Working 9 to 5 Is Officially Bad For You And Here's Why

When that alarm drills its evil tones through your head and you drag your body out from that warm bed into the cold, dark morning, we're sure you've often cried out that this is simply inhuman.

Well, it turns out that you were actually right.

An Oxford University academic has said that working a standard 9 to 5 shift is 'hugely damaging' and 'torture', as it doesn't fit with the natural circadian rhythms of the human body.

Speaking at the British Science Festival in Bradford, Dr Paul Kelley, an honorary clinical research fellow at the University's Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute, said: "This is a huge society issue: staff should start at 10am. You don't get back to [the 9am] starting point until [age] 55. Staff are usually sleep deprived. We've got a sleep-deprived society. It is hugely damaging on the body’s systems because you are affecting physical, emotional and performance systems in the body. Your liver and your heart have different patterns and you’re asking them to shift two or three hours. This is an international issue. Everybody is suffering and they don’t have to."

He continued, "We cannot change our 24-hour rhythms. You cannot learn to get up at a certain time. Your body will be attuned to sunlight and you’re not conscious of it because it reports to hypothalamus, not sight. This applies in the bigger picture to prisons and hospitals. They wake up people and give people food they don't want. You're more biddable because you're totally out of it. Sleep deprivation is a torture."

He suggested that society needs a shift to working later to fit in with our natural cycles, particularly among young people, with Dr Kelley saying that they lose an average of two hours sleep a day, which leads to poorer learning. He claimed that allowing them to stay in bed for longer - with 16 year-olds starting at 10am and 18 year-olds at 11am - would boost exam results by 'around 10 per cent'. Young children wake up early naturally, so they would be fine with the status quo - sorry guys.

And which 'philosopher' realised all this years ago? Dolly Parton. And people say she's just had a lot of hits.

(Image: Rex)