New research suggests that shift workers have a higher chance of suffering a heart attack or stroke.

A team of researchers from Canada and Norway analysed 34 previous studies in the British Medical Journal, involving more than 2 million workers.

They found shift work is linked to a 23 per cent increased risk of heart attack, and the chances of having a stroke go up a further 5 per cent.

In all, the research found about one in 14 heart attacks and one in 40 strokes were directly related to the effects of shift work.

Dr Robert Grenfell from the Heart Foundation says shift work disrupts the body clock and can have an adverse effect on lifestyle.

"When you do shift work of course your life tends not to be as organised. In particular you would tend to have a more preponderance to unhealthy lifestyles such as not enough exercise and often the wrong choices in food," he said.

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"I certainly would say that this study has certainly given us some more evidence to consider with regards to actually the health aspects of our employment and our employment conditions."

The study defined shift work as evening or night schedules, shifts which rotate or are split. Being on-call or casual counts too.

Dr Grenfell says avoiding permanent night shifts, limiting them to a maximum of 12 hours and getting enough sleep can help people cope.

"The hypothesis is it's the disruption in the sleep cycle, so that you're not in fact actually getting the regular time of cycle and the other part of that is of course the way that it actually breaks down a regular sort of pattern in your life," he said.

Miner concerns

Nearly 1.5 million Australians, or about 16 per cent of the workforce, work in shifts.

According the Bureau of Statistics, for women, the most common industry for shift work is health care and social assistance.

For men, it is overwhelmingly the mining industry.

Kevin Harkin, the secretary of Unions Tasmania, says mining shift work has increased beyond most people's normal expectations.

"Those sorts of shifts that people are working destroy the local communities that they live in because they're forced to fly-in and fly-out," he said.

He says the health problems coming from shift-work should be taken into account.

"I was in the airport myself this week and was talking to a group of Tasmanian shift workers that were on their way to the Pilbara to work and while they said that the money was terrific, the impact on their lives was not something that they were enjoying," he said.

Shift work allows businesses and services to run all day, every day, so it is not going away any time soon.

Dr Grenfell says there are always ways to be healthier, like eating less far and salt and exercising.

"How can I fit 30 minutes of walking into my day? So do I get off at the earlier bus stop and take that extra walk? Do I in fact make sure that every day I do get some physical activity into my working day, or even at my times between sleeping and work?" he said.

Shift work has previously been linked to other health problems like an increased risk of diabetes and high blood pressure.