Night workers do you take anything to boost sleep?

bainbridge said:
Ugh nights. I lasted a couple of months and couldn't hack it.
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I did it for about 3.5yrs and still suffer the consequences over 5 years after stopping. To the OP; get out now. Find another job lol :(

I understand there are jobs that require night work as part of a career path (NHS, police, fire etc.) but anything other than that I'd certainly not recommend it. In hindsight even if a job is paying double I wouldn't take it now. You have no life... just work and sleep, work and sleep (and recover at weekends).

Realistic advice; I found keeping my meals as normal worked. I got up around 4-5pm, didn't really have much breakfast. Had proper dinner with my girlfriend then took sandwiches to work and had those about 4-5am. Never really needed much food during the course of the night. Avoided eating when I got home, tried to get straight to bed. Even better in winter if I finished early and it was still dark (great fun rushing around trying to get locked up for the night/day). The benefit of going to bed straight to bed was you could get up 3-4pm if you're lucky in which case you could see some sunshine when you wake up which is the most important bit.

Anyhoo... good luck.
 
Best advice is don't work nights. It really does screw your body up.

However what worked for me was no caffeine after break, a blind to stop most of the light getting in and to eat breakfast before going to bed so you don't wake up hungry. Tbh though I found sleeping in the winter months easy, it's the summer when the room is hot and the neighbours are noisy when you struggle.

Also while I have no problem going a full nights sleep without needing to pee, I could never make it when sleeping in the day. Damn that mid day toilet break :p
 
I do 8-8's either am to pm or vice versa - I can generally sleep from like 10am-5pm most of the time as long as I don't wake up early needing a wee or my neighbours decide it's the perfect time to have building work done...

- no caffeine after about 3am
- bedroom has blackout curtains, I wear a good eye mask and have non-annoying ear plugs
- have a sun-rise/wake-up alarm
- use a SAD light at work to fake mid-day (or fake actual midday as there's no windows here)
- try and have similar eating times, e.g. days for gym-bro me it's roughly 10:30am, 2:30pm, 6:30pm, 10:30pm and nights 6:30pm, 10:30pm, 2:30am, 6:30am.

Always easier in the latter months when the daylight is shorter and it's colder so you can keep the windows shut.
 
Apart from the fact I'll echo that nights are the worst, I did 3 months over the summer while I was at uni. Cleaning a meat processing factory between the hours of 8pm-4am didn't do me any good, and my workmates who did it permanently definitely weren't doing well on it.

But....for sleeping, try things that take your mind off the world. Ambient music as suggested, also reading works for me, I'll often drift off within minutes with my kindle still in hand.
 
I work nights, I use Dr deans sleep stack, sometimes melatonin and have black out blinds, eye mask and silicone ear plugs.
 
wesimmo said:
But....for sleeping, try things that take your mind off the world. Ambient music as suggested, also reading works for me, I'll often drift off within minutes with my kindle still in hand.
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I'll expand on the music part a bit from my first post. Its not that the ambient music is put on cause you like it. Its to raise the floor level of noise in the room.

As I understand it, your mind generally adapts to ignore hearing what it considers the average base volume level of noise around you ... only picking out and registering sounds which are louder than that ignored sound level. In a silent / quiet room, this means your hearing and brain is sensitive to small sounds around the house, because they are louder than the base volume level of noise that your mind is ignoring.

By playing some music that is not engaging ... such as ambient, whale sounds, rain drops on a roof, white noise etc etc etc ... you put an average amount of sound into the room. Over time, your mind sees that level as the base amount volume of sound to ignore. So the sounds around the house are now drowned out by the music (which is being ignored), and so the brain doesn't register the sounds from the house and you're less likely to register them.
 
I think the best sleep aid for sleeping during the day is just making it dark and like night time. Decent fitting blackout curtains, reduce any ambient noises.

Taking medication of any kind, even if over the counter assists, is just gonna make you dependent on it.
 
7:30am is an awful time to try and get to sleep :( I used to do 5am finishes and that was OK but if we pushed into over time and I wasn't hitting bed until around 8am or so I'd never get a proper restful sleep in even with decent blackout curtains, etc.

Fortunately at the moment it is more like 2am finishes which are much easier to live with - though I still don't sleep well at the best of times.
 
I love working nights. 18.30 to 6.30 and I sleep till around 12 or 1pm. Get up and do things with the kids, shower and have dinner then back to work.

I'd cry if I had to do a regular monday to friday job. Different strokes for different folks I suppose.
 
Puzzled said:
Best advice is don't work nights. It really does screw your body up.
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This - I swore I wouldn't do it again after the long term effects last time :( but I'm on good money to cover them at the moment and it is nice being the most senior person in the building with no one looking over my shoulder on nights - I'm just about coping with it at the moment as we are doing more like evening shifts than night shifts but if it changes again I'll probably end up looking for another job.
 
I had to do it for a while and like the others so good blackout curtains and earbuds and avoiding any caffeine in the early hours.

I also try and read a book and have some warm milk 20 mins or so before I went to bed to clear my mind and avoided phones/tablets/tv
 
+1 for blackout curtains.

Another tip, which is in the summer time is to get a portable air-con unit for around £300. It looks like a mini fridge and has castor wheels. When the time comes, attach the hose to one of the windows and pull the backout curtains over it and it will cool a room up to 20M². It's absolutely essential if you're unable to sleep when the outside temperature is 20C or higher.
 
I used to have one of those portable air con units but it was far too loud to sleep through.
 
Pawnless Endgame said:
+1 for blackout curtains.

Another tip, which is in the summer time is to get a portable air-con unit for around £300. It looks like a mini fridge and has castor wheels. When the time comes, attach the hose to one of the windows and pull the backout curtains over it and it will cool a room up to 20M². It's absolutely essential if you're unable to sleep when the outside temperature is 20C or higher.
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Feek said:
I used to have one of those portable air con units but it was far too loud to sleep through.
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Yeah was going to say this.

Although we use white noise quite often so actually we've got used to it.
 
I have a blackout blind too. It’s great for the mornings when I feel like I need a bit more sleep.

It’s daytime in my bedroom when I say it’s daytime.
 
Feek said:
I used to have one of those portable air con units but it was far too loud to sleep through.
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Ah - I should have said that I'm severely deaf, so my bad. I'm so used to it that I sometimes forget and I don't know what normal hearing is like.

Can earplugs (as already mentioned) help if you have an a/c unit or is it still too loud?
 
Some people can just sleep anytime, in front of the TV, during the day,on a plane for example. They can work night shifts and not struggle too badly.

Others like myself struggle with all of the above, wouldn't cut it so.it wouldn't work.

If you need meds to sleep every day its not the job for you.
 
Helen Barber said:
I get in from my shift at 7:30am and find I'm only sleeping until around 12.....
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I used to work nights. Make sure you have blackout curtains and heavy (i.e. noise-absorbing) curtains on top. If you don't live in a detatched house speak to your neighbours as you may be being woken by something they're doing.

And don't go to bed immediately. Take the time to decompress. Have a meal and a nice long bath. When does your shift start? Aim to wake 90 mins or so before you have to leave, just as you would with a day job. Say your shift starts at 22:00 and you have to leave at 21:30 then you should wake at 20:00 and go to bed around noon.
 
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