Some people would just settle for less hours of sleep, but a new study suggests that poor sleeping habits could contribute to the risk of getting cancer.
BBC News reported that the new test puts emphasis on the health risks associated with working on shifts that disrupt normal sleeping patterns.
"To our knowledge, this is the first study that unequivocally shows a link between chronic [light/dark] inversions and breast cancer development," the authors wrote in their report, which appeared in the journal Current Biology.
Gijsbetus van der Horst of the Erasmus University Medical Center in Switzerland, one of the study researchers, advised that if a person has a genetic history of breast cancer, this person should not "work as a flight attendant" or go for jobs with shifting hours, according to the BBC News report.
For the study, researchers came up with a mice experiment design where the animals were bioengineered to become prone to breast cancer.
One group of mice was exposed to light/dark cycles inverted weekly, while the other group was exposed to a stable environment.
Around 80 percent of the mice, whichever environment they were in, developed breast cancer.
However, the group of mice in the inverted light/dark cycles were found to have developed tumors, eight weeks earlier compared to the mice in the stable environment, when normally tumor development would be after 50 weeks.
Furthermore, mice in the disrupted sleep cycle appeared to gain more weight compared to the other group of mice.
What the findings translate to for humans may not be simple, but according to researchers who reported to BBC, an estimated 10kg of weight will be gained; or for women who are prone to develop breast cancer due to genetic history, the disease may come five years earlier.
According to Dr. Michael Hastings of the Medical Research Council in U.K., people should pay more attention to their health and their body weight, and take time to inspect their breasts.
In addition, he suggested that employers should conduct regular health checks in the workplace, as reported in BBC.
