stressful time in your life.

Researchers in this study invited 14 voluneteers ages 22 to 34 into a sleep lab. They split them into two groups.

The first spent about three days on a day shift, and slept from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

The second group stayed awake for thee nights in a row and could only sleep 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

When blood samples were taken in the next 24 hours. Levels of melatonin and cortisol as well as levels of metabolites linked to digestion, were all analyzed and showed that in the night shift workers, the brain's "master clock" appeared to shift about two hours, but the digestive system "clock" and the levels of metabolites linked to digestion went really out of whack.

The brain clock was off about two hours and the digestion clock was off about 12 hours.

that means metabolites linked to things such as chronic kidney disease were messed up.

This might explain why working nights has been linked to higher health risks of certain conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke risk and cancer.