Shift work, sleep and the night roster.

A great many people around Muswellbrook work a roster rather than a week. Mining, health, emergency services, transport, hospitality and agriculture all run on hours that the human body was not designed around, and most people who do it will tell you they have simply got used to it.

Some of that is true. Some of it is a description of what tolerating something looks like from the inside.

What night work actually does

Your body runs on an internal clock set largely by light. It drives when you feel alert, when you feel sleepy, when your body temperature falls, when hormones are released, and how your body handles food. Night work asks you to be awake at the low point of that cycle and asleep at the high point.

The clock does shift somewhat, but for most people it never fully inverts — partly because on days off you go back to living in daylight, which resets it again. That is why the first night shift of a swing is usually the hardest, and why the recovery day afterwards rarely feels like enough.

The practical consequences are day sleep that is shorter and lighter than night sleep, a stomach that behaves oddly at 3am, and a mood that is harder to hold steady.

Light is your strongest lever

If you change one thing, change your light exposure.

• On the drive home after a night shift, wear dark wraparound sunglasses. Morning light on the way home tells your brain the day is starting, which is precisely the wrong message.
• Make the bedroom properly dark. Not dim — dark. Blockout curtains, and cover or remove anything with a standby light.
• Get bright light early in your shift where you safely can, to push alertness into the hours you need it.

Caffeine, timing and the things that seem to help but do not

Caffeine works, and it is a reasonable tool. The mistake is timing. It has a long half-life — a coffee at 3am is still meaningfully in your system when you are trying to sleep at 8am. Have it early in the shift, and stop at least six hours before you intend to sleep.

Alcohol is the common self-prescription for day sleep, and it is the one that does the most damage. It shortens the time it takes to fall asleep and then fragments the back half of your sleep, so you wake early and unrefreshed. Using it regularly to get to sleep after night shift is a pattern worth breaking early.

A short nap before a night shift — twenty minutes to half an hour — is genuinely useful. A long nap late in the day is not.

The drive home

This deserves its own heading because it is the part that kills people. Drowsy driving after a night shift is a serious hazard, and the drive home is when people are at their least alert and most convinced they are fine.

If you are microsleeping, drifting, or cannot remember the last few kilometres, stop. Pull over somewhere safe and sleep. If this is happening regularly, it is not a matter of willpower and it is worth an appointment.

Eating and moving

Digestion is at its worst overnight. Large meals at 2am tend to sit badly and make the rest of the shift harder. Most people do better with a proper meal before the shift and something smaller during it. Keeping the timing roughly consistent from night to night helps more than the specific contents.

Regular exercise improves sleep quality — but finishing something vigorous immediately before you try to sleep will work against you.

When to make an appointment

Adjusting badly to a roster for a week or two is ordinary. These are the things that are worth a conversation rather than another year of pushing through:

• You cannot fall asleep or stay asleep even when you have the opportunity, and it has gone on for months.
• You are sleepy at times that matter — driving, operating machinery — regardless of how much sleep you got.
• Sleep does not improve on your days off.
• You are snoring heavily, or someone has noticed you stop breathing in your sleep. That needs assessing in its own right.
• Your mood has changed, or you are relying on alcohol to get to sleep.
• You are gaining weight, or your blood pressure or blood sugar has drifted.

Bring a rough sleep diary if you can — a fortnight of when you slept and how it went makes the appointment far more productive than trying to reconstruct it on the spot. If you are due for a workplace assessment anyway, it is worth raising there too; see what happens in a pre-employment medical.

General information only. This article is general health information for anyone who finds it useful. It is not advice about your own situation and it does not replace a consultation with a doctor who knows you. If you are worried about a symptom, book an appointment or call us on (02) 6530 7404. Last reviewed 21 July 2026.