Graveyard duty

Pro-circadian night shift

Here’s the TLDR first for this post, then cruise through for more detail:

1. Circadian Light Environment: dimmer, lower, amber - ideally maintaining alertness but also allowing some pineal melatonin to still flow. Amber blue blocking glasses, billed hats, hoods, turtlenecks and clothing that blocks light from the skin work as an alternative, but the gold standard is to tune the environment—a community effort!

2. Circadian Meals: daytime only, and if at night, ketogenic fat and protein because of the body’s reduced tolerance for carbohydrates in the dark

3. Circadian Team Building: work with your team to improve the environment, and ideally, get people on board with sharing the duty so everyone who works night has a schedule that allows them some time to sleep that overlaps the natural darkness (ie, each shift should ideally be less than 12 hours and the shorter the better)

From a circadian perspective, pretty much everything about today's graveyard shift is wrong. It is well-known now for causing …