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Our society is dependent on 24hour services: healthcare, transportation, law enforcement, and fire services, as well as an ever-expanding service sector. The employees who contribute to these 24hour services, collectively called shift workers, suffer the cost of working outside regular daytime hours. Beyond acute health effects such as disturbed sleep and disrupted circadian rhythms, research has unveiled adverse long-term health consequences of shift work, for example, in terms of cardiometabolic health. In this thesis, we examine possible effects of shift work on body-weight related outcomes and lifestyle factors: smoking habits, alcohol consumption, caffeine consumption, and exercise habits. The data used in all three papers stems from The SUrvey of Shift work, Sleep and Health (SUSSH). SUSSH is a large cohort of Norwegian nurses that was initiated in late 2008. The overall aim of SUSSH was to examine possible adverse health consequences of shift work. In paper 1, we investigated possible associations between cumulative night shift exposure and adverse consequences to body weight and lifestyle factors. The cross-sectional data, consisting of 2059 nurses, was extracted from the first wave of SUSSH. The number of self-reported night shifts worked last year (NNL) was used as an operationalization of night work load. Body Mass Index (BMI), obesity (BMI>30), smoking habits, alcohol consumption (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test Consumption (AUDIT-C)), caffeine consumption and exercise habits were used as outcome variables and analyzed separately. NNL was found to be significantly and positively associated with BMI, both when evaluated against BMI as a continuous parameter (β =0.055, p |
