Coming Off a Night Shift: What Your Legs Need First
The order you do things in after a long night makes a noticeable difference, and most people do it backwards.
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After twelve hours upright, most people do the same thing: get home, get in, and get horizontal as fast as possible. It is entirely understandable and it is not quite the best sequence.
Get the legs above the heart before you sleep
Ten to fifteen minutes with your feet raised above the level of your heart does something specific: it lets gravity move the fluid that has accumulated in your lower legs across a long shift back toward the rest of you.
Lying flat helps, but not nearly as much as actually elevating. Legs up the wall, feet on the arm of the sofa, or a couple of pillows under the ankles all work.
Doing this before you sleep rather than after means you spend the sleep with legs that have already drained rather than legs that spend the first hour draining.
Sleeping flat is not the same as elevating. The difference is the height, and it is worth fifteen minutes.
Walk for two minutes before you stop moving
This one feels wrong and is worth doing anyway.
Going from standing directly to sitting in a car and then directly to bed means the calf pump goes from idling to fully stopped. A short, easy walk cycles it deliberately and helps clear the accumulation before you go still for eight hours.
Get the shoes off, and get them dry
Twelve hours in closed footwear leaves the shoe damp inside whether or not your feet felt sweaty. Taking them off promptly and leaving them somewhere they can actually dry, rather than in a bag or a cupboard, matters for the next shift more than this one.
If you have a second pair, this is what they are for.
Temperature, and one thing to be careful about
A cool or lukewarm rinse over the lower legs is comfortable and unremarkable. Very hot baths tend to make swollen legs feel worse rather than better, because heat encourages blood vessels to dilate.
If you have reduced sensation in your feet for any reason, test water temperature with your hand or elbow rather than your feet. This is standard advice for anyone with diabetes and it exists because burns of this kind are both common and avoidable.
Then sleep, properly
The rest is ordinary night shift advice and it is boring because it works. Dark room, cool room, phone somewhere else, and a consistent pattern where the rota allows one.
None of this is medical advice, and persistent swelling, pain in one leg, or legs that are still heavy after a full sleep are worth mentioning to a GP rather than absorbing as part of the job.
Rachel Donovan Rachel writes about comfort products for people who spend their working day standing. She has spent years on shop floors and in warehouses, and she tests everything she writes about in ordinary shifts rather than in a lab. More from Rachel Donovan
