Shift Work

Speaker 1 0:00

Today is the 20th of August 2023 . Well , at the time we're recording this podcast and today I'm thrilled to be celebrating 39 years of 24-7 shift work in frontline law enforcement . In today's episode , I'm going to take you through six key things that I have learnt along the way from the many mistakes that I have made . Shift work can be brutal , but it doesn't have to be . Welcome to a healthy shift . My name is Roger Sutherland , certified nutritionist , veteran law enforcement officer and 24-7 shift worker for almost four decades . Through this podcast , I aim to educate shift workers , using evidence-based methods , to not only survive the rigors of shift work , but thrive . My goal is to empower shift workers to improve their health and wellbeing so they have more energy to do the things they love . Enjoy today's show and welcome to a healthy shift podcast . Welcome back to a healthy shift , where I uncover evidence-based strategies to help shift workers thrive , not just survive . I'm your host , roger Sutherland , a veteran shift worker Well , today I can actually say for 39 years and an evidence-based nutritionist , and I get great pleasure in personally inviting you to this episode of the show and thank you so much for joining in Today .

Speaker 1 1:41

In today's episode , I would just like to reminisce on my 39 years in 24-7 shift work and take you through a few things that I've learned along the way that I wish I'd known when I very , very first started out . So let's just go through them one at a time . And number one you'll love this one . I just wish I'd known myself and what I know now when I started 39 years ago . It's a pretty simple one , really , because I honestly do . I wish there was someone like me out here educating me 39 years ago when I actually very , very first started shift work , because I can tell you quite categorically and without any doubt whatsoever nothing had prepared me for the rigors and the impact of shift work , and it really did have its toll in the early days , because you can't be prepared for it and it literally does take a big piece of your life to start off with . Now , that's all well and good for a young 20-year-old Oops , I think I've just given away my age but that's all well and good for a young 20-year-old who still lives at home , mum , still cooks for , doesn't have children or wife or anything else , and pretty much had no responsibility in any way whatsoever and all I had to do was pay the insurance on the car and the car loan and that was about it . On the regio , I didn't have to really worry about too much at all . But if I had had someone like me out there to actually guide me in the strategies that I have now learned in shift work , I would have been in a completely different position going back in the very , very early days and I would have known how to do things so much better , and I'll address that later on in the podcast Number two .

Speaker 1 3:39

One thing that we really do not do enough of , and that is I wish I'd made sleep my number one priority . Really , shift workers it's just so underrated for everything that we do and how we go about it , and I know we all struggle with it , and it is extremely difficult to try and sleep against what your circadian rhythm is dictating when you are on nights or chopping and changing your shifts all the time , and it really does make such a massive difference to us . So what we need to do is we need to make our sleep our number one priority . We need to make sure that we are getting sufficient good , restorative sleep because of what that sleep actually brings to our body biologically , when we are actually getting that quality sleep . It is so important . It gives our body a chance to repair . It also gives it a chance to flush the toxins out of the body . It really does make such an enormous difference to us when we get good sleep , and those that don't get good sleep always end up suffering quite severely with not only health issues but also mental health issues as well , which causes us a really big , massive problem . Alright , so that's sleep . It's not a time when you are on night shift to be staying up to run the kids to school . I want you to have a think about that in particular , because I'll hit you really hard here . While your body is deprived of sleep , the sleep homeostatic , which is the sleep pressure , is building and building , and building all the time , and you are staying awake to run your precious children to school , driving a motor vehicle on a trip that you do with monotonous regularity , that you do with ease and you don't have to think about , and that is the time that your body will literally micro nap and off the road you go . And I think it's something that we really do need to have a look at . And night shift is not the time for us to be getting our car serviced or making appointments or doing things like that as well . We need to make our sleep a priority . I think I've made the point there . But sleep number one , priority Number three the one thing that I do wish I'd known in the early days and , in fairness , there wasn't the research around about it as there is now , but I do wish I'd known that we do not just flip our meals when we're on night shift . I'll say that again we do not flip our meals on night shift .

Speaker 1 6:20

Circadian eating is something that's really really important for us as shift workers . A lot of the research that's been done on shift workers has been done retrospectively or without the education that we're now pumping out there . People like myself are pumping out there . For people like you to work with your circadian rhythm Now it's really super important that we are actually getting majority of our nutrients in during the biological day and the safest bet is to be eating at breakfast , lunch and dinner time as much as we possibly can . And that overnight fast , that circadian fast overnight , which is going to become more and more and more prevalent .

Speaker 1 7:06

It's not the time to be sitting down and having a night shift barbecue . It's not the time to be sitting there and eating cakes and chocolates and chips . It is not the time for us to be driving through the fast food agencies and picking up highly palatable , high fat carbohydrates . It's just not the time to be doing this because this is causing us massive metabolic issues , because it is now well and truly , quite clearly and quite categorically known that we do not metabolize food as efficiently overnight as we do during the day , with us being so insulin resistant as we are overnight . As a natural thing for our body . It means that what we are reading literally has nowhere to go to be burnt . We rely on this insulin to take the glucose into our muscle to be burnt .

Speaker 1 8:04

But if we're sedentary or we are more sedentary on night shift and we are more sedentary all around because we're so fatigued and so tired that we've just got no energy or no go to do anything at all this does cause us massive problems that it just leaves all of that glucose and those processed nutrients in our system to run around and get parked as energy because we haven't burnt it and that's body fat and that is a massive problem for us . So we don't flip our meals . We literally go through that circadian fast and if you want advice as to the best way to go about that , I Asked you to go to my website , which is a healthy shift comm , and if you scroll down the main page there , you will see that I actually have a free resource on the circadian fast or the night shift fast , and what's the best way to optimize going about it , and that book will talk to you about the why we do this , why it's important that we do this and , particularly as females , why it's important for us to do this , and it will also set you up with what to eat and at what times in a really good way . So just whiz by the website . It's free , it's a free resource that I make available and you can download that and have a read of it and see if how you can improve your own circadian fast .

Speaker 1 9:33

All right , the other thing that I really wish that I'd understood . Number four is I wish I understood the importance of regular movement and resistance training . I Wanted to make a clear point in relation to this was because I was certainly one of the people that would finish night shift at six or seven o'clock in the morning and go straight to the gym to try and do a hit class and there's no benefit in this in any way whatsoever for us . We need to go straight home and prioritize sleep , which was my number one point , right I really ? On number two point , I really wish that I'd made sleep a priority , because we stimulate our central nervous system and it doesn't afford us the opportunity to sleep properly . Not only that , but we are exposing ourselves To further light , which is going to cause us more problems to our sleep cycle , and we don't want to be doing that . We need to be getting out of work on night shift and going straight home and going straight to bed . That's the first point that I make .

Speaker 1 10:35

The second point that I make in relation to the importance of regular movement and resistance training is I Would take the pressure off myself to exercise for fat loss , because Exercise really isn't the key where you start for fat loss . The key where you start for fat loss is in your nutrition intake , because what we actually burn in exercise really is minuscule compared to what we think that we actually burn . We don't , and you can't be looking at your Apple Watch or looking at your garment to work out how many calories you've actually burnt , because it's proven time and time again in research , it's just literally not accurate at all . All right , so what we need to be doing is just focusing on just getting regular movement and , in all honesty , I've got two bank for buck exercises that I have spoken about on the podcast before . But just getting regular movement , just getting yourself out earlier in the day and taking yourself for a walk around the block in the light , is so underrated for our health . As a shift worker , getting out there in the light and getting movement are two of the main zeta gibbers for our body , which is the time queues to tell our circadian rhythm where it's at in time and space .

Speaker 1 11:54

Now , I'm not downplaying resistance training , but resistance training is incredibly important for us as well , for what it brings for us with the insulin sensitivity , to preserve lean muscle and also to maintain lean muscle . You don't want to be asking people to help you to carry your shopping in or to help you to do things when you could be doing that yourself . You want to own it . You want to be able to pull all the shopping bags out of the car and carry the whole lot in at once . You need to be able to flip the mattress on your bed or move the furniture . You want to be able to do all of those things . So resistance training is incredibly important for us , in particular , as shift workers as well , because we are generally in jobs where we are lifting , moving people , and we need to be strengthening those muscles and we need to be maintaining that , because we don't want to be ending up with things like osteoporosis , which is a problem with our bones as we age . And the other thing is we don't want to end up with sarcopenia as well , because sarcopenia is the wastage of the muscle as we age because we haven't told our body that we actually need it . So resistance training is enormously beneficial for

Keys to Thriving in Shift Work

Speaker 1 13:06

that .

Speaker 1 13:06

I've also discussed the importance of list training , which is the training that we do coming out of night shift , because list training is a really , really good exercise for us to do , which is exercising at 65% of our maximum heart rate , which burns those extra triglycerides out of our bloodstream , and these triglycerides are what elevates our cholesterol , which leads to cardiovascular disease , heart attack and stroke and obesity , type 2 diabetes . We need to be very , very careful and burning those out is a simple way , with which is a simple exercise , to exercise our heart and also to burn those out , where we just use the fat as fuel , is to work at 65% of your maximum heart rate , and I've done posts and there's also another podcast in relation to this as well . Number five I wish I'd known how to prepare simple meals to fuel my body through 24-7 shift work . I honestly wish that I'd known to take the pressure off myself for dieting . It's not about getting all these great big containers of food across the kitchen bench with meal preps and having meal preps that are laid out for us all the time that we can just pull out and go look at me , coach , look how good I've been , because that's not what you want to see . I just wish I'd understood that I could make simple stews , casseroles . I could have been making soups , highly nutritious , simple things , by buying cooked chickens and wraps and pre-prep salads and putting those together and actually taking those to work as a simple meal that I could have . I didn't understand this and I used to make all sorts of different foods or put pressure on myself and in fact , if I was totally honest , majority of the time I'd be driving through the fast food outlet and doing it , and that is where a lot of the problems come from in the early days . So I really wish I'd known about those Number six .

Speaker 1 16:05

I wish I'd had understood the importance of a work-life balance and the right to disconnect from work . Now , in the early days we didn't have mobile phones and I know it's a good story , grandpa , I get that but we didn't have the mobile phones and we really were very disconnected from work , which was good . But now we find that we're checking our emails from work on our phones for those agencies that actually do that . We're talking to our colleagues from work all the time . We're on social media platforms like Facebook and in our union groups and agency groups and looking at things and it really does agitate us and aggravate us and we don't realise the impact that , how that's actually going into our head all the time . I know , going back to one of my jobs within where I was working at the time , we used to be on the phone all the time talking to each other all the time negative , negative , negative , and it really does cause us so many problems .

Speaker 1 17:10

And disconnecting from that and focusing on where we can water the grass , where we are actually standing , does make a huge difference . Sorry , just had to have a cough yeah , so I think this is one of the most important things that we really do , and that's disconnect from work and disconnect from colleagues , and we need to be looking at what actually does work for us as far as who is valuating into our lives , and we need to literally untie the boats and let those people go if they're not valuating , because this is a real problem . And I also think that we need to focus on our home life and focus on hobbies and focus on those activities away from work to take the stress away , because if you are continually talking to people from work , continually on these union web pages or where everyone's grizzling and moaning the point that I'll make in relation to this the ones that are out there and succeeding and getting on with the job and doing it really well , aren't on those pages . They really are not . So if you want to be one of those people that's succeeding and doing really well , just unfollow the pages and just get on with your life and do what you're doing and stop worrying about what other people are doing or trying to compete with them , because everybody's got their own story going on in the background and we don't know exactly what it is . All right , that's the six main points , and I'm sure there is hundreds of others that I could literally go over . But I know all of these things now because I have travelled that journey and I have made those mistakes .

Speaker 1 18:52

I was absolutely one of the people that was doing the major cook up in the middle of the night shift in the early days , that we were all bringing food in and sitting down and eating at three o'clock in the morning and that was it All . We'd be eating donuts or all sorts of things , and it is a massive problem for us and what we do . But we do now know that this is causing massive metabolic damage to us and we need to make sure that we're on top of this and not causing ourselves further grief , particularly as a shift worker . I know all these things now and I also understand exactly what it is like for you . All right , I live it . I've not just researched it , although I do do a lot of that now too , and I mean a lot , and I don't just live with someone that does it . But , in fairness , my partner used to be a shift worker as well , so I do do that . I've also got a son that's a shift worker . I've got a daughter and son-in-law that a shift worker's as well , so I'm surrounded by it and I absolutely get it .

Speaker 1 19:56

So what advice would I give to myself If I was literally starting out or I was early in my shift working life or really struggling with shift work and what I would do is I would hire me . I would hire someone who gets it , someone who's lifted , someone who has the knowledge to help you to set yourself up in your shift working life forever . Now I know you can ask Jenny at the office or you can ask Karen , but what works for them may not work for others . But a coach like myself , with a full , holistic approach that will assess your personal life , your work life and your social life and manufacture a way of you working in with it and taking the pressure off you is , without doubt , the best way to go . Get rid of all of the myths , take the pressure off , the dieting pressure .

Speaker 1 20:45

I can work with you around body image . I can work with you around disordered eating practices . I can work with you around so much because I come at you from an evidence-based nutrition perspective , but I also are very much in evidence-based circles around everything else that goes with shift work as well now because I'm becoming so well read in that area , so I can teach you . I can teach you how to thrive and not just survive while you're working shift work . I'm here to help you Now . I coach shift workers one to one and I've literally got spots open at the moment and I don't hesitate .

Speaker 1 21:24

If you're looking for shift work help , then I can do a one-off consult for you . I have that available . Or you can do one-to-one coaching with me , which will go for a period of a minimum of 12 weeks and then ongoing if that's what you wish to do , where I can work with you on your home life , your social life and also your work life and try and find a really good way with what the evidence tells us around . The best way to go about it is Because what works for you may not work for another client , so I can work with you in relation to that . Ok , there's testimonies from shift workers that I've worked with before on my website and I encourage you to go and have a look at those testimonies to see the shift workers that I have actually worked with and the results that we've actually obtained , and I appreciate each and every one of the clients that I've actually had for what I'm learning from them to bring to you , alright , and that's it . That's where I'm at today .

Speaker 1 22:26

So what I do want to say as well is , for those of you that are listening , that are trying to catch me out , or the ones that are trying to trip me over give it your best shot , because I've been doing this for 39 years and you won't get me . I'm doing this now to make a difference to people and I'm doing my utmost best to give at a time when I should be retiring , to actually give as much as I can possibly give back to the shift working community , which is out there really struggling at the moment , and I'm keeping those people at work and thriving , not just surviving . So good luck to you , alright . Thank you for joining me on this insightful journey . If you found today's episode helpful , please don't forget to follow so that you are notified of any new episodes as they drop , and please share these podcasts with your fellow shift workers and tag me in it . If you're out walking , tag me in it .

Speaker 1 23:30

I love to see that it gives me the biggest smile . And keep those questions coming in as well , and remember you've got the power to be an absolute shift working champion . And as always , as I say at the end of every episode , please remember to be patient and be kind to yourself as you navigate the challenges of shift work and prioritise your mental health and well-being . And , as always , thank you for tuning into a healthy shift . Keep moving forward one step at a time , one percent at a time , and make yourself a healthy shift . Thank you for listening . If you enjoyed this episode , be sure to subscribe so you get notified whenever a new episode is released . It would also be ever so helpful if you could leave a rating and review on the app you're currently listening on . If you want to know more about me or work with me , you can go to a healthy shiftcom . I'll catch you on the next one .