Why is it bad to work at night?

Why is it bad to work at night? Many artists or other people find it a good time to work, and many people such as nurses are required to work at night.

In answer to your questions:

Basically when people work at night they cause Pitta and Vata imbalances because this is the time when Vata DOES NOT move except for Vyana Vayu who goes around the body collecting waste. In the morning Apana Vayu expels this waste that was collected by Vyana. So when Vata is activated by staying awake and working in the night several things happen:

– waste (Mala) is not collected properly causing disorders like arthritis, etc. in time due to waste accumulation.

– the other Vayus prevent Vyana from working correctly, but they also do not get time to rest so they become inefficient in their day time functions - this is called high Vata, or Vata Vriddhi.

– the Vayus activate both Pitta and Kapha and prevent them from removing waste from their areas of the body.

– Vata becomes tired in the afternoon causing low periods of the day cycle of Vata.

Pitta become aggravated by the activation of Pitta in its night time cycle. People who work at night get a second wave of energy around 11.00 to midnight because they have activated Pitta in an outward direction. Pitta as the controller of chemical transformations has daytime and nighttime work. The nighttime work is the internal transformation of micronutrients, whereas the daytime is suited more for the transformation of macro nutrients, e.g. digestion of lipids, protein, etc. So you have more of a cellular Pitta activity in the night that becomes compromised by external work - result will be various diseases of Pitta. Typically these are inflammatory disorders, for example nerve inflammation, vein or artery inflammation, muscle inflammation, etc.

The basic logic is that if you force a "daytime" activity on the Doshas during the nighttime, the normal nighttime function is affected or compromised. This results in disease. Of course living and working at night will not affect a person immediately, in some cases, it will just tend to make chronic, degenerative disorders in 60’s, 70’s that make life miserable. In other cases (for example nurses who work night shifts) the rate of diseases.

Modern medicine is just beginning to understand this, here is a good review of modern evidence: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045028/

Information on the Ayurvedic point of view is explained in my book:
Pathology & Diagnosis in Ayurveda (Volume 2) - - Ayurvedic Medicine for Westerners

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