Healio: Night-shift workers and other adults who sleep primarily during the day are at increased risk for diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.
One potential mechanism for this increased risk is circadian misalignment, which occurs when an individual performs actions that run contrary to the body’s circadian clocks, such as sleeping during the day and eating during the night, according to Andrew McHill, PhD, research assistant professor in the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences at Oregon Health and Science University.
“We have little peripheral clocks, or little circadian clocks, throughout the body that are promoting optimal timing for things,” McHill told Healio. “When you’re doing things at nonoptimal times, such as sleeping during the day or being awake and eating at night, you’re misaligning those things. It leads to a whole host of issues because your body isn’t prepared for it.”
