Welcome to A Healthy Shift | The Shift Work Podcast, the podcast helping shift workers thrive while changing how organisations think about people working in 24/7 environments.
Hosted by Roger Sutherland, Australia's Night Shift & Sleep Specialist, this is where evidence meets lived experience.
After more than 40 years of working rotating shifts with Victoria Police, followed by years studying nutrition, circadian biology, chrononutrition, sleep, human performance and women's health, Roger is on a mission to challenge the belief that fatigue, poor sleep, burnout and declining health are simply part of working shifts.
Because they don't have to be.
Whether you're a nurse, paramedic, police officer, firefighter, doctor, aged care worker, manufacturing employee, FIFO worker, miner, pilot, flight attendant, truck driver, dispatcher, or anyone working outside the traditional 9-to-5, this podcast will give you practical, evidence-based strategies to help you sleep better, improve your energy, optimise your health and perform at your best.
If you're a leader, manager, People & Culture professional, WHS specialist, or responsible for leading a 24/7 workforce, you'll discover a different way of thinking about shift work—one that focuses on building shift work capability from within through education, leadership and practical systems that create healthier people, stronger teams and higher-performing organisations.
Each episode explores topics including:
• Shift work • Night shift • Sleep after night shift • Circadian rhythm • Fatigue management • Shift worker health • Nutrition for shift workers • Chrononutrition • Recovery and resilience • Women's health and shift work • Leadership in 24/7 organisations • Human performance • Workplace wellbeing • Fatigue risk management • Building healthier, safer and higher-performing workplaces
This isn't another podcast offering generic health tips.
It's a podcast about changing the future of shift work.
Because healthier people create stronger teams.
Stronger teams build better organisations.
And it all starts by understanding how to work with biology, not against it.
Struggling to catch those elusive Z's between night shifts? As a former law enforcement officer with a keen interest in nutrition, I, Roger Sutherland, have weathered the same storm and emerged with strategies to help you not just cope, but thrive. This episode is a treasure trove of insights into the complex dance of sleep, work, and well-being for shift workers. I'll share why the common advice to sleep right after a night shift may not be your golden ticket to dreamland. We'll unravel the tangled web of disrupted social lives and reversed activity patterns, shedding light on how to respect our diurnal nature while navigating a nocturnal job.
Say goodbye to the trial-and-error approach to managing sleep on night shifts. Here, we confront the tricky relationship between sleep medications and our natural sleep cycles, emphasizing why natural slumber is paramount for our body's repair and detoxification processes. I'll guide you through the cautious use of sleep aids such as melatonin and offer alternative strategies like strategic napping to maintain alignment with our circadian rhythms. This episode is about building resilience and finding balance, with practical, evidence-based steps for enhancing energy, nutrition, and mental health amidst the unique challenges of shift work. So tune in, join the conversation, and let's together turn night shifts from a daunting endeavor into a mastered art.
Roger Sutherland is Australia's Night Shift & Sleep Specialist and the founder of A Healthy Shift.
After more than 40 years working rotating shifts with Victoria Police, Roger now helps organisations reduce fatigue risk, improve staff wellbeing and build healthier, safer and higher-performing 24/7 workplaces through evidence-based education, circadian biology and the Shift Work Champions™ Framework.
Disclaimer: Roger Sutherland is not a doctor or a medical professional. Always consult a physician before implementing any strategies mentioned in this podcast. Use of this information is strictly at your own risk. Roger Sutherland will not assume any liability for direct or indirect losses or damages that may result from the use of the information contained in this podcast, including but not limited to economic loss, injury, illness, or death.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of A Healthy Shift the podcast , our podcast , your podcast , the podcast where I give evidence-based strategies to help you in the rigorous life of shift work . Now , today , I know it's been a while since I've recorded a podcast , but I'm back , and I'm back with vengeance . Today I've got a topic that I really , really want to talk about . I'm changing my thinking around things and I'm just going to broad stroke it so that you can better understand the sleeps between night shift . 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 rigours 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 . It gives me a great pleasure to welcome you and thank you for listening to a Healthy Shift podcast . In this podcast , we dive deep into evidence-based strategies for thriving in shift work environments . I'm your host , roger Sutherland , and today I would just like to talk about that elusive sleep between your night shifts . But before we do , I just want to talk about one of the main reasons why I've been pretty quiet at the moment when it comes to the podcast . I'm actually doing a lot of reading and a lot of research , because there is an awful lot of research that is actually evolving at the moment for us in our shift working environments and for me to be able to give you evidence-based strategies , I need to be able to give you evidence-based strategies . I need to be able to stay on top of that , and what I'm doing is I'm just quietly working away in the background here and I'm learning as much as I can to bring you the absolute latest . Now , today is not about that . What today is is I want to talk about that elusive sleep that occurs between nights , why it occurs , why we have trouble with it , and I I want to talk about that elusive sleep that occurs between nights , why it occurs , why we have trouble with it , and I just want to talk about some client anecdotes , and also we will talk about different topics along not extending your night shift , going into the night shift and coming out of it , and the one thing that's really important is that sleep , anxiety medications and sleeps between night shift , and I'm even going to discuss melatonin as well . So let's get on with it Now .
Speaker 1
The first thing that I want to actually point out to you is these tips obviously depend on what your shift rotation is . All right , now I know that's very broad stroke , but some people do one nights . Now , when I talk about nights , I am literally talking about the people that are working that 7 pm to 7 am , that 10 pm to 6 am , 11 pm to 7 am . You get the idea . I'm talking about what we would call a legitimate night shift . All right , so you're doing that .
Speaker 1
Now some people in their rotations only do one night of night shift . Bless them , lucky people and a lot of nurses do this . They will just do like an odd night of night shift . Now some people in their rotations will do two nights , so they might do two days , two nights , and then they have four days off . Some people end up doing two nights , so they might do two days , two nights , and then they have four days off . Some people end up doing three nights , and then some of them are actually out there , like I did and did seven nights of night shift in a row . Admittedly , they're seven nights of eight hours . So what's the best thing to go about it ? What's the best way to go about doing this ? And I've changed my thinking around this sleep between nights . And the reason why I've changed my thinking around it is when I thought about it on my own reflection , I've realized that this is actually what I've always done and I've sort of preached along the lines of getting home , eating , going to bed , sleeping as long as you can , and then getting up and going to work .
Speaker 1
But if you think about it in life , when a nine to five goes to work , they work , they come home , that's when they socialize , then they go to bed , then they get up , go to work , socialize , go to bed . But what do we do as a night shift worker ? We actually sleep , and then we get up , we socialize and then we go to work , and then we come home , we sleep . Everything's reversed . So by the time we get to work , we're actually exhausted , we're tired because we've already been socializing for that period of time beforehand . And also , we come home from work and we sleep while we're still wired , whereas our nine-to-fivers are people who are coming home and relaxing in the evening before they go to bed . Have a think about that , because it is a big impact . Now I'm not telling you to come home from night shift and stay awake , but some people I know do do that . They come home from work , they stay awake and then what they do is they go to sleep later in the afternoon and sleep right up until they go back to work , get up , shower , go to work , and that works for them . But the main thing that I want to talk about today is I want to talk about more the people who do from one to three nights and what the best thing to do is between those nights , or going into and coming out of it . All right .
Speaker 1
So the first point that I have to make and this is super important is you must remember that you are not a nocturnal creature and you never will be a nocturnal creature . Even people who do regular or only nights are never , ever , ever going to be a nocturnal creature . We are human beings and we are diurnal , and that's what we must work to . So the way that we optimize our shift working life is literally to work in line with the natural daylight and the natural night . Now , while we are doing shift work . Obviously we are out of sync with what our eyes are seeing , which gives us social jet lag . Our circadian rhythm literally desynchronizes , which causes us problems , right ? So we have to just remember that even those people who were on permanent nights , they are still exposing themselves to daylight during the days , on their days off . Right , think about it . You go shopping , you're going to go to the letterbox , you're going to put the bins out , you've got to go out and mow the lawn , you're making appointments . So you will never , ever be the nocturnal creature that you strive to be , and that light simply resets you to a diurnal creature . And if you are trying to live as a nocturnal , you are causing your body biological damage in a massive way , and we don't want to be creating those problems .
Speaker 1
So let me just come to the first point , and that is my client struggles . A lot of my clients come to me . The first thing they come to me is the weight that they've gained working shift work , and that's easily explained away with food timing , and I can help people with that , with food timing , and I can help people with that . But the other thing that we have big struggles with is that sleep between the nights and I've got clients that are really , really struggling with . They go to bed and then they wake up after a short time , toss and turn , get up , go to the bathroom , go back to bed , try and sleep . Can't sleep , doze off for half an hour , wake up and then they fight it and they end up tossing and turning and then have an awful sleep . Just shelve that for a minute , and I want to explain what is actually going on there and why this happens .
Speaker 1
Now , the reason why this actually occurs is because we are , as I said before , diurnal creatures . We are designed to be awake during the day and asleep at night . Now , the fact that we've been awake all night doesn't automatically mean that we're going to sleep during the day . Of course , we come home from work and we are dead set , absolutely exhausted , so of course we're going to sleep , because anybody that's been awake for nearly 24 hours or has been awake for 16 hours that sleep pressure builds and of course you are going to want to sleep . So you crash out , but then you only wake . You sleep for a short period of time and then you wake up .
Speaker 1
It's not uncommon for a lot of people on night shift to wake up between 10 and midday and that can be a problem to them . It's a real issue because they want to get all this sleep and they can't sleep . Shelve that one as well . One of the biggest problems that I see with a lot of shift workers is that when they're going into night shift or they're coming out of their night shift , what they tend to do is stay up late the night before they go into night shift to prepare them to go into that night . This is biological suicide .
Speaker 1
What you are actually doing is you are adding a further circadian disruption into your day-night cycle . Do not do this . The best thing that you can actually do going into your night shift is to get up early that day , get on with the day , get your light , your movement , stay in sync with what a normal diurnal creature would do . Continue on with that day . Get your exercise , like gym or swim or move , walk , run , do whatever you do and then at some stage in the afternoon , put your head down for an hour and a half . Even if you lie there with your eyes closed , with your face mask on or your eye mask on , you can still zone out and get that deep rest non-sleep for a period of time which is going to really help you overnight . Remember , we don't want to be awake overnight and we do not want to be sleeping during the day .
Speaker 1
The next thing is when we come out of our night shift . When we come out of the night shift , a lot of people will sleep as long as they can wake up , and then they're waking up in the mid-afternoon and then what they do is they are continuing on in this night cycle that they're adjusting to and adding another circadian disruption . When you get home after your last night or night shift , all you want to do is have yourself three or four and a half hours sleep . We sleep in 90-minute cycles . So come home , set your alarm for three hours or set your alarm for four and a half hours sleep . We sleep in 90 minute cycles . So come home , set your alarm for three hours or set your alarm for four and a half .
Speaker 1
If you wake up between those cycles , what actually happens is that is when you get that sleep inertia and why you feel so ordinary and the brain fog and you just can't function . It's natural for us to stir between each sleep cycle every 90 minutes . So if you set an alarm and you wake up , get up , open your blinds , strip your bed , change your sheets and actually get on with your day , make your coffee , go and sit outside , get that light . What you will do is re-sync back up again with your normal diurnal cycle , which is your natural circadian rhythm , and this will help you to come out of the night shift very quickly . Keep that in mind as well .
Speaker 1
Now , the one thing that's really important to understand also about that sleep between nights and also normal sleep is that we get sleep anxiety . Now . Sleep anxiety is a thing . So let's remove that sleep anxiety , and that's what the purpose of this podcast is today just to change your mindset and I'll get to the point that I'm going to make here and help you with a mindset , because I'm big , very big on changing your mindset , change your life . So what we want to do is we've got to get rid of this sleep anxiety .
Speaker 1
How many of you go to bed and think , oh my God , if I'm going to sleep , or I've taken this melatonin and I'm not going to sleep , or I've done everything right , am I going to go to sleep ? Or how come I'm thinking about that ? Or what am I doing here ? This is a problem . This creates the anxiety . You're not naturally winding down and letting your body to sleep . Remember , in the famous words of Tom Coleman if you create the environment , your body will take care of the rest . We are still sleeping against our natural circadian rhythm , but we can still wind down and relax and get ourselves ready for sleep . So we've got to get rid of it , because what happens with a lot of people that end up with sleep anxiety and they can't sleep ? What do they turn to next ?
Speaker 1
Medications . Now I want to be quite clear with people with medications Anyone that takes medication to go to sleep when they're on night shift , you're not sleeping .
Anyone that uses sleep medications to sleep , you are not sleeping . Doctors will prescribe this as a solution for you , but the evidence is very clear on what's been researched and that is that your body is unconscious and it doesn't go through the natural 90-minute cycles of sleep . And we need to go through all of those 90-minute cycles of sleep . This is when our brain detoxes , this is when our human growth hormone is released and lean muscle grows . This is when everything our body gets to cleanse , our body rests , our body restores , our body repairs .
Speaker 1
When you are taking medications and you're sleeping , that's not happening . So when Karen comes to work on your night shift crew and she says , oh , I got nine hours today because I took a rest of it or I took whatever I took , she hasn't even been asleep . She's been asleep , she's been unconscious and that's why she's half groggy . Because you don't sleep . You're not getting that good , solid , restorative sleep that your body needs to go into night shift . You're also forcing your body to be unconscious at a time when your circadian rhythm wants you to be awake as well .
Speaker 1
Medications absolute last resort . A doctor should not be prescribing you with sleeping tablets . There are medications to help people with shift work sleep disorder , and it's not sleep medications , it's literally to just help you to be more alert during the nighttime if that's what you've got and to also rest more during the daytime when you need to sleep . I can't recall what the names of the medications are at this point , but they are actually there and they are specific for shift work sleep disorder . Poor research , rog . I better go and have another look at that one .
Speaker 1
Anyway , now the other thing that I do want to talk about , because I don't throw melatonin in with medications and sleep . Now melatonin is another one . Melatonin is shown to be very efficient for people to get themselves back in sync with their circadian rhythm and to help them to sleep . Melatonin is a hormone . It is not a medication , so it's highly encouraged that people do use melatonin if they do struggle to go to sleep . I need you to remember this .
Speaker 1
Melatonin is only a precursor to sleep and helps you to go to sleep . It's not something that holds you asleep . Melatonin puts you to sleep , so more is not best . We don't need to go and try and find 10 or 15 milligram melatonin . All you need is half a gram or one gram of melatonin , which will put you off to sleep . That's all you need .
Speaker 1
I do recommend melatonin for shift workers that are going into a day sleep coming out of night shift . So if you're coming out of night shift , you can use melatonin for that . Obviously , we prefer that natural sleep , but if you need support or you need help with it , melatonin . But I want to put a disclaimer on this as well . One thing that's really important around melatonin very important to understand is research shows that the efficacy of melatonin that we buy online is extremely poor , and what we need to be careful of is that some of it's got too much even out of the one bottle . The ranges of content of melatonin in each tablet can be outrageous , so the best thing to do is to speak to your doctor and get prescribed melatonin so that you are getting a pharmaceutical grade melatonin that is tested and you can actually use that , and I highly support people using melatonin to get that sleep between . Once again , it's not medical advice . It is something that I would suggest that you speak to your doctor about .
Speaker 1
So what about if we were to remove the anxiety and the stress of this sleep ? So you come home and you're exhausted and then you go to sleep , but you're only asleep for about three hours and then you wake up and you start cussing . What about if we called that a nap and then we got up and then we just got on with the day and then we had another nap later on before we went to work ? Now , I've always done this and I think this is what got me through and got me through shift work really , really well for nearly four decades . If we come home without thinking I need to sleep eight hours and waking up after three hours , and we wake up after three hours and think , okay , I've released sleep eight hours . I'm waking up after three hours . And we wake up after three hours and think , okay , I've released the sleep pressure , I'm clearly not hungry . So what I need to do , I'm not hungry , I'm not tired , I'm just going to get up and get on with the day .
Speaker 1
What about if we just got up , got our water , got our caffeine , took ourselves out for a walk in the light or sat outside ? We did that and we continued on with our day . What about if we just did that ? And then we then went back to bed for just 30 minutes or a 90 minute deep rest , non-sleep , or even a 90 minute nap later on to get us through the night ? The reason why I've changed my thinking around this is quite strong , because that causes our circadian rhythm a synchronization . So we struggle to get through the night , obviously , but what we can do is because of that nap , we release the sleep pressure in the evening so that we can actually work through the night . We've also released the sleep pressure in the morning when we've napped or slept . We don't call it a sleep , we're going to call it a nap .
Speaker 1
So what about if we look at this cycle ? So you've worked overnight , this is your one night , a night shift , and you're going to do two . You come home , you've been up early beforehand , you've done your gym , you've done your walk , you've done everything you needed to , you've shopped , you've meal prepared , you've had your nap . You come out of the night shift and then what you do is you go home , you eat , buckle up , grab your teddy bear , climb into bed and you go to sleep . And you only sleep for three hours . But if you change your mindset and make your mindset okay I've had my nap , I'm now no longer tired and you get up , get your light , have your meal at lunchtime , have your meal at dinnertime , go back to bed and have yourself a 30 minute or 90 minute nap later on in the evening . And what you've done is you've exposed yourself to light during the day , which is what we want .
Speaker 1
We want to keep in that diurnal rotation for our circadian rhythm . Then we go to work and , albeit that we might struggle , we come home and we then get another three hour nap when we come out of the night shift and then we are all of a sudden back in sync with our normal circadian rhythm , ready to go back to bed that night for the overnight sleep . I don't know if that made sense , but what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to say that we don't want to go into a nocturnal environment . Most people are only doing one , two or three nights a night shift and it's a long way less than ideal of phase shifting into it and phase shifting out of that night shift . Why not just get in , get that first night done , have a nap , get out in the day , have a nap , do the night , have a nap , do the day , have a nap , do the night and then come out of it very quickly .
Speaker 1
What we've got to do , and the most important way to thrive , instead of really just struggling from one shift to the next , is to stay in sync with our circadian rhythm , and I honestly believe that this is a way that we can do it by changing it from wanting it to be asleep to changing it to a nap when I come out and a nap before I go back into night shift , and just using it just to release the sleep pressure , instead of trying to sleep for ridiculous amounts of time during the day when we're actually not sleeping . Have a think about that and see if you think that that is something that might take the pressure off you from getting frustrated because you're not getting six or eight hours sleep between your nights . Now , if you're one of these people that naturally gets eight hours sleep between your nights , happy days and all kudos to you , and that is ideal . But what I'm trying to do is help the people that can't sleep well , and what they do is they literally nap and then they get frustrated for hours on end , lying in bed , tossing and turning , dozing . Why not just get up , get on with the day , stay in sync with your normal diurnal and call it a diurnal circadian rhythm , call it a nap . Get on with the day , have another nap in the evening when you start getting tired again because you will , and then go into that night and just treat the nights as a couple of late nights , but get back in sync with your normal circadian rhythm . Just food for thought . Have a think about it , and if you think about it , it really , really does make sense . And during that , that's not a time when we would be using any medications or any melatonin in any way whatsoever . What we're doing is we're removing the anxiety of the fact that we can't sleep .
Speaker 1
I don't sleep between nights . My sleep is awful . Okay , let's have two naps . Let's just call it two naps and get on with it that way . And that wraps up the episode .
Speaker 1
Now , I hope that helped you , because it certainly has been a bit of a light bulb moment for me and when I think about why I thrive doing my last , probably 15 years of night shift , that would be the reason because I've always been a two nap or a two sleep person . To do it . I call it two sleeps , but it's literally probably a sleep and a nap , and maybe you can do the same and maybe it might help you to give you longevity and thrive in your shift working environment , because the last thing that you want is not to have any energy left when you get to your days off , because you are absolutely exhausted . Get in , get out of that night shift and just have naps between it . There you go , okay .
Speaker 1
So , fellow shift workers , your health and , in particular , your sleep must be a non-negotiable .
Speaker 1
It's the foundation that allows you to excel in your career and enjoy your life beyond the workplace . And remember
, this is what it's all about . This is about having more energy to do the things that you love outside of your shift working life , and by taking these evidence-based steps , you won't just be surviving , you will actually be thriving . So keep pushing forward and remember one little step at a time . If you fall forward , you already had momentum . So get up , dust yourself off and get going again . Stay committed to nourishing your body and prioritizing your well-being and , as always , please remember to be patient and kind to yourself as you navigate the challenges of shift work and prioritize your mental health and well-being .
Speaker 1
I'll catch you on the next one . Thank you for listening . If you enjoyed 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 .
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