Why me? -- Part 2

After posting a few days ago about my youthful indiscretions with respect to lifestyle, I thought of another likely factor in my development of Alzheimer's disease.  From when I was 21 until my early 30s I worked at a job that was very tough on sleep schedule.  I was an engineer in a shipyard, and it involved shift work.  But my schedule was very uncertain.  I might come in to the office in the morning expecting 10 hours of office work (we usually worked 10 hours/day for five days and 8 hours on Saturday) but be told to go home and come back for graveyard shift.  Assignment to that shift might last only two or three days, and then I had to cycle my metabolism and sleep schedule back to day shift in the office.

So how does that work for sleeping well?  I had just gotten up after a full night's sleep, so when would my next sleep period be?  Maybe a nap in the evening, but no one can ever get good sleep under these conditions.  By 4 a.m. I would be really dragging.  And when I was assigned graveyard shift over a longer period of time I could never sleep well.  I could never learn to sleep well during the day.

When I moved up in management, it got worse.  I was responsible for whatever happened 24/7 in my domain.  So the phone would often ring after midnight, and I might need to go in to work to investigate an emerging problem.

From what I've learned about the role of sleep in the development of Alzheimer's disease, I would not be surprised to learn that my sleep deficiencies during those years played a significant role in why and how I developed the disease.