Shift work promotes cancer, researchers believe. A recent study reviewed influence of disturbing circadian rhythms in animals and found that tumours were growing 3 times faster when regular sleeping patterns were disturbed.

Shifting sleep isn’t good for your health

In general, short work is linked to reduced immunity and a recent study demonstrated that cancer developed 3 times faster in animals that couldn’t sleep during regular hours.

Shift work may be compared to jet lag when people travel from one time zone to another.

Each cell in our bodies has its own inner clocks of how to grow, self-repair,  reproduce, and perish. When circadian rhymes are disturbed, these mechanisms are impacted, affecting the way the whole body operates.

Tumours, on the other hand, have disturbed inner clocks, and this is the reason why they grow so rapidly and take over organs.

The main clock regulating the whole body’s operation is located in the brain. It is this clock that sends signals to the time-keeping mechanisms throughout the rest of the body. The “master clock” is regulated by the day light. If the periods of light and night are mixed up, such as due to working shifts, the mechanisms that regulate functioning of all the molecular mechanisms also start getting out of alignment.

To find out how disturbed circadian rhythms are linked to cancer growth, researchers injected mice with melanoma cells. One group of animals was living within a regular schedule of days and nights, while the other group was under shirts of days and nights by 6 hours every second day.

In just one month, researchers found that tumours in the second group were as much as 3 times larger is size than in the first group.

The immune qualities of environments surrounding tumours also were sharply different for mice with disturbed schedules. The “jet lagged” group had a strongly different balance of immune cells called macrophages, which promoted tumour growth.

The circadian rhythms of organs near tumours were also disturbed.

Without the presence of cancer cells in the body the inadequate response of the immune system might not have been a problem, but when a threat such as melanoma was present, this inadequacy was critical.

In other words, shift work isn’t good for your health.

Other studies linked loneliness to higher chances to die from cancer. People who have live-in partners tend to have a higher survival rate, researchers found. Marriage is good for your health, apparently, especially if you are a male.

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