NIGHT SHIFT LINKED TO INCREASED HEART DISEASES

Night shifts can cause heart disease, and this raised risk appears to be free of obvious causes such as an unhealthy diet and lack of exercise, researchers reported.

They found nurses who worked rotating night shifts for 10 years or longer had a 15 percent or higher increased risk of coronary heart disease compared to women who escaped night shift duty.

"There are a number of known risk factors for coronary heart disease, such as smoking, poor diet, lack of physical activity, and elevated body mass index," said Celine Vetter of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who led the study.

It's probably related to disrupted biological rhythms, the researchers said, or perhaps shift work wreaks havoc on peoples' social networks.

The effect appears to wear off after a woman quits doing night shifts, the team found. And the risk, while real, is overall a small one.

The study also indicates that night shifts hurt women in other ways. The longer women worked night shifts, the more weight they gained, on average. Night shift workers tended to be married to men with less education than those on daytime schedules, they were more likely to smoke, less likely to have children and used more painkillers.

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