Abstract
(1) Background: Night shift workers have greater risks of developing cardiometabolic diseases compared to day workers due to poor sleep quality and dietary habits, exacerbated by circadian misalignment. Assessing effects of dietary interventions on health outcomes among this group will highlight gaps for future research. (2) Methods: A search of studies was conducted on PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, Embase Classic, Ovid Emcare, and Google Scholar, from earliest to June 2019. The population–intervention–comparator–outcomes–study design format determined inclusion criteria. (3) Results: 756 articles were retrieved; five met inclusion and exclusion criteria. Six-hundred-and-seventy night shift workers were from healthcare, industrial, and public safety industries. Dietary interventions included two longer-term nutrition programs and three shorter-term adjustments of meal composition, type, and timing. Outcome measures were varied but included weight and cardiometabolic health measures. Nutrition programs found no weight improvement at both six and 12 months; low-density lipoprotein (LDL)-cholesterol levels decreased at six months. Triglycerides peaked after meals at 7:30 pm; glucose and insulin area under the curve peaked after meals at 11:30 pm. (4) Conclusions: Weight loss was not achieved in the studies reviewed but LDL-cholesterol improved. Future studies should investigate the effects of energy reduction and altering meal timing on cardiometabolic risk factors of night shift workers in randomised controlled trials, while assessing hunger, sleepiness, and performance.
Highlights
Shift workers are people who work rotating shifts, irregular shifts, evening shifts, afternoon shifts, morning shifts, or split shifts [1]
Triglycerides peaked after meals at 7:30 pm; glucose and insulin area under the curve peaked after meals at 11:30 pm. (4) Conclusions: Weight loss was not achieved in the studies reviewed but low-density lipoprotein (LDL)-cholesterol improved
Five studies were included in our review [39,40,41,42,43]
Summary
Shift workers are people who work rotating shifts, irregular shifts, evening shifts, afternoon shifts, morning shifts, or split shifts [1]. Shift workers are known to have elevated cardiometabolic risk factors including higher levels of triglycerides, and lower levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-cholesterol [2]. They have a greater incidence and risk of chronic disease than the general working population, including metabolic syndrome [3] and obesity [2]. These risks are similar when studies focus on night shift workers [4,5,6,7,8]. Night shift work is linked with an increased risk of diabetes [9], blood pressure [10], breast cancer [11], and heart disease [12]; where weight or waist circumference is adjusted for, the association between night shift work and diabetes is attenuated [9], is inconsistent for blood pressure [6,10], and remains for cancer and heart disease [11,12]
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