Coffee Consumption Helps Night Workers Stay Alert

When it comes to beginning a night shift, according to the web site Positively Coffee, the negative effects can be compared to taking a flight across eight time zones. Yet for many people, this is a phenomenon that must be accepted.

The health and safety implications are very real. People are naturally nocturnal animals; people's biological rhythms involve sleeping at night. This is because their energy cycles are usually lowest at between midnight and six in the morning. If this pattern is ignored or interrupted for some reason, mistakes can often occur, such as what was witnessed during the infamous "Three Mile Island" incident in 1979, in which a potential nuclear meltdown was narrowly averted.

Studies have shown that the effects of caffeine have the potential to combat many of the symptoms experienced by night workers, including the tendency to be less attentive and slower to respond to changing situations. Two large cups of coffee containing a total of 200 mg of caffeine can significantly reduce the tendency to sleep, as well as increase alertness and concentration, enabling night shift workers to perform at a level comparable to their peers who are working during the day.

Post Script: In the last blog I mentioned that coffee does not appear to increase cognitive functioning. I have since learned that this may not actually be the case. According to a study conducted by Dr. Martin Jarvis at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, which was published in 1993, there is a clear relationship between cognitive performance and coffee consumption. In other words, intellectual function tends to increase with the amount of coffee consumed.