Night-shift workers can have trouble concentrating and staying awake, reports The Associated Press.

According to Dr. Charles Czeisler, chief of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, studies show that 30 percent to 50 percent of night-shift workers report falling asleep at least once a week while on the job.

“Government officials haven’t recognized that people routinely fall asleep at night when they’re doing shift work,” he said.

Dr. William Fishbein, a neuroscientist at the City University of New York, added that when people work odd shifts “it mucks up their biological rhythms.”

The wake-sleep cycle is synchronized with hormones, which dictates the brain when it’s supposed to be asleep that affects how people function. People who change shifts every few days are going to have problems related to memory and learning.

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