Describe the effects of shift work and jet lag on the body's circadian clock. What is a treatment described in the module for these effects?
What will be an ideal response?
Shift Workers
Staying awake when your sleep-wake clock calls for sleep results in decreased performance in cognitive and motor skills. For example, employees who work the graveyard shift (about 1 to 8 a.m.) experience the highest number of accidents, reaching their lowest point, or "dead zone," at about 5 a.m., when it is very difficult to stay alert. The reason shift workers and late-night drivers have more accidents is their sleep-wake clocks have prepared their bodies for sleep, which means they feel sleepy, and are less attentive and alert.
Jet Lag
Jet lag is the experience of fatigue, lack of concentration, and reduced cognitive skills that occurs when travelers' biological circadian clocks are out of step, or synchrony, with the external clock times at their new locations. Generally, it takes about one day to reset your
circadian clock for each hour of time change.
Light Therapy
Light therapy is the use of bright artificial light to reset circadian clocks and to combat the insomnia and drowsiness that plague shift workers and jet-lag sufferers. It also helps people with sleeping disorders in which the body fails to stay in time with the external environment.
You might also like to view...
Goals of psychotherapy include
a. mending interpersonal relations. b. improving one's sense of self. c. restoring a sense of hope and optimism to clients. d. all of these.
______________-oriented leaders are more concerned with productivity and focus on providing direction and instructions for group members
a. Task b. Relationship c. Motivationally d. Honesty
When people believe they are members of a group with a common purpose, it creates a
A) sense of community. B) sense of alienation. C) social division. D) dislike of those not in the group.
Between 3 and 18 months of age, the brain's weight increases by what percent?
A) 20% B) 30% C) 40% D) 50%