Dr. Kristen Holmes explains how staying up late disrupts melatonin production, a hormone that protects against cancer. Shift workers, especially women, face higher breast cancer risk. Late nights also raise fasting glucose and prevent deep, restorative sleep because our bodies aren't built for shifted schedules.
when you are not able to build a natural pressure for sleep consistently, you end up not releasing the most potent kind of bolus of melatonin. And melatonin is not just the hormone of darkness. Yes, it helps us kind of feel sleepy, but melatonin is a really powerful antioxidant and we know it is cancer protective. So I think one of the reasons why shift workers are so vulnerable to diseases like cancer, particularly women, breast cancer is because of this lack of circulating melatonin. They're not getting that protective antioxidant or enough of it. When you're up after midnight, we know that that has an impact on your fasting glucose next day. Obviously, just your ability to drop into these deeper stages of sleep during the biological day, we're just not as good at that because our body, regardless of whether we're shifted completely or not, like our body still, there's something about, you know, we just haven't evolved for our bodies to be able to just shift and drop into these really deeper stages of sleep. We might be so sleep deprived that we do get into these deeper stages of sleep, but again, how restorative is that? That hasn't really been quantified.
She Used to Crash Every Afternoon — Here's What Fixed It | The Wardrobe Consultant
