Speaker 1: 1:11

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Speaker 2: 1:26

Alright, let's get on to Roger Sutherland he's on the phone Morning my friend, 40-year veteran of frontline Victorian police, but also, more importantly, 24-7 community for shift workers. He has a website and we'll talk about that. You know, one of the things I'm loving working the shift work, roger. But I did notice the other day and I'd forgotten, but I wanted to mention this. I got out of the lift and I felt really dizzy and I couldn't figure out why, and then I remembered, oh yeah, shift work, that'd be the reason for that.

Speaker 3: 1:55

Oh, there's an extremely good reason for that, and I think one of the things that we forget too, phil, is that it becomes our new normal. Like that, we start the flat line, we go down and a lot of our nurses, police, our emergency services will relate to this that you forget what it feels like to actually feel good. And then you have a good day and you think, oh, that's right, I feel fantastic, but you're not really feeling as good as you could. You're actually just a little bit better than what you have been because we adjust to this new normal, which is bottoming out, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 2:29

Well, it's funny because I was in town with my wife a couple of weeks ago during the day and I thought something's odd here. What is it? Ago during the day and I thought something's odd here, what is it? Something just doesn't feel right. And then I realised it was people. There were people walking around. It's the little things like that that you completely forget.

Speaker 3: 2:41

Absolutely, and there's that something in the sky as well, which you're not used to seeing either, I guess. So this brings a whole impact on us as well, phil, because while we're working overnight, we're very passionate about what we're doing, but we're sitting in a studio there, we've got artificial light over the top of us. You drive home probably, you know, in the winter time you drive home in the dark, you drive to work in the dark, you're sleeping during the day and our body, literally, is counting on those circadian rhythms being reset. Otherwise we start to feel, well, that feeling of jet lag all the time for anyone that's travelled, and it's called social jet lag for shift workers, and it really, really has a massive impact on our health.

Speaker 2: 3:26

And it's funny because some days you feel normal, but then other days you can really feel the impact of burnout. And I think burnout is the one thing that you don't realise you've got until it overwhelms you Totally. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 3:37

Well, see, the impact of burnout and I think burnout is the one thing that you don't realize you've got until it overwhelms you Totally. Yeah, well, see, the impact of this desynchronized circadian rhythm that we have impacts severely on our hormone releases within our body. You know, our body runs on a 24-hour clock and whether we're awake during the day, whether we're awake during the night, our body is actually running on a diurnal, which is a daytime circadian rhythm which runs all the time releasing those hormones at those times. So when you're exposed to light at night, you confuse your system. When you are awake or trying to sleep during the day and your body is trying to run, like the release of cortisol, the release of melatonin, it all becomes very confusing. This is why a lot of shift workers have massive problems with weight gain.

Speaker 3: 4:22

It's so important for us to eat at the right times during that biological daytime as well, to keep that circadian rhythm in sync and get that daylight, that blue sky which you probably get a bit of in Sydney, probably a bit more than we get down here in Melbourne, but you get that blue sky which tells you, tells your body, because through your eyes it is, because your body can't see other than through the eye and you get that blue light and it goes. Oh, okay, so it's now daytime, right? So we suppress all of our sleep hormones, we wake ourselves up, we get ourselves going, but when we're exposing ourselves to that blue light at night, the body becomes incredibly compromised, not knowing whether it should be awake or whether it should be asleep.

Speaker 2: 5:05

And do you know, the other thing that I've noticed and just thinking about it while you were mentioning that is that I've noticed my eyesight is actually not as good now as it was before. I started doing the shift work.

Speaker 3: 5:15

You've just given me the reason for that?

Speaker 2: 5:17

because you're basically staring at a blue screen all night.

Speaker 3: 5:19

Well you are. You're staring at a blue screen, you're staring at screens, you're under artificial light. You've got to remember we, as humans if you go back to you know, as we evolved, it was literally just light and dark, and when it got dark we couldn't do anything at all, so we just slept. And then we would wake up when it got light and we'd go off and we'd hunt and gather and then we would bring the food back. And as humans, now we have light and food available to us 24-7, all the time.

Speaker 3: 5:50

So what we're doing is we're actually forcing our bodies to do things which it is not natural for our body to do it at the time that it's doing it. So our body, even though we are awake, our body shuts down and goes into a rest and digest mode at around about eight, nine o'clock at night and then melatonin elevates in our system. So if you're working overnight and then you start putting highly processed carbohydrates and fats into your system, which is, you know, we crave that glucose because we're looking for energy. Our body is chronically fatigued. It upsets our hunger and satiety hormones. So what we actually do is we crave those.

Speaker 3: 6:32

You know, the chips, chocolates, the lollies damn, jenny and her cake. You know we have big problems with that and the nurses can relate, because we end up with all of those you know the families of patients are bringing into the hospital. You know chocolate saying oh, thanks for looking after Nana, and you know it's great, and they bring chocolates in. They never bring a platter of fruit or a handful of nuts in for them, which is what we need to be eating overnight. We don't want to be eating all those highly palatable carbohydrates and fats, because our body doesn't metabolize and store nutrients the same overnight as what it does during the day, and this is something that we have to be really aware of as shift workers at night.

Speaker 2: 7:19

The problem is, of course and I'm not a biscuit eater, I've never eaten biscuits, but we have them in the kitchen and so I'm going to carbonate. I've got some terrible habits that have only come across since I've been doing this. But you know, the other thing is but it only occurred to me the other day is you have a completely different relationship with your workplace, because your workplace is somewhere where you go not just to work but ostensibly also to be social with other people. And when you don't have that, you don't realize it until down the track you suddenly go. My emotional relationship with my workplace isn't the same as if I had a nine to five job.

Speaker 3: 7:52

You know what, phil? That is just such a fantastic observation because the research actually shows how isolating shift work is. We're at work and they do become our peers, our friends, our confidants, our everything, don't they? Because you go to work and you look forward to it, because that's where the stimuli is. Everyone's in the same boat. They're all doing the same thing, we're all trying to survive as best as we possibly can and our week is so short when we're out of work that we tend to isolate ourselves. We don't get out, we don't do things because we just don't feel like it, and we do become incredibly depressed, so isolated it causes us massive problems.

Speaker 3: 8:37

The impact of shift work is enormous on people, on their mental health in a big way, not only from that circadian rhythm disruption, but also we couple that with the isolation of. Well you know yourself, because you've got to work, you miss out on that family function going to that football game, going to. You know it's Jenny's birthday and you want to go to Jenny's birthday and you can't. But your wife's going, the kids are going, it's one of your kids' birthdays, but you've got to work so you can't be there. This all has a massive impact on our shift working community causes us massive problems. It really does, and this is where our emergency services and frontline health really suffer like, really suffer.

Speaker 2: 9:21

That's exactly right, Roger. Hold on there a minute. We'll continue our chat after this. It's 3.34. 22 minutes to four. I'm Phil O'Neill. No-transcript. There is massive upsides.

Speaker 3: 9:55

What about if you're a gym goer? You can walk into a gym and it's quiet because it's during the day. Nothing worse than having to go to a gym between 5am and 7am in the morning before you go to work, when everybody's in the gym, or from 5 o'clock at night until 8 o'clock at night, when everyone's in the gym. I think the other thing that we love as well is we can make an appointment to see a specialist. And you know, whenever the receptionist answers, they say oh, I'm really sorry, I've only really got 11 o'clock on Thursday, I'll take it. They go, oh really, because you can. You can make those appointments and you can go. And not only that, but you can get out to the shops and there's no one around. You can get in and out and you can do what you have to do without having to go at the same time as everybody else. And you become smart too, don't you? Because you don't hit the road while the mums are picking their kids up from school or dropping their kids off at school.

Speaker 2: 10:47

The only thing is, of course, I've been missing out on my gym because I haven't got that routine down pattern, so I'm missing out. You know, like where I used to go to the gym four or five times a week, I'm now down to two, and it's not just the lack of energy, but it's also just you've got to get yourself organised with your time management, otherwise, before you know it, you're eating on the run and you're heading into work on the run.

Speaker 3: 11:07

Oh, phil, this is a fantastic way I help my shift working clients that I actually work with, because I've coached hundreds of shift workers in my time now and what I actually do in relation to them is one of the most important and the best strategies that we can actually do as a shift worker is to schedule and time block for ourselves. Now, this seems like something that's really simple, but getting a whiteboard and putting a whiteboard up on the wall in your kitchen, family room, somewhere where everybody can see it, and what you do is you write your shifts down on it first of all. So whatever shift you're going to be working, now it's okay for you because you're regular, but I'm talking about nursing staff, police, fire, ambulance people that are working nights, train drivers, et cetera taxi drivers, uber drivers. If you write your shifts down, what it does is it actually avoids a conversation in the family of people saying, oh, dad, when are you working? Next, it's there on the wall and then are you going to take me to soccer or is mum taking me to soccer training? No, I am. You can see it's on the wall there, because it's written there dad's soccer, mum, you know, taking Jenny to calisthenics, and so it's written out and then, if you look at it too, this takes decision fatigue.

Speaker 3: 12:24

Because shift workers, you would notice yourself. You haven't got the energy or the bandwidth to make decisions outside of work. You just can't be bothered because you're so busy. When you're working overnight doing the radio there, you are taking calls, you're thinking all the time what you've got to say, how you've got to say, and by the time you finish you are decisioned out. You've got no more decisions to make.

Speaker 3: 12:48

And decision fatigue is well researched back with people. And we need to really have a look at this decision fatigue with people because what actually happens is we feel useless and we feel totally inept, but it's actually. Our brain is literally just burnt out from making decisions. So the way we combat this is we either allocate those decisions to our better half to make those decisions for us, or what we do is we schedule out and we put those things onto our daily planner so that people can see. And you can see at a time when you're lucid and you made this schedule, you can look at it and go oh right, I've got Johnny's basketball, I've got Jenny's calisthenics, I've got oh, I've got to go to the gym this day and you've time blocked it out. So it's right there and it's visual for you and everybody else in the household to see as well. Scheduling is a game changer for shift workers to see as well.

Speaker 2: 13:42

Scheduling is a game changer for shift workers If people want to find out you've got a terrific website.

Speaker 3: 13:48

Tell everybody about that. I run a website which is all one word ahealthyshiftcom, and on that website I've got numerous blogs and resources which are for our shift working community, to help our shift workers to thrive and not just survive. My motto is to give people more energy to do the things that they love outside of their shift working life, because when you've got the energy to do that, you then enjoy more doing the things inside your shift working life. When you're at work, you actually enjoy it more because you've got a work-life balance there. I've also run my own podcast, which is A Healthy Shift as well, where I've got over 240 episodes there now of just espresso, episodes of little tips to help shift workers all the way through, and that's on all of the platforms.

Speaker 3: 14:34

As to what to do when should we eat, when should we not eat, what should we be eating, what's the best diet, what's the best way to exercise, when should we exercise? Blah, blah, blah. And what I've done is I've decided after my time in law enforcement we need a community that people can feel supported in that community. So I've started an online community which is called the Shift Workers Collective. On the top of the website. There's a link that people can go to there and you'll come into that community.

Speaker 3: 15:21

I'll be running webinars which are shift work specific community. I'll be running webinars which are shift work specific. It's only shift workers that will be in there so everyone can support and cheer each other on. Recipes will be shared. I'm offering up my shift work specific recipe books. We'll be running live Q&As and plus I'll be in the community as well, which will be actually offering up to people to help people with advice on just specific information. It's just a really good support unit which we all feel so isolated, don't we, phil? And this is the thing we've got, and it's 24-7 because there's always going to be a shift worker around in that community.

Speaker 2: 15:56

Roger, lovely to talk to you, mate. Thank you so much for that information and we'll also give you more details about that website again in just a moment, 3.45.

Speaker 1: 16:02

For that information and we'll also give you more details about that website again in just a moment, 3.45. Autobahn's Great Easter Sale is here. Get a huge 20% off store wide, plus 25% off Rhino Rack Online. Good Friday Hopping Store from Saturday Sale Ends Easter Sunday. Three days only Exclusions apply. Autobahn Chuggy on Crisis.

Speaker 4: 16:18

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