The use of circadian-informed lighting, where artificial lighting is synchronised to the natural biological rhythms or a person’s ‘body-clock’, significantly improves quality of sleep and work performance for night shift workers, a major new trial has found.

The Flinders University trial is among the first tightly controlled in-laboratory studies to have simultaneously evaluated circadian-lighting effects on markers of body-clock timing, work-shift cognitive performance, and sleep following an abrupt transition to night shift work.

The results of the trial have produced two papers published in SLEEP, finding that strategic exposure to light accelerated body-clock adjustment and improved alertness and performance, as well as sleep after a night shift.

“Circadian rhythms reflect our body’s internal clocks that control the activity and timing of bodily functions, including our sleep-wake cycle,” says Flinders University sleep researcher Dr. Hannah Scott, author of “Circadian-informed lighting improves vigilance, sleep, and subjective sleepiness during simulated night shift work,” published in SLEEP.

“Shift work causes circadian disruption, for which well-timed light exposure, designed to promote alertness and facilitate circadian adjustment, is one of the most potent methods to help retime the body clock.”

In Australia, about 15%–16% of Australian workers report being shift workers. For both men and women, rotating shifts with varying schedules each week are the most prevalent type of shift work

[https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-circadian-boosts-night-shift-workers.html](https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-circadian-boosts-night-shift-workers.html)

[https://academic.oup.com/sleep/advance-article/doi/10.1093/sleep/zsae146/7700053?login=false](https://academic.oup.com/sleep/advance-article/doi/10.1093/sleep/zsae146/7700053?login=false)