Family members of shift workers may adopt similar eating and sleeping patterns and experience adverse metabolic consequences.

“So these are the family members of shift workers who have a lifestyle that are very similar to shift work. And this is something that we found in a study, in the same myCircadianClock study, in India where we found some people who self-describe them as not shift worker, but then their eating pattern was like shift workers. So when we asked them again, then we realized that their spouses were shift workers. And to maintain that strong family bond they wanted to share meals with your shift work spouse, shift worker spouse. So in that way we call them the secondhand shift worker who are not working in shifts, but they are actually sleeping and eating like shift workers and they may be experiencing the same adverse metabolic consequences of shift work.”