Comments on: Your Circadian Rhythm Is Recorded in Your Hair… or Your Beard

By: Andrew Moseman

Andrew Moseman — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:57:52 +0000

@Willis
You’re right, they’re changing every week. I think the researchers are thinking of it as a three-week cycle—early shift, late shift, early shift—because that’s how long they did the study. But if people were on a constant week-to-week shift change you’d get a different result.

I’d be interested to see them do this for an extended period on people who change every week, to see if the body ever settles somehow during longer cycles.

By: flip flopper

flip flopper — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 02:19:34 +0000

This is why trucking companies should be required to have a set start time for each driver. The current ‘hours of service’ rules are causing drivers’ schedules to flip every day or two. This is killing us, literally, and putting everyone in great danger. When is there going to be a study on this? We deserve to have human rights and workers rights apply to us just like they do to everyone else.

By: Willis

Willis — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:42:24 +0000

“volunteers who worked the 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift one week, the 3 p.m. to midnight shift the next week, and back to the morning shift on their third week. Clock gene activity lagged 5 hours behind the workers’ lifestyles, the researchers found, which indicates that 3 weeks was not long enough for the body clock to adapt to the new schedules”

If their schedule was changed every week, doesn’t that mean that their body only had 1 week to adapt, not 3?