Night Shifts Can Affect Your Bladder And Overall Health: Here's How

Working night shifts may deteriorate your quality of life by affecting your bladder, researchers have warned.

Night shift workers reported a significantly higher rate of overactive bladder, and a poorer quality of life when compared with day shift workers, suggests the study presented at the European Association of Urology Congress in Barcelona.

They also need to pee more, said researchers, including Cosimo De Nunzio of Sant Andrea Hospital, Rome.

"We know that long-term night work is stressful, and is associated with increased levels of health problems. This work shows that constant night workers may have a higher urinary frequency as well as a decline in their own quality of life," said De Nunzio.

"One of the most concerning things about this work is everyone in our sample was under 50. We normally expect bladder problems with older people, but here we have younger people expressing a deteriorating quality of life," the author added.

For the study, the researchers surveyed 68 men and 68 women between March and October 2018. All were workers in the Italian National Health System, with 66 of the volunteers working night shifts, on average, 11 hours per night shift.

The 70 day workers worked an average of 9.1 hours per day.

Using the generally accepted Overactive Bladder Questionnaire, the team found that those on night shift reported an average total score of 31, as against a score of 19 for those working day shifts.

The team also found that night workers scored a significantly worse quality of life, with scores of 41 against 31 with day shift workers.