Shadowing Practice: Shift Work, Sleep Deprivation, and Health - Learn English Speaking with Video

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In the modern world, it is often seen as admirable to get as little sleep as possible in order to be the most productive.

As scientists look more closely at this issue, they are finding that sleep deprivation can contribute to a wide variety of health problems.

Some people's jobs require working outside the typical workday hours.

These include late night, overnight, and early morning shifts.

These workers are everywhere from

that cab you took at 3 a .m to the truck

driver bringing your overnight package to the paramedics on call ready for an emergency.

And as we move increasingly towards a 24 -hour society, there are more people working these atypical hours known as shift work

And chances are, they're sleep -deprived.

When social constraints are not an issue, sleep is biologically controlled by two major systems.

Process C, the circadian system, and Process S, the homeostatic sleep drive.

Process C is synchronized to the environment and provides wake -promoting signals at approximately the same time each day.

Process S increases your tendency to sleep the longer you've been awake.

They work together to make sure you're attentive or sleepy at the right time each day and night.

If you're new to the study of circadian rhythms in sleep, check out this video to learn more.

Shift workers often have trouble sleeping because their work schedule does not line up with their internal clock.

They have to work when cues from their body are telling them to sleep

and try to sleep when their body is expecting to be awake.

This difficulty in adjusting daily timing can be further compounded by rotating schedules or, for people on permanent night shift, flipping activity patterns on days off.

The difficulty of adapting to these complex schedules leads to shift workers not being able to sleep

when they have the opportunity and being sleepy when they need to work.

This maladjustment increases the possibility of accidents in the workplace, reinforces circadian misalignment and chronic sleep deprivation, and eventually leads to adverse health outcomes.

Sleep is essential to many processes in the body.

We spoke with Dr. Celine Vetter, an assistant professor from the University of Colorado Boulder, about the connection between shift work, circadian misalignment, sleep, and health.

Please forgive the audio quality.

Dr. Vetter generously met with us in the middle of the Center for Circadian Biology conference at UC San Diego,

and the recording conditions were not ideal.

So shift work does a lot of things to our bodies

and so if you want to think about how shift work disrupts physiology

and behavior and thereby can affect health you want to think about different axes

so you can think about on the one hand shift work disrupts your social life right

so there's a whole social component to how you have to plan

and anticipate and organize your life and it may be harder to follow some of those you know

extracurricular activities that are important to you so there's the social part

that I don't work on that much but

that is definitely a big part of it then there is the physiology part

and the behavioral part so we know

that shift work is associated with partial sleep deprivation

so shift workers on average sleep a little less usually

it's between 30 minutes to an hour on the average side

and it will depend on what shift you work and

when you work how little you will probably sleep it also induces a state of circadian misalignment so the

so the cycles of your behavior may be mismatched with environmental

cycles of the light dark cycle feeding fasting cycles what this means is

that if you do shift work

and especially night shift work

you're forced to be active at a time where your body is expecting to sleep

you're taking in food you're consuming food at a time where your body is usually expecting to digest

and pause you're also exposed to light

because we need a certain level of light to effectively

and safely do the work at a time where your body anticipates darkness right

and where we usually sleep and melatonin gets expressed and and

so due to that light exposure the secretion of melatonin gets suppressed

so there's a whole shift work is really not just one thing

Now let's talk about some of the basic health effects of shift work on the body that have been observed in studies.

Sleep deprivation has harmful effects on the endocrine system, which have been linked to health risks such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.

The endocrine system consists of glands that make chemical messengers known as hormones.

Hormones signal to target organs to help coordinate many processes, including metabolism.

Many of these hormones have a circadian rhythm peaking at different times of day.

Leptin and ghrelin are hormones that influence eating and wakefulness.

They work together to regulate appetite.

Ghrelin is secreted by cells in the stomach prior to habitual mealtimes, making you feel hungry.

Leptin is secreted from adipose tissue, commonly known as fat, and suppresses your appetite after you've eaten.

Leptin is also circadian -regulated, peaking at night, so that it suppresses your appetite when you're asleep.

Sleep deprivation is associated with higher levels of ghrelin, along with lower levels of leptin, meaning more of the signal telling you that you're hungry,

and less of the signal telling you that you're full.

Circadian misalignment and irregular mealtimes associated with shift work may cause irregular secretion of leptin and ghrelin, affecting food intake and energy expenditure.

Together with the practical complications of eating during shift work, such as limited access to healthy food at available mealtimes.

The imbalance of these hormones contributes to poor eating habits and poor health.

Laboratory data indeed show that circadian misalignment changes leptin and ghrelin levels, which may contribute to increased risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

The hormone insulin regulates glucose uptake by cells throughout the body.

Insulin resistance leading to type 2 diabetes is a serious risk among shift workers.

We spoke with Dr. Vetter about the interactions among shift work, appetite, and nutrition.

So I think for shift work and type 2 diabetes, we think that there are several things going on.

So one is that if you eat during your biological night, which is something that happens a lot,

the reaction that you get is that you get increased levels of insulin,

right? so your body is trying to deal with the blood sugar that's associated with

that food intake and needs to produce much more insulin to deal with elevated blood sugar

that we see so those are two different types of things

that we see happening so

and both of those types of reactions are considered risk factors for type 2 diabetes on the other hand

we've seen from some work from Andrew McHill for example

that energy expenditure is affected by working during the night

so you actually expend less energy for the same type of activity

which may contribute to increases in body weight and weight gain

and through that again will increase your risk to type 2 diabetes we've also seen

that circadian misalignment and sleep deprivation will influence food choices that you make.

So, you have a higher likelihood to pick more sugary foods,

fattier foods, and then if you combine this with the idea

that your body cannot deal that well anymore with

that blood sugar then then you know you're kind of accumulating the risk factors

and now chronically this will then lead to type 2 diabetes

so that's kind of part of the pathway

that you can think about you you your body cannot process the food as it can during the day

you you pick foods that are bad for you

but probably even worse than during the night as compared to during the day

and you're spending less energy while doing that and

so those those together will then lead to

that increased type 2 diabetes risk here's a short summary of what we talked about today

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which you can pause to take a look at prolonged shift work poses risks to many aspects of health especially

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when it involves sleep deprivation and circadian misalignment, and we have shown you only a few of them.

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There is still much to be learned about the health effects of shift work

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because this is a relatively new area of study.

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These problems sound serious, and they are, but there are ways to make healthy adjustments in our modern society.

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Workers can take action to help minimize their risk of chronic disease.

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Here's Dr. Vedder's advice for those who are shift workers.

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We know that lifestyle is one of the biggest factors, modifiable factors, in chronic disease prevention, right?

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So if we think about smoking, and a healthy diet, and exercise, and a body weight, and the normal range.

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those have a very big impact on your future chronic disease risk.

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Now, we know that those are not independent of circadian misalignment and sleep deprivation.

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I just said, you know, your food choices may be influenced by the levels of misalignment and sleep.

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So, I think what's important is to kind of educate the public about those links you know

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if you know your work shifts can you make an extra

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effort to prepare a healthy snack for you to take to work

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and really prioritize those healthy lifestyle choices now this is hard

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but those are very effective ways how to minimize your chronic disease risk

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and if you don't have the choice and

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and minimize the exposure to shift work

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then this is really your your best bet how to keep your chronic disease risk low.

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The other part is that oftentimes individuals have a hard time to prioritize sleep and really make sure that individuals know,

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employees know how important sleep is for all our physiology

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but also for social interactions and for safety at the workplace making sure

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that you prioritize sleep just as you would prioritize a healthy snack for work

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and make this equivalent and recognize the importance of this as a as a preventive factor

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that you can actively make an important priority in your life, I think is important.

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Not everyone is a shift worker, but everyone needs sleep, and sleep deprivation increases the risk for many health problems.

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The American Academy of Sleep recommends that adults get seven

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or more hours of sleep in order to minimize the risks of sleep deprivation.

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So ask yourself, did you get enough sleep last night?

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Shift Work, Sleep Deprivation, and Health”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: sleep, shift, risk, circadian, type. This video has 129 sentences and 1767 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:10. The speaker talks at a steady 145 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
diabetes noun	/ˌdaɪəˈbiːtiːz/	Diabetes mellitus; any of a group of metabolic diseases whereby a person (or other animal) has high blood sugar due to an inability to produce, or inability to…
chronic adjective	/ˈkɹɑ.nɪk/	Of a problem, that continues over an extended period of time.
hormone noun	/ˈhoɹmoʊn/	Any substance produced by one tissue and conveyed by the bloodstream to another to effect physiological activity.
contribute verb	/kənˈtɹɪb.jut/	To give something that is or becomes part of a larger whole.
appetite noun	/ˈæp.əˌtaɪt/	A desire to eat food or consume drinks.
insulin noun	/ˈɪnsəlɪn/	A polypeptide hormone that regulates carbohydrate metabolism (in various animals including humans).
minimize verb	/ˈmɪn.ɪˌmaɪz/	To make (something) smaller or as small as possible; shrink; reduce.
regulate verb	/ˈɹɛɡ.jə.leɪt/	To dictate policy.
suppress verb	/səˈpɹɛs/	To put an end to, especially with force, to crush, do away with; to prohibit, subdue.
physiology noun	/ˌfɪziˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/	A branch of biology that deals with the functions and activities of life or of living matter (as organs, tissues, or cells) and of the physical and chemical…
hungry adjective	/ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi/	Affected by hunger; having the physical need for food.
exposure noun	/ɪkˈspəʊ.ʒə(ɹ)/	The condition of being exposed, uncovered, or unprotected.
difficulty noun	/ˈdɪfɪkəlti/	The state of being difficult, or hard to do.
interaction noun	/ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/	The situation or occurrence in which two or more things act upon one another to produce an effect; the effect resulting from such a situation or occurrence.
lifestyle noun	/ˈlaɪfˌstaɪl/	A style of living that reflects the attitudes and values of a person or group.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
check out verb	To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is often seen · is synchronized · is associated
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	you've been · have been observed · have been linked
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	system, which have · night, which is · those who are

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 18 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, we've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: rhythm /ˈɹɪð.əm/, thereby /ðɛɹˈbaɪ/, pathway /ˈpæθˌweɪ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: exposure /ɪkˈspəʊ.ʒə(ɹ)/, interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/, tissue /ˈtɪʃ.(j)u/, prevention /pɹɪˈvɛnʃən/, partial /ˈpɑɹʃəl/
Long words — get the stress right: physiology /ˌfɪziˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, difficulty /ˈdɪfɪkəlti/, interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/, obesity /ə(ʊ)ˈbiːsɪti/, expenditure /ɛkˈspɛndɪt͡ʃə/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like diabetes, chronic, hormone.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Shift Work, Sleep Deprivation, and Health - Learn English Speaking with Video

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