Watched a free sleep and shift work class through my hospital’s patient education page last week, out of boredom on a slow shift, and the part about cortisol timing is what actually stuck with me. The instructor was talking about people on rotating shifts and how cortisol (the hormone that’s supposed to spike in the morning and drop at night) gets thrown off when your morning is actually 9pm. Nothing new there, everyone on nights already knows their clock is a mess.
But she said something I hadn’t connected before: skin barrier repair is tied to that same cortisol dip, which normally happens overnight. If you’re on your third or fourth night shift in a row, that dip either doesn’t happen when it should, or it gets pushed to some hour when you’re wide awake at a register instead of asleep.
I’ve been on a rotating schedule for 6 years (2 weeks days, 2 weeks nights) and always figured my flares around week 2 of nights were about stress or bad food at 3am. This made me think it’s less about what I’m eating and more about the timing being off, no matter what I do.
A few things from the class I’m trying now:
– same sleep window even on days off during a night stretch, instead of “fixing” it for one day and messing it up again
– blackout curtains closed all the way, not just pulled over
– not stacking my last night shift into a 16 hour double when I can avoid it
Three nights into this stretch, can’t say yet if it’s doing anything. Might just be the bread I baked yesterday calming me down regardless. Wanted to write it down before I forget where I heard it.