(Press-News.org) Forget bad guys and gunfire: Being a police officer can be hazardous to your health in other ways.
Researchers at the University of Iowa have found that police officers who sleep fewer than six hours per night are more susceptible to chronic fatigue and health problems, such as being overweight or obese, and contracting diabetes or heart disease. The study found that officers working the evening or night shifts were 14 times more likely to get less restful sleep than day-shift officers, and also were subjected to more back-to-back shifts, exacerbating their sleep deficit.
The study is the first peer-reviewed look at differences in duration and quality of sleep in the context of shift work and health risks in the police force, the authors noted.
"This study further confirmed the impact of shift work on law enforcement officers and the importance of sleep as a modifiable risk factor for police," wrote Sandra Ramey, assistant professor in the College of Nursing at the UI and the lead author on the paper published in Workplace Health & Safety. "The good news is this is correctable. There are approaches we can take to break the cascade of poor sleep for police officers."
The research is important because getting fewer than six hours of sleep could affect officers' ability to do their jobs, which could affect public safety. It also boosts the risk for health problems, which could affect staffing and could lead to higher health costs borne by taxpayers.
The researchers recommend putting practices in place to ensure officers get proper sleep. For example, 83 percent of police on the evening or night shift reported having to report to duty early the next morning at least occasionally. One idea from the UI team is to change the morning time that evening or night-shift officers may need to appear in court, to ensure that they get full rest. They also recommend that law enforcement and nurses partner more closely, to encourage officers to get 7-8 hours of sleep per night.
The researchers surveyed 85 male police officers ranging in age from 22 to 63 years old from three police departments in eastern Iowa. The respondents were equally divided between those who worked the day shift and those who worked the evening or night shifts. The officers, who worked on average 46 hours per week, were queried on their levels of stress and fatigue, while their height, weight, and C-reactive protein levels (marks inflammation levels in the blood) were measured.
While officers working the evening or night shifts were more likely to get fewer than six hours of sleep, the researchers also found that police who slept fewer than six hours were twice as likely to sleep poorly. That finding is important, because poor sleep can lead to "vital exhaustion," or chronic fatigue, the authors noted, which can trigger additional health problems.
The UI study builds on other studies that show a possible link between sleep deprivation and ill health and chronic fatigue in police officers. "This finding is supported by other studies that suggested poor sleep and short sleep (with resultant fatigue) may be related to psychological stress," they wrote.
Somewhat surprisingly, the researchers did not find a strong tie between lack of sleep and the onset of health complications, although they said a larger statistical sample may be needed to more fully understand the relationship.
The study, titled "The effect of work shift and sleep duration on various aspects of police officers' health," was published in the May edition of the journal. M. Kathleen Clark, Yelena Perhounkova, and Hui-Chen Tseng from the UI College of Nursing are co-authors on the study. Laura Budde, from Mercy Hospital in Iowa City, and Mikyung Moon, from Keimyung University in South Korea, are contributing authors on the paper.
The Prevention Research Center for Rural Heath at the UI College of Public Health funded the research. Ramey has a secondary appointment in the College of Public Health.
INFORMATION:
Police need sleep for health, performance
2012-07-19
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Internists express support for new payment and delivery models as basis for replacing SGR
2012-07-19
(Washington) – "We know that the current Medicare payment system is not serving the needs of patients, physicians or taxpayers," David L. Bronson, MD, FACP, president of the American College of Physicians (ACP), today told the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Health. "Congress needs to do its part by repealing the SGR, once and for all. But the medical profession needs to do its part by leading the adoption of innovative models to align payment policies with the value of care provided to patients."
Dr. Bronson pointed to several promising payment and delivery ...
Efficacy of herbal remedies for managing insomnia
2012-07-19
New Rochelle, NY, July 18, 2012— Approximately 1 in 3 Americans suffers from chronic sleep deprivation and another 10-15% of the population has chronic insomnia. Sleep disorders can profoundly affect a person's whole life and have been linked to a range of diseases, including obesity, depression, anxiety, and inflammatory disorders. Over-the-counter herbal remedies are often used to treat insomnia, but surprisingly, very little research has been done to study their efficacy, according to an article in Alternative and Complementary Therapies, published by Mary Ann Liebert, ...
Hookah smoking increasingly common among first-year college women
2012-07-19
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Nearly a quarter of college women try smoking tobacco with a hookah, or water pipe, for the first time during their freshman year, according to new research from The Miriam Hospital's Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine.
The study, published online by Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, suggests a possible link to alcohol and marijuana use. Researchers found the more alcohol women consumed, the more likely they were to experiment with hookah smoking, while women who used marijuana engaged in hookah smoking more frequently than their peers.
They ...
Moffitt Cancer Center researchers find potential key to new treatment for mantle cell lymphoma
2012-07-19
Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues have demonstrated that the inhibition of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) in mouse models of mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), an aggressive and incurable subtype of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma that becomes resistant to treatment, can harness the immune system to eradicate residual malignant cells responsible for disease relapse.
Their study appears in a recent issue of Cancer Research, published by the American Association for Cancer Research.
"Despite good initial response to first-line treatment ...
Fighting obesity with thermal imaging
2012-07-19
Scientists at The University of Nottingham believe they've found a way of fighting obesity — with a pioneering technique which uses thermal imaging. This heat-seeking technology is being used to trace our reserves of brown fat — the body's 'good fat' — which plays a key role in how quickly our body can burn calories as energy.
This special tissue known as Brown Adipose Tissue, or brown fat, produces 300 times more heat than any other tissue in the body. Potentially the more brown fat we have the less likely we are to lay down excess energy or food as white fat.
Michael ...
UCF discovers exoplanet neighbor smaller than Earth
2012-07-19
The University of Central Florida has detected what could be its first planet, only two-thirds the size of Earth and located right around the corner, cosmically speaking, at a mere 33light- years away.
The exoplanet candidate called UCF 1.01, is close to its star, so close it goes around the star in 1.4 days. The planet's surface likely reaches temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The discoverers believe that it has no atmosphere, is only two-thirds the gravity of Earth and that its surface may be volcanic or molten.
"We have found strong evidence for ...
El Zotz masks yield insights into Maya beliefs
2012-07-19
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A team of archaeologists led by Brown University's Stephen Houston has uncovered a pyramid, part of the Maya archaeological site at El Zotz, Guatemala. The ornately decorated structure is topped by a temple covered in a series of masks depicting different phases of the sun, as well as deeply modeled and vibrantly painted stucco throughout.
The team began uncovering the temple, called the Temple of the Night Sun, in 2009. Dating to about 350 to 400 A.D., the temple sits just behind the previously discovered royal tomb, atop the Diablo ...
Parental consent for HPV vaccine should not be waived, poll says
2012-07-19
ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Most U.S. adults support laws that allow teens to get medical care for sexually transmitted infections without parental consent. But when asked about the vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV), most adults want parents to have the final say on whether their teen or pre-teen gets the shots.
The University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health recently asked a national sample of adults about allowing adolescents age 12 to 17 years old to receive the HPV vaccinations without parental consent.
Only 45 percent ...
Scientists develop new carbon accounting method to reduce farmers' use of nitrogen fertilizer
2012-07-19
It's summer. For many of us, summer is a time synonymous with fresh corn, one of the major field crops produced in the United States.
In 2011, corn was planted on more than 92 million acres in the U.S., helping the nation continue its trend as the world's largest exporter of the crop.
Corn is a nitrogen-loving plant. To achieve desired production levels, most U.S. farmers apply synthetic nitrogen fertilizer to their fields every year.
Once nitrogen fertilizer hits the ground, however, it's hard to contain and is easily lost to groundwater, rivers, oceans and the atmosphere.
"That's ...
Sleep deprivation may reduce risk of PTSD according to Ben-Gurion U. researchers
2012-07-19
BEER-SHEVA, Israel, July 17, 2012 –Sleep deprivation in the first few hours after exposure to a significantly stressful threat actually reduces the risk of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), according to a study by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and Tel Aviv University.
The new study was published in the international scientific journal, Neuropsychopharmacology. It revealed in a series of experiments that sleep deprivation of approximately six hours immediately after exposure to a traumatic event reduces the development of post trauma-like ...