Shift works impact on health outcomes of a non hazardousindustrial employees

Abstract

Working time is the period of time that a person spends at paid labour. For every shift our body needs to adopt to the external changes. This may cause dreadful disruption of circadian rhythm which maintains all the biological responses including sleep-wake cycle, hormone inductioninhibition, hunger, growth and other cellular processes. Hence preventing the disruption of the circadian rhythm can prevent the disturbances in biological responses. The specific objectives include numerating the working pattern of general and shifting workers. To compare food habits, incidence of various health effects such as Cardiovascular risks, Sleep wake disorders, Endocrinological disorders (Diabetes, Cholesterol), Obesity, BMI, Blood Pressure among general and shift workers. An observational prospective study was carried out by approaching the workers, by a standard questionnaire which was designed to collect the data of the employees from the company and data was analyzed using statistical software. The observed values have shown that out of 302 workers general workers were 112 and shift workers were 190 and P-value <0.001 which is found to be significant. This study shows that the diabetic status, sleep disorders, appetite and GERD disturbances of the workers are dependent on the shift pattern being followed by them. There was a significant difference between shift and general workers in terms of Glucose levels, Blood Pressure, Total Cholesterol levels and GIT disturbances. Conclusion of our study revealed that prople working in shifts tend to have higher risk of prevalence of disorders such as Hypertension (Blood Pressure compared), Diabetes (Random Blood Sugar compared), Sleep and GIT disturbances. Body Mass Index, Total cholesterol levels of both general and shift workers did not show any high significance when compared. The risk of metabolic disorders was higher among those working in shift work rather than in the general workers.