STRESS AND AROUSAL CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS IN SMOKERS AND NON-SMOKERS WORKING DAY AND NIGHT SHIFTS

✍ Scribed by JONES, M. E. E. ;PARROTT, A. C.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 134 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0748-8386
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1700(199704)13:2<91::aid-smi722>3.0.co;2-8

✦ Synopsis

Twenty smokers and twenty non-smokers completed a brief Mood State Questionnaire every 2 hours, over one day shift and one night shift. The subjects comprised male police ocers and factory workers, aged 23±57 years. Cigarette smokers reported signi®cantly higher stress levels than non-smokers on both day and night shifts p 0X05. This con®rms previous ®ndings that smokers are often more stressed than non-smokers. Stress levels varied over time within each shift p 0X001, but the circadian patterns did not dier between smokers and non-smokers. Thus smoking did not alter circadian mood rhythms, nor did it facilitate stress control. Self-rated levels of arousal showed the archetypal inverted-U pattern over time in both smokers and non-smokers. There was no dierence in mean arousal levels between subgroups, indicating that cigarettes did not lead to greater alertness. The shift  time interaction was signi®cant for both stress p 0X001 and arousal p 0X003, indicating dierent circadian rhythms during the day shift and the night shift. Finally, while smokers consumed slightly more cigarettes during the night shift than day shift (22.3, 19.4 respectively, p `0X05), mean stress and arousal levels did not dier between shifts. The implications of these ®ndings for smoking behaviour are discussed.