Speaker 1: 1:11

A study recently came out that showed that even if they sleep according to their preference, do the same thing every day, they're not out of sync. They still do worse than morning. People Like bedtimes after 1am are just associated with worse results.

Speaker 2: 1:30

Shift work can be brutal, but it doesn't have to be. Welcome to a healthy shift. 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.

Speaker 2: 2:02

Enjoy today's show and welcome back to another episode of a Healthy Shift podcast. Today I bring back my friend and I call her a friend because we do communicate a lot and she's someone who educates me in so many areas around the content that I put out on my social media in relation to circadian science and light. It's really, really important that we understand this. But Olivia's got an exciting project. Things have happened to Olivia in the last 12 months which she's going to talk about in this podcast. She will talk to you about what's actually occurred to her, and she's also going to talk about something that is very exciting and I mean very exciting for us, the consumer, in relation to what she is doing at the moment what's actually happening at the end of this month. So, without much further ado, let's introduce Dr Olivia Walsh. How are you, olivia?

Speaker 1: 2:59

I am so thrilled to be here.

Speaker 2: 3:01

Oh, not as thrilled as I am, I know I say that about every single guest I have but there's a very, very exciting reason why I wanted to speak to you today. Now, for those that are unaware and I've talked about this in my introduction but Dr Walsh is actually the founder of ArcaScope, and ArcaScope is the company which has built ArcaShift for us, which we've been getting live shift workers to work in this app, and you're getting all the data at your end, which is pretty exciting. Olivia, could you do us a favor, tell us just to rehash and let people know who you are and what you're doing, and can you talk a little bit about how ArcaShift is going at the moment for us?

Speaker 1: 3:43

I would love to. All right, so what's my deal? I'm a mathematician who did a postdoc research in neurology, so I span math and brains. While I was doing this research on sleep and circadian rhythms, which is my focus, I really came to realize that man shift workers need help. I have never been a shift worker. When I was in college I had some pretty crazy sleep schedules. But I have talked to now hundreds of shift workers, tons of whom, roger, you've introduced me to and that's led me to just sort of try and figure out how we can use the math and what we know about brains and the lived experiences of real shift workers to help them, which is why I founded ArcaScope and why we made the ArcaShift app.

Speaker 1: 4:27

Here's the reason ArcaShift exists. Light does different things to your body depending on what time your body thinks it is. Shift workers could be in any time zone of the world. They could be living in Detroit, michigan, but look like they've got the body clock of somebody in Istanbul or Tokyo. And if you try and use a simple rule like your bedtime to figure out what your body time is, it's not gonna work. For a shift worker it's really bad. And so we built ArcaShift to actually track people's body time so they can do recommendations that help them, as opposed to generic recommendations which could end up making them worse. So ArcaShift's the app Right now.

Speaker 1: 5:03

We are so excited to be launching a big push for making the app more fun. So we've, in talking to so many shift workers, kind of realized that a lot of them have a pretty good sense of humor. You're up in the middle of the night, you kind of have a little bit of a fatalistic attitude about it and the app we didn't want it to be bland. Like when you're really tired, you kind of want something just to tell you what to do, to talk to you like you're a real person. So expect the app to be a lot more fun in the coming weeks, to have some new features, including adding gamification, so you can try and shift your body's rhythm towards where we told you to and get points. That's what's up with the app.

Speaker 2: 5:41

I love this. Gamification is huge in science at the moment, isn't it? And what I love about this in particular, olivia, so much. If there's one thing that I've learned about shift workers in my coaching experience with them is they're pragmatic. They're not interested in all the science, they just want to know. This is the problem and this is how you solve the problem.

Speaker 2: 6:03

And adding gamification into applications and things like that today to get people to move into the direction of what we want them to do makes it fun, and I think shift workers are, as you've rightly pointed out, in the middle of the night. They're delirious, so what they're doing is they're actually looking for something a bit of fun to keep them engaged. And if we can keep them engaged in the app with a bit of gamification, I think this is extremely exciting. Now, for those that haven't actually had a play with the app, shame, shame. Now, for those that haven't actually had a play with the app, shame, shame, shame on you, because the app is honestly. We've worked quite hard to get real-time shift workers and you've been communicating with those shift workers in the background to ask them what do you want, how do you want it, and what works and what doesn't work. We want to make this the best thing ever, don't we?

Speaker 1: 6:54

We do and we want to not get complacent and stop. We want to continuously learn, which is why I love when people tell us we're doing good. But I kind of even more love when somebody is like why are you telling me to do this? Because then that's a design problem we can fix. So feedback of all kinds we really welcome. We want to make the app work for you, no matter what kind of shift worker you are.

Speaker 2: 7:15

Yeah, fantastic. Now. We are also in a really, really exciting area of research at the moment as well, and the good thing about this is is you can change the algorithm in the background of the app to go with what science is currently telling us about. So, as much as it hurts me to have to say, it means that you have literally got a coach in your pocket telling you because, I mean, let's face it, olivia, everyone's pulling their phones out, looking at their phones every 30 seconds these days, but if you've got a push notification there that says this is when we should finish eating, this is when we should be getting light, this is when we stop caffeine hey, now's a good time to get caffeine. Now's a good time to have a nap. Napping is a shift worker superpower, without any doubt whatsoever, because the benefits of napping are huge. So I loved that you included this napping feature into the app. I think people fear naps because they sleep too long. We've got science that backs us into the app now. It says oh, you're feeling a bit tired? What about a nap? How about you have a nap between this time and for this long? And it will really help you so fantastic.

Speaker 2: 8:23

Now you've been a researcher. You've been a scientist for a long time and a mathematician, which I find interesting because you understand all of these algorithms of circadian science and things like that, and as I've learned more and more about what researchers are doing, there's a real mathematical science behind what everything does, which is why you've made a natural transition into this area. Now, it's one thing to research, it isn't it? It's one thing to understand it. It's another thing to actually live it. Tell us what's actually happened to you in the last 12 months, olivia, that a lot of people will probably be unaware of since the last podcast.

Speaker 1: 8:57

So seven months ago I had my very first kid.

Speaker 2: 9:01

You've had your first child and you've got a little boy. Talk to us all about your little prince.

Speaker 1: 9:07

His name is Kai. He's about this big Audio listeners. I gesture to about 20 inches. He's so cute and thank the heavens he's an amazing sleeper, but then also maybe thanks science.

Speaker 2: 9:21

Ah, now let's talk about exactly that, because how many mothers do we hear say oh, my child's a terrible sleeper, oh, my child is awful at this, oh, my child keeps waking up in the middle of the night? Now you've dropped a little breadcrumb in there that I'm going to really cash up on. Thanks to science, your son is a really really good sleeper. What have you implemented to help with that? Understanding the whole biological science in the background?

Speaker 1: 9:50

I'm going to start with an analogy that I also came up with in the last year, and it's a little bit of a like, but I'm going to tie it back into the baby, I promise. Okay, so think of your brain like a water cooler, and it fills up with gunk when you're awake, and then you can drain it when you're asleep. Sleep is the act of draining it, so you don't have to sleep, you can keep yourself up with caffeine and like loud noises, like kind of. The same way, you don't have to drain a water cooler. It might get really close to full, but you can keep it close. But eventually, though, you want to drain that water cooler, so you can push the button and the water cooler gets drained, and that's how your brain fills up with the water, the byproducts of being awake, and then drains when you're asleep. Okay, so if you've ever been at a barbecue and you're trying to get liquid out of a water cooler and it's getting kind of low, you've maybe tilted it towards yourself to get a little bit more out of it. Right, you're draining, you want a nice long, uninterrupted pour, so you tilt it towards you and you keep the flow going uninterrupted pour, so you tilt it towards you and you keep the flow going. In this analogy, your brain filling up with stuff. That's the sleep hunger.

Speaker 1: 11:00

In the two process model of sleep, the water cooler tilting towards you is your circadian clock. And so, if you're not a shift worker, what your sleep looks like is you fill up during the day, you're draining the water, and then your circadian clock tilts your water cooler towards you and that's why you're able to sleep eight hours continuously, so you don't wake up in the middle of the night. It's tilting towards you. The pour is not interrupted.

Speaker 1: 11:29

If your circadian clock is disrupted, though, like you're a shift worker, here's things that can happen. You can be emptying the tank and then drop below the top because you're not tilted enough, and then you wake up after a few hours, or you could just not be able to fall asleep when you want. Usually, shift workers don't have that problem because they're so tired, but say you're trying to shift your sleep a little bit earlier after having been on a bunch of off days. Your water cooler is actively tilted away from you in those cases often, and so you're like why can't I sleep? I'm tired, I've got water in the water cooler, but it's because it's below the tap, because of the tilt. All right, thanks for coming with me on this big long journey. You can have a more interrupted sleep if you have more of a tilt is the thing to take away from that If you don't want to have a bunch of wake-ups in the middle of the night.

Speaker 1: 12:17

Get a nice long tilt, the same way you would if you were trying to pour yourself a glass of water from a water cooler. So I wanted to make my baby's circadian clock have as much of a tilt as possible in the direction of sleep at night, because then he wouldn't be waking up all the time. It's like draining. He's got a little tiny water cooler and I'm trying to turn it as horizontal as possible to get a big, long, uninterrupted pour, and the way to do that is with light exposure. Obviously, like feedings matter, I wasn't going to tell him he couldn't eat ever, but I could control his light exposure, and so what I did basically from the time he was born was go outside a ton during the day and then at night make it as dark as possible.

Speaker 2: 13:05

I love this because what has been the byproduct of that Olivia for you, with Kai?

Speaker 1: 13:12

Okay, so early days he was still waking up in the night and still napping, and he still naps a lot during the day. He's only seven months old. I shifted my rhythms earlier by about two and a half hours. So he goes to sleep right now at 6.30 and wakes up at 6.30. So he sleeps straight out. It's pretty good. It wasn't immediately like that, though, and so kind of the same way that if you're trying to make a circadian change, it doesn't happen right away because your circadian clock is a little sluggish. It's like oh, is that what we're doing now? We're doing, this is the daytime, okay, so you need to give it days and days to figure out what it wants to do. And so for me, because I was in with him a lot of times in the dark periods, my rhythms just naturally shifted earlier to kind of be centered around his rhythms. I'm not going to bed at 6.30, but I am going to bed closer to 9 or 9.30, when I used to be more like 11.30 or midnight.

Speaker 2: 14:09

Let's just break that down simply for our very, very jealous mums, because what you've done is you have got his light diet exactly right. Now I'm talking a lot about this at the moment on my social media. We have to get our light diet right. Don't worry about any other diet. Once you get your light diet right, you are fine. So you need early light exposure every single day. Get up, open the blinds, get that light, get out, get that movement and also eat that food at the times of breakfast, lunch and dinner, because these are all our main Z-Gebers which are actually triggering that circadian rhythm.

Speaker 2: 14:47

Now, where I liken this to for people and anybody that's listening, that's a non-shift worker or even a shift worker is when we travel and we go from where we are in a set circadian rhythm and then we move to somewhere on the other side of the globe where our circadian rhythm is completely misaligned. How do we realign it? Now? The way we realign it, we get up early, we get light, we get movement and we eat at the times of that normal thing and, as you said, that's when our circadian clock then goes oh, okay, so this is what we're doing now. So it starts moving to that time, doesn't it? It's entraining, yeah. So we move it to that time and then it goes okay, I'm really happy with this and everyone's happy with it, because when we're on holiday, we're up and we're out and about early and we're moving around and we're looking at things, and then we get to the end of the day and we're really tired, so we have dinner and we just go to bed and of course, we're in the darkness and so the body learns.

Speaker 2: 15:46

With young Kai. I want to ask you the question from what your own research is, because I know you will have done this when do we start in training a circadian rhythm?

Speaker 1: 16:02

Yeah, I would say you can see fetal circadian rhythms. It's something that's still around even before you're born. But one of the things that hides circadian rhythms in babies is the fact that they I'm sort of speaking in like the theoretical math side of things their sleep hunger, grows so fast. You can think of it as they're new to the world and they're just like whoa, I'm learning so much. You can also think of it as they've got a really small water cooler, because their brain is little and so it fills up pretty close to the brim, pretty quickly, and they're like well, I have to nap, I have to go to sleep.

Speaker 1: 16:31

And so you imagine you've got a little tiny water cooler. It just fills up so fast and even though it's tilting back and forth so I'm going to use my phone as the example here water cooler, it's just like filling up and then at the time it reaches it has to drain. So it's doing this because of your circadian clock. It's rotating back and forth, but it's just constantly filling up so fast, way faster than adults do, that he just needs to nap around the clock. So basically, you do see circadian rhythms really early in babies, but it's hidden by the fact that they're just needing to sleep all the time because they need to drain their sleep hunger, which is why, if you can tilt extra, if you can get them a really robust circadian rhythm that helps compensate for the fact that they fill up so fast, it can help you get a long uninterrupted block of sleep during the night.

Speaker 2: 17:19

I just want to explain this simply because you know, and I know exactly what you're talking about with the water cooler here. But I just want to explain this really simply to our common shift worker. The water cooler filling up it's what we call sleep pressure. Now, from the second you wake up until the time you can't stay awake any longer, that is your sleep pressure building, and this is what Olivia is talking about with your water cooler filling up, and then what happens is when you go to sleep, it releases that sleep pressure.

Speaker 2: 17:50

That doesn't mean that you're in line with your circadian rhythm at all. What it means is that you have got to the stage where the sleep pressure has built so much like your water cooler is full to the brim and it wants to drain and it drains. Now where we have the issue here which is why, to me, olivia has explained it so beautifully is when our circadian rhythm is out of line with our sleep pressure. It drains, but it drains below the level of the tap, but we can't get all of the rest of the sleep pressure out of it, which is where our circadian rhythm comes in, and this is where getting our light right means that we actually are tilting our water cooler so that we can get every last drop out of it, so that there's no actual sleep pressure left in the water cooler.

Speaker 1: 18:40

Thank you for doing that because, like, probably 80% were like what is she talking about? And yeah, literally the act of being a shift worker is you're at the barbecue, you're trying to drain a water cooler into a cup, but instead of tilting it towards you, you're tilting it away from you. You're not getting anything out of the tap. You're like it's 10 am. You went to bed at 7 am. You've gotten three hours of sleep. You're miserable. You're so tired. You're like why can't I sleep anymore? And it's because your circadian clock is tilted away from sleep.

Speaker 2: 19:09

It's just not in the state to get you more draining of your brain Hold on and we have learned this more so probably in the last 10 years, haven't we really with our circadian rhythms? And this is why a lot of researchers will tell us that blue light exposure doesn't really impact on our sleep per se, and it doesn't really significantly, because it only really delays sleep onset by probably somewhere between four and seven minutes, which is not statistically significant. And that's because that water cooler is full. We are full of sleep pressure to fall asleep, but once that sleep pressure is gone, because our circadian rhythm is out of line, we wake up. This, shift workers, is why, when you've done six or seven nights of shift work like I used to do in the police and a lot of people that listen to this do a whole week of night shift you have shifted your circadian rhythm. Now, when you get home from work, your sleep pressure is enormous because you've been awake for a long time. So your water cooler is full, totally. But what happens is you go to sleep and it drains down very quickly down to the tap. But because it's tilted the wrong way, because we are sleeping when we shouldn't be sleeping, we wake up. And therein lies the problem with the light diet, because we're not actually designed to sleep at that time of the day because our circadian rhythm is at a completely different time to what life is telling us, which is called social jet lag. So that's that.

Speaker 2: 20:44

I hope you're enjoying the show. If you are, please don't forget to rate and review once you've finished. This helps the show's reach enormously. And have you got my free e-book the Best Way to Eat on Night Shift? Well, this is a comprehensive guide to the overnight fast, why we should fast and how to best go about it. I've even included a few recipes to help you. I've put a link to the ebook in the show notes. And are you really struggling with shift work and feel like you're just crawling from one shift to the next? Well, I've got you. If you would like to work with me, I can coach you to thrive, not just survive, while undertaking the rigours of 24-7 shift work. I also conduct in-house live health and wellbeing seminars where I will come to your workplace and deliver evidence-based information to help your wellbeing team to reduce unplanned leave and increase productivity in your workplace. I've put the links in the show notes to everything mentioned. You can find me at healthyshiftcom or on Instagram at a underscore healthy underscore shift.

Speaker 2: 21:55

Now let's get back to the show. Now you have literally trained young Kai. Sweetheart, I want you to sleep at this time, so I'm going to set it up. What you've actually done is you have zeroed out any blue light. There's no blue light in your home from 6.30 on, so you are teaching him. Well, his eye doesn't see light at all. It doesn't see the blue light in any way whatsoever. So his circadian rhythm is trained that it's 12 hours awake and it's 12 hours asleep as in that's his rhythm.

Speaker 1: 22:28

That is totally right and I'm really militant about it, in part because there's some evidence that light for kids is really pronounced. It has like a big effect on them. I mean you'd expect that because they've got fresh new eyes. They just have a big response to it and they're, we say, phase response curve. It seems like it just almost is like a block function where it's like big response to even a little bit of light. So his room has a $10 smart lamp. I got off of Amazon that I turn red at night. So if I need to go in there I just he's not seeing blue. I'm not seeing blue.

Speaker 2: 23:07

It is super dark, love this and I'm promoting these products. We've actually changed ourselves. Now, of course, once you get to my age, olivia, you're getting up in the middle of the night and having to visit the bathroom as well, and I've got a zero blue light. That is a sensor light which is in the ensuite. So when I walk in there, this zero blue light comes on and when I walk out, it goes off. Now, because my body has seen zero blue, it still thinks it's dark. End of story. Even though there's light, because there's no blue in it, it still thinks it's dark. And this is what a lot of people really, really want a lot of people to understand around light, that you can be seeing light, but if there's no blue in that light, then your body still thinks it's dark.

Speaker 1: 23:48

If it's bright feeling, then the light can get in through the rods and cones. But you're not talking about bright light, you're talking about night lights like up in the night. If it's zero blue, your brain thinks it's dark.

Speaker 2: 23:55

The problem that we make is a lot of people are going. I can't sleep. I'm a terrible sleeper and we've also learned, too, that our late chronotypes, our night owls. They've entrained themselves, but they're probably more sensitive to light, which is what we're learning now, aren't we? They're more sensitive to light. It's not so much that, oh, this is where you're at, but you're a very sensitive to light person, correct?

Speaker 1: 24:26

Here's a point in favor of that. So there's a study they did in 10 or 15 years ago where they took a bunch of people camping and they looked at their chronotypes beforehand and they were a bunch of really late people. And then they looked at them after camping and all the late people had vanished. And this is something that's not intuitive, because when we talk about being a night owl or an early person, we think of it as an immutable, intrinsic part of your personality. But in fact it's kind of like there's two wolves inside you, like which one wins? It's the one you feed. There's a night owl and an early bird inside you, and the one you feed a healthy light diet to will feed one or the other, and so you become more of a night owl if you are not only more sensitive to light but getting a bunch of light at night it'll make you later, and that's right.

Speaker 2: 26:12

And the other thing is too being a night owl is not a badge of honor, is it?

Speaker 1: 26:17

it simultaneously isn't just inherently by itself terrible. Like a lot of times, night owls, they do worse because they have to get up for society's times right, like 6am, 7am, like it's going to be 3am. For a night owl, it's going to feel like 3am to them, maybe. However, a study recently came out that showed that even if they sleep according to their preference, do the same thing every day, they're not out of sync. They still do worse than morning people Like bedtimes after 1am are just associated with worse results, and I simultaneously don't want somebody to be like I'm depressed because I'm a night owl and society's not for me. But also, if you weren't in such an artificial lighting environment, you probably wouldn't be so much of a night owl, and so it's something that you should maybe not invest your personality in quite so much.

Speaker 2: 27:07

I agree. It's environmental, isn't it? It's not biological. So because it's environmental, it's something that you can change.

Speaker 2: 27:15

I know myself when I was working, I was definitely a night owl, no doubt about it. It's probably because of the light I was exposed to. I was able to get up, do my thing in the morning, go to work in the afternoon, work in the afternoon I thrived. I felt so much better. But since I've stopped working, I've prioritized getting up early and getting to bed early. It's made such a difference to my life in so many ways.

Speaker 2: 27:38

What I meant by saying being a night owl is not a badge of honor is a lot of research shows that the outcomes for people who are night owls suffer from poor mental health, more insulin resistance, gain weight a lot easier. The contributing factors are enormous to this and it's something that we need to really look at. And this is where my mission at the moment is to work with shift working environments to start changing around the times that they're starting people and working people and things like that, to help them with that. I think it'll make a big difference long term. Now we've got some exciting news to announce for you. You're going to be using your knowledge that you've learned in your whole journey, and I'm quite sure that those that have got young children are going to benefit enormously from this. In understanding the theories, what have you done that we're about to talk about?

Speaker 1: 28:34

I wrote a book. It's called Sleep Groove and it's coming out at the end of January 2025.

Speaker 2: 28:40

It's too exciting. Now I can't begin to tell you when I accidentally picked this up. Now, you and I, we swap a lot of messages and we communicate often, but I accidentally picked this up and I went oh my God. I love the title Sleep Groove, because I always talk about getting into a groove with something and I think getting into a sleep groove particularly as we talk about 2025, because I'm sure that this book of yours is going to have an enormous aspect of getting your light diet right, which is going to be incredibly important, and explaining how people can go about that. Tell us how the book came about, olivia, and the title. I love the title Sleep Groove. I think it's fantastic.

Speaker 1: 29:18

I'm so excited to tell you the start of my journey, just because I imagine somebody is listening to this and hearing me be like my baby sleeps 12 hours and it's so easy and just like gnashing their teeth and being like she's horrible. I was back in the day in college a sleep cowboy Like I didn't believe I needed it, and so I pulled multiple double all-nighters like awake for 48 hours. I felt vaguely superior and smug for doing this. I would be doing laundry at 3 am and then I'd be tired. I'd like nap on the floor of the laundry room and wake up like.

Speaker 1: 29:56

This is not a very compelling, attractive picture, but it's who I was back in the day, the origin of my interest in sleep in general. I got to grad school. After college. I basically didn't remember anything of the last four years, and not for fun reasons, it wasn't like I was partying so much, it was not sleeping, and so I wasn't forming new memories, and so it's just this blur where I'm like I think I had a good time, but it's a little hazy. So I wanted to figure out what was going on in the mathematics of sleep, and as part of that I participated in a study where I had to keep the same bedtime every single night for three months and during that time, everything in my life got better. So I lost weight, my mood improved, I PR'd in running distances, I had a skin condition that cleared up. Obviously, this is an N of one, but I was convinced, especially back then.

Speaker 1: 30:49

A couple of times I was like, well, maybe, I think, if I hadn't had a sort of watch that I was wearing and the researchers spying on me the whole time and three months of time in which to do it, I probably wouldn't have stuck with it. If I just read something being like hey, yeah, sleep regularity is important, I would have maybe done it like a day or two, which is not long enough to get into a groove. Right, if you're listening to a song and trying to figure out where you should step in for, like the dance move, you don't do it instantly. You like listen for a little bit, you need to find the beat and your circadian clock needs to do that too. All of which is to say I had this journey from sleep catastrophe to sleep A plus student going to bed at the same time.

Speaker 1: 31:47

Every night, I got the opportunity to write a book and include some of my drawings, so I often draw comics and I put some comics in there and really, as I was thinking, there's so many great books about sleep already. But the narrative of the last five years, I think, is sleep regularity is a huge, important part of sleep health and a stronger predictor of mortality than sleep duration. But people don't know about it, so we need them to get it and they get grooves. People get the idea of grooves. Let's get people into a groove.

Speaker 2: 32:20

That's what it's about Get into a groove. And I mean I grew up, obviously because I'm a 60s child, so I grew up when everything was groovy, and now we're in a groove. Now, I mean, I grew up obviously because I'm a 60s child, so I grew up when everything was groovy and now we're in a groove. Now we're reading books about a groove, everything's groovy.

Speaker 1: 32:33

I mean, my original idea for the book was just groove, and then my editor was like you need to tell people it's about sleep, otherwise they'll think it's about music. But I think the story with Circadian Rhythms is it's not just sleep. You have a food groove, you've got metabolism groove, you've got an immune groove, you have a DNA repair groove. So why is it bad to get a bunch of light in the middle of the night that squishes your circadian amplitude groove and it's going to affect your sleep in a very visible way. But it's also going to throw off all these things as well in your body that we're just now waking up to how rhythmic and important they are.

Speaker 2: 33:13

I think this is so important. This is going to be, I think, light and sleep. I know we've talked about this a lot, but I do honestly believe that in 2025, this is going to become a key point for everybody, that what's got to actually happen for people. They've got to get into a sleep rhythm. Now this is all well and good, but I think a lot of people can learn from this. A lot of executives that I've been doing stand up for a financial group and they work very late into the night, early mornings and things like that, and I think a lot of CEOs of businesses and companies and company employees could really benefit enormously from getting into a sleep groove, as, in focusing on it and getting it 100% right, everything would work well. But our shift working community it's very hard for them to get into a groove. The book that you've written, Olivia, because you're working hard on an app to help shift workers and things like that. So what's the benefit of your book for the shift worker as well?

Speaker 1: 34:10

So I want people to have a physics intuition for their sleep. The same way, you've got an intuition for what's going to happen if you drop a basketball. If you drop a basketball, it's going to bounce right. So that's the sort of intuition we have there. Shift workers could benefit from having intuitions like the water cooler example. So instead of beating yourself up and being like, oh, why can't I sleep right now, I'm so tired, why can't I sleep? It's because you've got a water cooler. It's full of sleep pressure, but it's tilted away from you and so nothing can come out of the tap. Similarly, you can be like all right after shift. I know I was on days right beforehand. I just did a night shift. I can sleep after my night shift, even though that's not when my circadian clock wants me to sleep. Well, it's like, yeah, it's because your water cooler is so full you can drain it whenever, wherever, but you're not sleeping when it's tilted towards you and so you might wake up sooner than you'd like. So that's a physics intuition.

Speaker 1: 35:07

Another kind of physics intuition I want people to have is that, okay, circadian rhythms.

Speaker 1: 35:12

They're kind of like being on a swing.

Speaker 1: 35:15

You're going back and forward, and back and forward, and light during the day is like a push in the outward direction when you're moving outward and light at night is that same push in the same direction.

Speaker 1: 35:27

But when you're on the backswing and when you get that push, what it does is it turns a really cool, robust swing envy of everyone else in the playground into kind of a crappy swing. It's got a low amplitude, it's not got a lot of momentum behind it, and so for shift workers to, on their days off as they're adjusting back to a night schedule, appreciate the importance of light, not just because, like Roger and Olivia told them to, but because they've got this sense of oh, what I'm doing is I'm kind of just like got a really small swing go and I'm kind of scuffing my toe into the dirt. But this light is helping me build my swing back up and avoiding it really aggressively when I'm on the backswing. Avoiding that push forward is going to also help me build my momentum up, build my amplitude up, and I think when you have a physics intuition, you just kind of believe it more than you should do this just because.

Speaker 2: 36:24

I agree, and this is the thing that I find, because I take what you've taught me and also Dr Martin Moore Ede, I read his book and I'm also very big on Professor Russell Foster's book Time, life and things like that, and what I've learned out of those three books is circadian rhythm is everything, and getting it right is everything. Because the biggest thing that I want my shift working audience to take out of this today and if there's one thing that I've really helped shift workers with, is your analogy of why we wake up in the middle of the night after we've done a run of night shift and then we wake up in the middle of the night. You talked about the mosh pit and, having been carried across the mosh pit, we're tired and we're being carried by the sleep, but then what happens is the sleep runs out because there's no more sleep pressure and the sleep pressure then it falls down, then the lights come on and then we go to the bathroom and then we do this and then, of course, we can't go back to sleep. Now you might ask how have you helped shift workers with that? By labeling it, because if there's one thing that we need to do is label it Because when we label it, we have an understanding of what's actually going on and we know just to be patient, our circadian rhythm will catch up.

Speaker 2: 37:36

I took that from you, I've learned that from you, and I've also learned because I now understand the circadian rhythm and the science behind it and the importance of the light and the Z-keepers. And every single morning on my Instagram story I post a picture of me looking out the window and it's get your light diet right. This is the secret to going to sleep at night. Now people might say to me oh, that's all right for you because you don't work shift work anymore. I did for 40 years and it wasn't until I understood in my latter part of the years, because the research and my knowledge is fairly new once I started lining things up with that daytime circadian rhythm, the difference it made to my health, well-being, fat loss, mental health, everything was enormous.

Speaker 2: 38:20

It's not about, oh, I'm a shift worker, so this is what it is. It's about what can I do to fix this? And this book that you've written, sleep Groove and I know because I know what your drawings are like and I know how you're going to explain things, and I know because you love an analogy and I know the analogy is going to help as well. This is going to help shift workers to label, to understand exactly what it is that's going on, so that they're making an informed decision decision right, because scientists all know this. But it's up to you to get it out to the public as in, so that they understand it in layman's terms. Have you done that?

Speaker 1: 38:56

I sure tried. I love the sleep and circadian field, I love other scientists in circadian rhythms, but I think one thing as evidenced by if you grabbed a random person on the street and were like what's a circadian rhythm that we've kind of failed at is communicating, that it's more than sleep. Communicating the way it moves, the way the ball bounces, like how does a circadian rhythm change from day to day? It kind of gets a little later, a little earlier. It can definitely get flatter and higher, and it's very natural that this isn't something we've totally mastered communicating, because it's very abstract, like what we're talking about is this like cluster of neurons in your brain that you can't see?

Speaker 1: 39:37

But I think with analogies we can start to make circadian rhythms more intuitive for people and we can have them be like oh, of course, yeah, of course. If I turn on all the lights in the middle of the night, what that's going to do is dampen my groove. I'm not going to have as much of a swing, I'm not going to have as much of a tilt on my water cooler. My mosh pit is going to thin out. All these things are way more tangible, because we've touched them in the real world, than saying well, the synchrony of the neurons in your suprachiasmatic nucleus will be reduced.

Speaker 2: 40:12

I just love it and that's why I wanted to get you on to talk about this today, because of what you've learned through having your own child as well, because I talk about where my knowledge comes from, having been a shift worker for 40 years, so I can read the science and I can understand what actually applies into the real world, coming from both perspectives. But a lot of women, and a lot of men as well, will study something and will research something and will put out guidelines around. This is what you've got to do with zero knowledge of what is actually practical in a working environment, in a shift working environment. But I think someone who's gone from, especially with, we are conditioning our baby and you've conditioned your baby through what you've learned through science, to be a 12-hour sleeper overnight, and I think that's the mic drop moment really.

Speaker 1: 41:04

I still had all those new mom moments where you've got spit up on you, your hair's a mess, you're like bouncing. I just did it in the dark and I think that did make a difference.

Speaker 2: 41:13

Okay, now that's key as well. We're not saying that you had a baby and then, within like three weeks, baby was all of a sudden sleeping 12 hours a night, overnight. We're not saying that. What Olivia is saying is it's about conditioning over time and perseverance and consistency and continuity in continuing that, because that's how we train our circadian rhythm, just like when we travel, when we're traveling and we travel to a new time zone through continuity of all those new behaviors in that new time zone and that light exposure, it helps us.

Speaker 1: 41:46

Think of it like trying to find the beat in a song. If you've got music playing, but then you've got other music on in the other room and somebody's talking, your dog's barking, you can't find the beat. And my baby's brain was trying to find the beat of the sun and by keeping it really dark at night and really bright during the day, it was like turning up the volume on the beat of the sun.

Speaker 2: 42:09

Your husband is obviously going to be guided by his professional wife. Obviously, but was he a conformer or is he a non-conformer? Does he go along with this, I guess? When are you getting 12 hours sleep overnight? He's definitely going to be on board.

Speaker 1: 42:23

A hundred percent. And he's a good sport because I have what I like to call dim the lights in other people's houses disease, where I go over to somebody's house and I'm like this is a little too bright for me at 7 PM. It's very charming, everybody loves it and yet, like my husband, who has experienced this more than anyone is on board, has been so receptive and just straight up knows that he has better sleep than he otherwise would, that he goes to bed earlier. He still goes to bed after me. That's fine, but goes to bed earlier, wakes up in a healthier, groovier way.

Speaker 2: 42:57

His benefits are enormous. I'll tell you what. Olivia, you and your husband and young Kai could come to our house anytime you like, because I can tell you from here once the sun's gone, the light's gone, we are in a orange-red environment because, let's face it, campfires at night. It's all very, very orange. Someone came over the other week that wanted to put the big light on over the head. What, what are you talking about? We don't do that. Yeah, you would be right at home in our environment because you would just go oh, this is how it should be. It comes down to when you understand, then you do. People might think you're a freak, but I can tell you the impacts of it are absolutely enormous and it makes such a big difference. So tell us the book. Where is the book available? I've already ordered mine. What day is it released again?

Speaker 1: 43:45

The 28th of January. It's available on Amazon and independent booksellers as well. You can find your favorite one and ask them to order it for you, and there's also a audio book coming in February. And audio books are great because if you are trying to keep your sleep in a groove, but you're awake and so you need to do something with your brain, but you don't want to have the lights on, no photons from an audio book, just sound waves.

Speaker 2: 44:11

And have you narrated it?

Speaker 1: 44:12

I actually did not. There's an actress who's narrating it. Oh no, it's not in your voice what she's great, she's super great, and I really I had this moment where I was, like most audio books that are narrated by the author, I think they should have had a professional do this. But maybe I'm different. And that lasted 30 seconds and then I was like a professional is going to do a great job, she's going to knock it out of the park, and she did.

Speaker 2: 44:38

Yeah, yeah, of course she will, but I've got to tell you there's something about your voice and the way it is. It's a great storytelling voice. That's why I love listening to Professor Russell Foster when he narrates Lifetime. It's like your granddad telling you a story, and I just feel like it's the sort of thing that you can just lie there in bed and just listen to and just go. I just feel like granddad's reading me a story as I go to sleep. You're right, though.

Speaker 2: 44:58

Some authors probably should have left it to their professionals to do as well. I think, and from what I understand, it's extremely difficult to narrate a book, because they will pull you up on the slightest little dialect problem, the slightest grammatical error or anything. So, yeah, let's leave that to the experts, but let's just get the book out there. Olivia, I will get and put the links to it, obviously through the Amazon store here in Australia. I will put it in the show notes. I know it's already there because I've seen it and I've sent that to you as well. I really do sincerely wish you so much success with this book. Being a published author is something that I desire to do down the track as well, with my own stories. Something as important as sleep as we go into 2025 is going to be absolutely incredible. And let's get the mamas reading as well, so that they understand the importance of this circadian entrainment in their children and why their children may not be sleeping well, because it's probably 90% of the problem, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 45:57

The early days when he wasn't sleeping, I definitely had moments of like oh, how am I going to get through this? But I did, and you will too, if you're a mom listening to this. And one thing that could help circadian rhythms.

Speaker 2: 46:09

Fantastic, olivia, thank you so much for coming on again. We look forward to all of the advancements of ArcaShift, particularly gamification going into it, which will be quite exciting. If anybody has not come across ArcaShift yet, you clearly don't follow me. Whereabouts can they go to find ArcaShift, which is the Shift Workers app which learns you and tells you what you should be doing? And well, how can you not have that app? Like seriously get the app. Where can they find Olivia?

Speaker 1: 46:38

They should go to either the Google play store if they're on Android, or the app store if they're on Apple. Download that sucker. Give it a shot and tell us what you think.

Speaker 2: 46:46

Yep, and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll even put the link to the ARCA Shift webpage with the Apple and also Google links in there, so people can go direct to that, depending on what platform they're on. Olivia, thank you again. I look forward to our communication in the future. Thank you very much for coming on and sharing your exciting news with your book.

Speaker 1: 47:06

I just had the best time. Roger, thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 47:09

And there you have it. That's Dr Olivia Walsh. My goodness me, imagine training your baby to sleep from 6.30 at night until 6.30 in the morning and, you know, putting simple principles in place. And this is why I get people like Dr Walsh onto the program so that they can talk about these particular scenarios and how you can utilize science and what we're understanding to be able to entrain your own baby's circadian rhythm to get to that stage.

Speaker 2: 47:41

Crazy, when you say that you've got a baby that doesn't sleep, I've got to tell you that it is generally a light issue, because you haven't entrained that circadian rhythm, because light contributes so much to this circadian rhythm around feeding, around, moving around, being awake, around being asleep. The more you understand this, the better it will be. Now, as I said in the podcast, the links to the book will be in the show notes there for you, and I would highly recommend that you go across and have a look at arcuscopecom arcuscopecom, because on there are some fantastic blogs which will explain a lot to you about circadian rhythms and sleep in layman's terms. I really, really hope that you got plenty out of that podcast. I just love talking to Olivia and we do communicate a lot in the background. It's always fun, it's where I get a lot of my knowledge, it's where I learn a lot around circadian rhythms and light exposure from her, and it's a well and truly good website.

Speaker 2: 48:45

Please, if you could if you got anything out of that I really, really need you to rate and review the podcast. If you could share it so others listen to it, that would be amazing. But if you could just take one second to just hit five stars on the podcast, whether you're listening on Spotify, whether you're watching it on YouTube, whether you're listening to it on Apple, if you're on Apple, you can just hit five stars. It's right there. Just exit out, hit five stars, scroll down to the bottom and if you could just take a few minutes to write a review to help others because that's what gets the podcast found and I just want to get evidence-based strategies out there to help you, the shift worker, catch you on the next one.

Speaker 2: 49:30

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 ahealthyshiftcom. I'll catch you on the next one.