New Study: Jetlag and Shiftwork affect your genes

In a new study scientists have shown that sleep pattern disruption such as that you would experience with jet lag or with changing shift work patterns has an adverse effect on the way your genes express themselves.

The study was conducted at the University of Surrey and published in the The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Simon Archer one of the authors of the study commented .....

"If you desynchronise sleep from your body clock with jet lag or shift work, so many processes are affected, in terms of the timing of when things happen," said Archer. "It explains why you feel so bad when you're jetlagged or doing shift work.

"Sleeping at the wrong time is bad for you. We know it has a massive effect on the temporal organisation of gene expression and that must link up with negative outcomes."

A Guardian article on this study can be found here www.theguardian.com/science/study