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Shift Work Dulls Brain Performance
davidshenba writes: Scientists warn that working in unusual shifts can prematurely age the brain and dull intellectual ability. Three thousand people in France were given tests of memory, speed of thought and wider cognitive ability. People with more than 10 years of shift work history had the same results as someone six and a half years older. The brain naturally dulls as we age, but the researchers said working antisocial shifts accelerated the process.
Three-and-half years of shift work (interesting, well-paid work for a good employer and decent working conditions) did me physical harm that did not wear off for many years after the experience. I felt listless, short on energy and intitative and thinking power, slightly better while on days, but very bad while on nights. That listlessness was still with me for years afterwards.
During those years, I experienced three different shift patterns. Rotating once a week (day, evening, night) was worst - pretty hellish. Rotating once a month was bearable. I once did 4 months straight on nights - to my surprise, that worked OK (physically). At the end, I was back on weekly rotation and couldn't wait to get out.
Shift work wrecks your social life. Your friends never know where you're at, so they don't include you in their plans, and you don't have the energy yourself to organize anything.
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Maybe people who couldn't get anything better than "shift work" had duller brains to start with.
While this is certainly a possibility, even if you took a quick glance at TFA (I know, I know...), you might find out there seems to be more than that:
Those with more than 10 years of shift work under their belts had the same results as someone six and a half years older. The good news is that when people in the study quit shift work, their brains did recover. Even if it took five years.
Why would dumb people "recover" lost brain function if they never had it in the first place?
And once you read that in TFA, it might actually make you want to click on the link to the study itself, where you can discover the methodology in the abstract without even reading the article:
Methods: We conducted a prospective cohort study of 3232 employed and retired workers (participation rate: 76%) who were 32, 42, 52 and 62â...years old at the time of the first measurement (t1, 1996), and who were seen again 5 (t2) and 10 (t3) years later. 1484 of them had shift work experience at baseline (current or past) and 1635 had not.
"Prospective cohort" -- i.e., they had a control group, which they measured periodically. The shift workers did significantly worse....
(Why is it that everyone at Slashdot seems to automatically assume every study is done by idiots who could not possibly foresee their first possible objection? And why do such posts get modded up? There are lots of crap studies out there, but not every obvious objection was unforeseen by most research teams. Sorry for the exaperation, but if you're not even going to bother to RTFA, stop modding idiots up who also haven't.)