Karthika Priyadharshini U¹
Dhivya K²

¹Assistant Professor, Department of Physiology,
²Final Year MBBS Student,
Sri Venkateshwaraa Medical College Hospital
and Research Center,
Ariyur,
Pondicherry, Tamilnadu, India

Abstract

• Introduction: Shift work among the hospital staff is considered necessary to ensure continuity of patient care. Night shifts in particular are the most frequent reasons for circadian rhythm disruption and subsequent psychological and physiological disturbances.These workers suffer from persistent fatigue, decreased muscle strength, declined cognition and mental alertness. Reaction time is an indicator of mental alertness. Alternate nostril breathing(ANB) for about 15 minutes was known to affect the mental alertness.
• Objectives: The aim is to assess the effect of alternate nostril breathingon visual reaction time (VRT) among the rotating shift workers in the tertiary care hospital.
• Materials and Methods: After getting institutional ethical committee clearance and informed consent from all the participants,simple and choice visual reaction time was recorded before and after 15 minutes of alternate nostril breathing using Deary –Liewald Reaction time tester.60 volunteers of both sex of age 25-40 years with normal BMI who did rotating night shifts and 60 subjects of age, sex and BMI matched who were not on shift duty were selected as study and control groups respectively based on inclusion and exclusion criteria.
• Results and discussion: Rotating shift workers were found to have significantly increased stress level and reaction time (P < 0.05) compared to non-shift workers. Reaction time was found to be significantly decreased (P < 0.05) after alternate nostril breathing among both shift and non- shift workers.
• Conclusion: ANB can be practiced regularly by the shift workers, to maintain their sound health and to improve their performance in the night duty.

Keywords: alternate nostril breathing, cognition, non-shift workers, rotating shift workers, visual reaction time