Work, Sleep, Stress and Sickness
We know that stress has a large impact on our lives, however, it seems that many individuals think that they are capable of pushing past or toughing it out when dealing with stress. While certain individuals may be more affected than others when it comes to stress, humans cannot completely bypass the effects of stress through shear will and determination. The papers “A Hard Day’s Night: a Longitudinal Study on the Relationship Among Job Demands and Job Control, Sleep Quality and Fatigue”, “Sleep Length and Life Satisfaction in a College Student Sample” and “Psychological Stress and Disease” all show how stress can have dramatic effects on an individual. I also believe by looking at the implications of each paper, we can draw conclusions on how stress, sleep, work, and disease are all linked.
The longitudinal study on the relationship on someone’s job and sleep and fatigue made many interesting and thought provoking points. I appreciated the discussion of recovery. In my job as a strength coach, we cannot talk about someone’s program or training load without discussing recovery. If someone wants to workout 5-8 times per week, with some days including two a day trainings, we have to look at their sleep, nutrition, rest time, and overall stress. If someone has the schedule and resources that allows them this kind of flexibility to acquire this kind of recovery, then we can properly execute this high volume demand of training. But if an individual is working 40-60 hours per week, has a family, is low on sleep, and has lots of other responsibilities to attend to, we need to decrease the training volume in order to be able to gain results. This seems to be true here as well with demanding jobs. My curiosity here is that if an individual has a demanding job, but is also able to have substantial recovery, does this help with sleep quality and fatigue? My prediction would be that for some it could help while others, the degree of sleep quality and level of fatigue may persist. This could mean more time off, more breaks, etc. This is an argument the article makes in the end and I would be very interested to see if there is more data to support these kinds of suggestions.
Another interesting note of this study is that it was completed using 1163 Dutch participants. The Netherlands is also known to be one of the happiest countries in the world. What would this same type of study show if it were done in the US? How would the stress levels compare? Although this country is ranked one of the happiest in the world, all humans still experience stress. As stated before, it is an unavoidable part of being alive. This could show that even in countries that are very happy, and with people who are working in fairly good working conditions, people still experience an increase in fatigue and decrease in sleep quality as their jobs become more stressful and demanding. I would be curious to know how the initial rankings of demand, sleep quality and fatigue compared to other countries. Would this change the results? Would we see an even worse pattern of sleep and fatigue? It seems highly possible.
This article made me think back to the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. The book discusses what the purpose of sleep is in our lives and what damages it can do when limiting this primal need. While the Hard Day’s Night article states that hypothesis 2: Sleep quality and fatigue affect work characteristics across time, was not proven in this study, Matthew Walker demonstrates that there is a connection between sleep, creativity, attention span, memory, and emotional patience. Walker states that decreased sleep can cause a decrease in creativity, difficulty remembering, difficulty paying attention, as well as making us more emotionally irritable. All of these factors can absolutely make work much more stressful and more demanding. If an employee is not able to learn more material, remember their responsibilities, is short or aggressive with their peers, and is not able to come up with new ideas required for their position, this could all majorly affect the perceived demands of their job.
Disease is another factor to discuss here. The Hard Day’s Night article does state that there is a link between sleep quality and sick absences from work as well as long term disability. We can see the connection of demanding and challenging jobs and health by connecting the three articles: Hard Day’s Night article, Psychological Stress and Disease, and Sleep Length and Life Satisfaction article. The Hard Day’s Night article proves that jobs with higher demand and less control yield poorer sleep quality and increased fatigue. The Sleep Length and Life Satisfaction article states that decreased sleep is connected with a lower satisfaction of life and increased worry, anxiety and depression. The Psychological Stress and Disease article states that there is a connection between stress and disease such as depression, cardiovascular disease, HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, asthma, herpes viral infections, autoimmune diseases and wound healing. All of this to say that the more demanding one’s job is and the less control someone has over their job, the higher potential for disease occurs.
Looking at these kinds of studies, it is infuriating to me how many companies do not care or put minimal effort into proper recovery for demanding workloads. This would not only create a happier, less stressed work force but could save companies millions of dollars through decreased sick time and disability. It even has the potential to grow revenue through an increase in engagement, creativity, and job/life satisfaction.
Returning back to my position as a strength coach, job stress, sleep quality, and recovery are all major factors we must look at when programming and coaching someone through their routine. Often times people get down on themselves because they might experience a day, week, or even month of feeling weaker or see their progress being stunted and feel like they need to work harder in order to make progress. In reality, their body and brain is under recovered, not under worked. So many individuals do not realize the large demand that job stress and sleep place on the body and mind. My hope is that we can learn to better understand the implications that job demands, lack of sleep, and overall stress has on us and over time we can create better environments for all of us to thrive.
