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I'm 23 years old lanky guy, and my health is below average. I believe it's also wise to mention that I currently have Tuberculosis in my lymph nodes around the neck area, for which I'm taking my medications. My past health issues were typhoid and recently pneumonia (February 2014).

With that being said, I'm currently working two jobs out of necessity. First starting from 1pm till 10pm, and another starting from 11pm till 5am. So my routine is work from 1pm till 5am, and reach home by 6am and sleep till 12 noon, get ready and the cycle continues. This happens 5 days a week, and I get a full two days of rest.

Now I've recently thought about taking a leave on my night job (11pm - 5am) every Wednesday, such that I'll get to have a good rest in the interval of 2 days (I hope you understand the pattern). By first thoughts, this feels like a good enough decision.

But my concern is that I may worsen my health even more. I think I read somewhere that random changes on one's routine can confuse the body which will lead to serious health issues, and since this new routine is pretty random, I fear that I may fall sick all of a sudden, something that I cannot afford financially and health-wise too.

So should I go ahead and follow this new routine? I know there aren't many options that I can choose from, but is there better routine that could follow?

Butterfly and Bones
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DriftingSteps
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  • sleep is for the brain, not the body. Expect functionality to decrease – jiniyt Jun 03 '15 at 12:13
  • so work at night is a must? – Ooker Jun 03 '15 at 15:23
  • Sadly, yes. Actually, my first job was a night job, which I started about 7 years ago. Till date, I've spent at least 5 out of those 7 years sleeping during day time. Maybe I should mention this on the main post? – DriftingSteps Jun 03 '15 at 16:08
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    @DriftingSteps i think you should look at my question of long term sleeping at day too. I'm still waiting someone to answer sadly :/ but i think that what is hurting you more than sleeping at day is your 6 hours of sleep only. You need to sleep at least 8 hours. Especially with such heavy rotine – Freedo Jul 05 '15 at 22:19

1 Answers1

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You are correct to be worried about the effect of sleep on your physical health, especially because you seem to have bad luck (or bad genes) when it comes to serious infectious disease.

Anyway, back to the issue of sleep as it relates to infectious disease:

 Sleep deprivation attenuates antibody responses to vaccine,
 whereas good sleep imparts long-lasting immunoenhancing effects.
 Furthermore, sleep is a profound regulator of cellular immunity
 and formation of immunological memory critical for adaptive
 responses to immune challenges.
 -- from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3695049/

So it's safe to presume that your lack of sleep is impairing your health. No one can guarantee that good sleep will restore you to good health, but it can't hurt.

End Anti-Semitic Hate
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Iron Pillow
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  • By the way, there is a big literature on genetic susceptibility to tuberculosis: http://omim.org/entry/607948 and there is very interesting research on cystic fibrosis genes conferring resistance to typhoid fever http://omim.org/entry/219700 but OMIM did not have anything on increased typhoid susceptibility. – Iron Pillow Jul 03 '15 at 18:55