Speaker 1: 1:11

coming home from their night shift and maybe eating breakfast at an appropriate sort of breakfast time. If you're working a day shift, so maybe coming home with the family and eating breakfast, you're challenging your glucose metabolism so we're not able to process that food as well. And even if we just do sort of four nights of doing that, we're challenging our system to the extent that we're well on the way to developing diabetes later in life.

Speaker 2: 1:42

Shift work can be brutal, but it doesn't have to be. Welcome to a healthy shift. My name is Roger Sutherland, certified Nutritionist, veteran Law Enforcement Officer and 24-7 shift worker for almost four decades. Through this podcast, I aim to educate shift workers, using evidence-based methods, to not only survive the rigors of shift work but thrive. My goal is to empower shift workers to improve their health and wellbeing so they have more energy to do the things they love. Enjoy today's show. They have more energy to do the things they love. Enjoy today's show and welcome to another episode of a Healthy Shift podcast.

Speaker 2: 2:21

I'm your host, roger Sutherland, and today, in another special episode, interviewing Dr Charlotte Gupta from the University of Queensland, based in South Australia. Now, what I wanted to talk to Charlotte about today is a really, really important topic, and that is the factors influencing the eating behavior of shift workers. Now, what we wanted to dive into with this one was the what, when, where and why. We wanted to understand why shift workers eat certain things at certain times. Understand why shift workers eat certain things at certain times. What is it that impacts on that? When should they eat how? Why all of those sort of things?

Speaker 2: 3:06

This is a paper that was authored by Dr Charlotte Gupta back in 2018. I met Dr Charlotte Gupta four years ago at the Australasian Chronobiology Conference. After hearing her speak, I sidled up to her and I thought she's someone who I need to be in touch with and learning from, and she's someone that I've been learning from ever since. So today I get the opportunity to talk to her and you get to listen in to our conversation. So, without much further ado, let's introduce Dr Charlotte Gupta. How are you, charlotte?

Speaker 1: 3:39

Hi, good thanks. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: 3:40

Oh no, thank you so much for coming on to the show, such an important area of research that you are actually doing for our shift working community, and I've brought you onto the show to talk about one paper in particular, but also to let us know exactly what it is that your department are actually doing around shift work. So can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background, and also what led you to researching the eating behaviours of shift workers?

Speaker 1: 4:07

Yeah, so I am a researcher at Central Queensland University but work in Adelaide and Garnerland and focus on optimising optimizing health behaviors for shift workers with a real interest in nutrition. So optimizing eating behaviors basically, how can shift workers eat healthy, eat well, be safe and perform well on shifts? Finished my PhD in 2020, the beginning of that year Got into it sort of accidentally, like a lot of researchers do, where I was working on a study in my honours year looking at the glucose metabolic response to eating at night for shift workers, and I came on and was helping to run the study by looking at the performance outcomes and didn't originally come in aiming to look at the eating impacts on performance at night because we didn't think there would be any. So we were collecting the data, but I was going to look at performance at night without the impact of eating and when it came to do the stats we thought, all right, well, we'll see if there's something here. And there was.

Speaker 1: 5:12

So there was the impact of eating a big meal versus not eating at night changed how disciplines performed Sleep labs. So food at night impaired performance compared to not eating. From there we got a grant to do the bigger version of that study with eating a big meal, eating a snack or not eating, and I was able to continue on my research and really build this research area of performance at night and eating and it really sparked my interest into, okay, how is what we eat at night impacting how well we can work and how safe we can work, but also how does it impact how we feel and if I'm looking at, okay, maybe reducing meal size at night is safer for performance, how feasible is that? What are the reasons people eat at night? And that led into this paper on the motivations and, yeah, really sparked my interest in the area.

Speaker 2: 6:04

Love this Now. Charlotte, I met you at the Chronobiology Conference in Brisbane in was that 2021 or 22? You're going to tell me 23 or something but we met and I must admit, when you spoke I know you're given a very short period of time to speak on a particular topic and as soon as you finished talking, in typical Roger fashion, I sidled straight up to you and went right, we need to talk. I need to know more about this because if there's one thing that I've done is I've done the 40 years of shift work. But I love reading the research around shift work to understand, because one of the main reasons why I do what I do today is because I watched all of my colleagues really struggling.

Speaker 2: 6:49

I saw the weight gain, I saw the health impacts and I personally thought oh, it's nutrition. All you got to do is find a calorie deficit and away you go. It's a lot more impactful than that and there's a lot more to it, as you have learned as a shift worker. So I went off as a researcher. Now I went off and studied nutrition, thinking that this was going to be the solution and in my experience of coaching shift workers, I've learned because of what the work that people like yourself and your department are actually doing. I learn more and more and more around the impacts of it. Eating and nutrition is very different for shift workers than it is for our nine to five gen population. Is that a fair comment?

Speaker 1: 7:35

Yeah, definitely it's. The timing of eating is so important. Lots of presentations I give to industry, to employers and even at conferences like to start with it's not just what we eat, but when, and for shift workers, the when is so important because it's night shifts, eating at night, but even any sort of rotating shift work. It's changing our eating routines and our eating patterns. Some researchers looked at the amount people are eating and what people are eating over 24 hours with different shifts, and it's not so much a change in the amount of food necessarily for 24 hours, but it's that timing, that shifting time, eating at night that we know is what leads to a lot of the challenges.

Speaker 2: 8:19

Absolutely fantastic it does. It leads to huge challenges, because I know myself that in my time in shift working it would be nothing for me to cook up a spaghetti bolognese and chow down on that at three o'clock in the morning. And when I think back to that, I just think to myself oh my God, rog, no wonder you were having issues with weight gain and health and things like that, because the more you understand, the worse it actually is and the impacts are. What I've done now is encourage the fasting overnight, particularly while melatonin is elevated in the body, because I think we learn more now, don't we, that we metabolize and store nutrients very differently when melatonin is elevated in the system. Is that a fair comment?

Speaker 1: 9:04

Yeah, I think so. It's definitely eating at night, when melatonin is elevated, and when our melatonin is increased, our body is preparing for sleep, and so at night, all of our physiological rhythms are promoting sleep and not digestion and active metabolizing of food. We're challenging the system a lot more at night with food than we would be during the day, when our body is primed to be digesting.

Speaker 2: 9:31

Can you just tell me what are the biggest misconceptions about how shift workers eat? I know myself I used to just completely flip my meals right, so I'd be having my main meal at three o'clock in the morning, and it wasn't until I learned more that I realized how bad that was. So what are the biggest misconceptions about how shift workers eat today?

Speaker 1: 9:51

I think the biggest challenge I've come across when I'm talking to employers or talking to management and the sort of higher ups, is this idea that shift workers almost want to be unhealthy or pick unhealthy foods and nothing can change and that's just. You know, you're on the night shift, you're unhealthy. I remember reading some Facebook comments because I was doing an analysis of comments from shift workers on nutrition and one of them was from a chef at a mining site and they said you know, no matter what I cook, people are always going to choose the unhealthy things. And it was sad to read really, because that's sort of discrediting all of the disruptions to our cravings, disruptions to our hunger, food availability at night, all of these reasons that foods are picked to eat or forced sort of is the only option, and just sort of taking responsibility away from what employers can be doing to promote healthy eating and that shift workers. You know, no one wants to be doing something unhealthy but there's reasons behind everything that means that maybe that's the best option that night.

Speaker 2: 11:01

This is what I've learned myself. While we think it's nutrition and people don't know how to go about eating and what they do, there's a whole umbrella of issues sitting over the top of the nutrition, isn't there?

Speaker 1: 11:13

Yeah, definitely. It's not as simple as I'm choosing between a salad or hot chips at night. It's never going to be that simple, but I think people like to think it is and that people are choosing the hot chips.

Speaker 2: 11:25

Yep, they are, and I'm convinced from a position. This is an experienced shift worker talking to an experienced researcher. I think we resign ourselves to the fact that we're unhealthy because we're a shift worker and there's nothing that you can do about it, without any doubt, and that's the point that you've made and made well, I think this is where it's wrong and that is a very, very big misconception. I've interviewed Dr Jill Joyce from Oklahoma State University, and I did that back in episode 64, where we talked about the influence of food accessibility and what that plays in our shift working environment, as in, what we see is what we want to eat.

Speaker 2: 13:11

But I really want to discuss your paper, because you were the lead researcher in a paper that was published in 2018. And that is titled the Factors Influencing the Eating Behaviour of Shift Workers. As in what, when, where and why. This fascinated me, this paper. I love this because this encompasses absolutely everything I think around eating for a shift worker. So your research in this paper highlights that night shift workers often eat breakfast at an inappropriate time. Why is this an issue and what are the potential health consequences of that? What are we calling breakfast?

Speaker 1: 13:46

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:47

So when I say inappropriate it's meaning sort of from traditional timing, traditional sort of nine to five day work, and that is a product of the schedule.

Speaker 1: 13:57

So a lot of workers are coming home from their night shift and maybe eating breakfast at an appropriate sort of breakfast time if you're working a day shift so maybe coming home with the family and eating breakfast, but then they're eating that right at the end of their shift and then trying to go to sleep and so that food is challenging their sleep. We also find people, you know, maybe having a big meal during the night as maybe their dinner meal or their lunch meal, whatever meal you want to call it, which is also challenging the system, like I said before, when, at the time when we're not primed to be eating, and what we know from some other research that I've been involved in is that you're challenging your glucose metabolism so we're not able to process that food as well, and even if we just do sort of four nights of doing that, we're challenging our system to the extent that we're well on the way to developing diabetes later in life.

Speaker 2: 14:51

This is a key point and this is what I absolutely wanted to speak to you about as well. We talk about glucose metabolism. Can you just explain to our listeners in simple terms what you mean by glucose metabolism? I understand it, but I'd love you to just explain a nine-to-fiver and how glucose is metabolized and why this is so compromised for a shift worker at night.

Speaker 1: 15:16

Yeah, so in I guess really basic terms it's how our body processes the energy we get from food, and so energy and the energy we get from food, and so energy and the glucose we get from food. And during the day our body is primed to be doing that. So we have periods of increased metabolism during the day, coinciding with our typical breakfast, lunch, dinner meals. Then our breakfast meal sort of kicks that off for the day, which sort of part of the reason breakfast is so important. At night our body is not primed to be digesting, it's not primed to be metabolizing energy, and so resources that we need to be sleeping have to be almost diverted. So neuronal resources, physiological resources to metabolizing and dealing with that challenge of the food at night, and so the sort of more we pressure that system and the longer we're doing that, the more our rhythms are out of sync and the more that's leading to risks of chronic health disease later in life.

Speaker 2: 16:18

And we do tend to see this because the longer a person's actually done shift work, they do tend to gain more weight, and there is a correlation with this as well, because of that poor glucose metabolism. To explain to a person in simple terms, I think what that means is that when you're consuming and, let's face it, we don't crave an apple overnight, do we? We're wanting highly palatable carbohydrates and fats, which is our biscuits, our chips, our chocolates, our lollies? Anything that's in a vending machine we'll go for, because it's our body searching for that energy which comes from glucose. Now, when we eat it, it goes into our body, but there's nowhere for it to go, as in at night, because our insulin resistance is high Insulin, the pancreas doesn't release as much insulin. So we end up with all sorts of problems and over time, this glucose continually gets parked as stored energy. We gain weight. It gets to the stage where we become diabetic or we become a type 2 diabetic over time, because the body has nowhere to put it, and this is why it's uncool for people to just go oh, I'm a shift worker, so therefore I'm just going to be unhealthy, because you are literally, once you cross the Jordan, and become a type 2 diabetic. That's it. That's your sentence forever, and you need to be very, very aware of that.

Speaker 2: 17:35

So how do we break the availability influence on shift workers' meal choices? Have you come across industries and workplaces that handle this particularly well? Obviously, you're looking at places. People are reaching out to you. How do we go about doing this? And you've spoken about the chef that says you know what? It doesn't matter what I cook. It can be healthy, it can be high protein, it can be anything. They still go for the burger and chips all the time. Have you come across an organization that's doing it really well and what are they doing?

Speaker 1: 18:05

Yeah, I've come across shift workers that are doing it really well. I'm yet to find an organization a lot that listen and that want to know. But putting that into practice and often funding the funds to do that sort of doesn't quite match what I would like them to be doing. Which might be other options in vending machines, things like storage in ambulances or in trucks, storage for fresher foods on shift truck stops or servos that people are stopping at cafeterias, in hospitals open at night or, if they are open, they're not providing many options. So increasing that and a lot of that does come with a cost.

Speaker 1: 18:42

But I have spoken to so many shift workers that one tell me yeah, I know what you're talking about, I've been doing that for years anyway. Why are you even saying this, which I love because it really shows that we need research to be catching up to what people are doing and what problems people are facing, and so hopefully I'm lessening mad gap is my aim. But yeah, a lot of shift workers who meal prep and so are packing really healthy things to eat on shift A lot that fast, like you said earlier, you know maybe a team leader that manages that with colleagues and so you know nurses that band together and say we're getting chocolates from patients but we're not going to eat them at this time of night, that sort of thing. So I hear from a lot of shift workers who get it right and do a lot of great things, but you have to find that organization that is really nailing it for the shift workers.

Speaker 2: 19:32

I've got an organization that I really want you to get into, because they could really use the education for some of the behaviors that I saw while I was working that are just compromising their staff's health, which is the bottom line. They're compromising it, they're not supporting it. Handing out lollies during peak periods is not the way to go. You just gave me an idea while you were talking then as well, actually around talking about team leaders in hospitals or hospital managers or people like that that when these chocolates come in, when they come on shift, they should just clear them out, shouldn't they, and put them away in a storeroom so that they're not actually there in sight, and I thought that sort of supports what Dr Jill Joyce said as well about putting it out of the way, which I think is really, really good.

Speaker 1: 20:20

Yeah, it is hard, I guess, because I don't ever want to take away something that's comforting on a really stressful shift and I am not a nurse and I can't imagine the stress of a lot of those nights and I would never want to come in and say, well, don't eat chocolate. If that's the thing that's getting you through that shift and that's what's giving you comfort in a very stressful environment, or also something that you you know as a team, you can sit and have some cake and that really bonds you, and so it's really working out the optimal way to balance health and long-term health with the on shift well-being. And so you know, if we take away the chocolates, is there another way we can have something that's more of a treat or something that's comforting for people as well.

Speaker 2: 21:05

And this is where we look at these things. So, as you've said, we don't want to take the chocolate off them because it might be a comfort food, but what we want to do is just find an alternative, and this is where research evolves, that we just got to find people that go, oh no, I would love this. Or a handful of blueberries and some Greek yogurt or some protein or something like that. That gives you the sweet hit, which is the same, but it's just much more efficient in our system. The paper mentions limited access to healthy food options. So how does this impact shift workers' overall health, and what is there that workplaces can actually do to improve this?

Speaker 1: 21:42

Yeah. So what we looked at in this review was okay. If shift workers are eating, let's say, more sort of ultra-processed foods things like chips, chocolates, lollies, sandwiches, those sorts of things why? Why is that? Where is that food coming from? And you know, some of it is brought on shift, sure, by the shift workers themselves, but a lot of it is that's what's available, so that's all you can get from the vending machines. You know the canteen isn't available at the hospital, so you go to vending machines. There's nowhere to store fresh food. You don't know when you're going to eat, so you can't bring fresh food with you in the police car, for example. So you're picking up, you know, maybe protein bars or something that's easy to carry.

Speaker 1: 22:23

A lot of factors like that that are due to workplace environment, shift type, irregular breaks all of that is contributing to what shift workers are eating.

Speaker 1: 22:37

And so if we're wanting to optimize what people are eating and when, workplaces will have a responsibility to one provide those foods. If they are providing any foods, they want it to be more of those sort of less processed, healthy, high protein, high fiber snacks fruit, potentially like nuts, muesli bars that aren't very super sugary, those sorts of things Providing places to store snacks, which we've talked about, and that's at work, but also in cars, in truck cabs, wherever that can be Set break times. Obviously that's hard in some jobs, but the break times do dictate what people are eating and when at a lot of times, and so if we know that, we tell people not to have food, say in the one to three zone where it's a circadian low, so our body is naturally sleepiest, but that's the only time people have a break, that's the only time people can eat, and so it's making workplaces aware of those sorts of factors that influence eating.

Speaker 2: 23:35

I totally agree with this. I think one of the biggest problems that we have today is, as society has broadened into a 24-7 environment, all they're doing is packing humans into these 24-7 working environments. There's actually no consideration given to what the research is telling us around, what needs to happen with how we should be rostering people, how we should be structuring breaks, and things like that. See, if I had my way, I'd strip every 24-7 workplace down and rebuild them as a shift working environment with what the researchers actually told us. Imagine how much better we'd be.

Speaker 1: 24:15

Yeah, we're sort of, like you're saying, kind of retrofitting now what we know to these existing structures and the existing way that the world works. And often, you know, maybe we have servos open 24 7 and that's typically to serve. You know, maybe you're out late drinking, and they are mainly open to cater to that community, whereas probably the people that are using the most are people, workers. So it's maybe not targeting the services we have to the people that are actually using them.

Speaker 2: 24:45

So, charlotte, on that, do you think that you and I could start a company, maybe that we could then actually have shift worker specific vending machines, that we could actually start putting food in and live happily ever after as multi-millionaires?

Speaker 1: 25:02

I mean that would be great. I've tried HelloFresh and similar kind of meal packs and also sort of pre-packs food that you have in your freezer, and thinking of having a shift work specific version of that where you give people the food but also tell them when to eat it. So no one's still this idea, or, if you do, please include me because I think that would be really cool.

Speaker 2: 25:23

Yeah, I know. Could you imagine if, for argument's sake, I'll give them a plug? But if you had a company like my Muscle Chef that were producing meals and then they had a timeframe of when you should eat it on the meal, hey, this would be just gold.

Speaker 1: 25:39

That is my dream, I think.

Speaker 2: 25:40

Yeah, yeah, I agree, so that someone could go to the vending machine that's got the my Muscle Chef meals in it my Muscle Chef, my Muscle Chef, if you're listening. And what they could do is they could have a window like oh, here I am. Now it's 8 o'clock to 10 pm, what do I need to eat? And you could pick from the 8 pm to Charlotte. We're onto something.

Speaker 1: 26:07

Exactly, and we shouldn't expect shift workers to have to have a sort of higher understanding of nutrition or anything than everyday person. I mean, I don't have a nutrition background. I'm coming to this from psychology and from optimizing behaviors and that's what we want to do. We don't want people to have to kind of do a full research degree just to understand when they could eat on their shifts when they're doing such important work.

Speaker 2: 26:33

I totally agree. And the other thing to emphasize that, from a shift work perspective, from someone who's done it, not only that, but someone who's coached a lot of people decision fatigue, decision fatigue is enormous. But if you could walk over to a vending machine saying I'm hungry and it's got a column there eat this between 6 pm and midnight, eat this between midnight and 6 am, eat this during the day, and you could just pick from those slots, imagine the difference that it would make. The brain goes a million miles an hour. Now that's a great idea and this is what we need, because shift workers don't want to have to think any more than what they do, because they see it as another chore. It's another thing they've got to do.

Speaker 2: 27:18

They're already chronically fatigued and tired and on this too and you've said you've come from a psychological background as well around the shift work. So social and psychological influences play a really big role in eating behavior. And this is one thing that I in particular, have learned in coaching people. Can you expand on how stress, fatigue and also the social dynamics shape what shift workers are actually eating?

Speaker 1: 27:44

Yeah, I mean on a stress level. We know, no matter what sort of work we're doing, when we're tired, when we're stressed, we've got a deadline coming up. You know, for non-shipworkers, we're wanting those comfort foods. Body is craving the sugars and the chocolate and things that we know are comforting, and the same goes for shipworkers. So even at night our body, in that stress state, can still want and crave those things. We know that sleep restriction impacts our leptin and ghrelin, so our hunger and satiety hormones, and the more we sort of restrict sleep, the more we disrupt them and we can overcome our leptin rhythms. So even with higher rhythms, so leptin is the satiety hormone, even if we've got higher levels of that, if we're sleep restricted, we can resist it and still crave food. So leptin resistance is quite common in shift workers. And so you know it's not necessarily a weakness or giving into these foods, it's this biological craving that we have and it's quite common in overweight and obesity as well.

Speaker 1: 28:54

And then this sort of social aspect of food, you know, eating together on shift.

Speaker 1: 28:58

I talk to a lot of shift workers in different industries and nursing firefighters, police, where someone says, yeah, I eat with someone else on shift or if I have this partner with me on, then we always go to this place and with someone else on shift. Or if I have this partner with me on, then we always go to this place and get these donuts on shift, or something like that and there's a real social bonding, team cohesion aspect to it. It's not because they're hungry, necessarily, or they're craving that food, but it's an activity and it's a bond. Food has this real power to bring people together and bond over it and comforting, and so the last thing that I want to do as a researcher is come in and take that away or change it without any experience of what it does for these people. Yeah, disrupt patterns on shift, disrupt that social fabric, and so I think if we're thinking of how to optimize food timing, we need to also be mindful of not disrupting social health.

Speaker 2: 29:55

Yeah, 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 ebook, 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.

Speaker 2: 30:21

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 ahealthyshiftcom or on Instagram at a underscore healthy, underscore shift.

Speaker 2: 31:06

Now let's get back to the show. We've got to make sure that we're encompassing the social health, but people are aware I know from my own experience that we used to many years ago, before everything went 24-7 as well, someone off crew or someone on crew would be cooking on each individual night. So it'd be my turn Tuesday night, another person's turn Wednesday night, and then you would all sit around and eat a meal at three o'clock in the morning and this is standard as to what we used to do and everyone used to come in. There'd be a barbecue on Thursday morning and you'd be barbecuing and everyone would be having when I think about it, sausages and steaks and hot dogs and sausage in bread and all of that sort of stuff, and I think, oh, my goodness me, but that's what we did. But it was a bonding exercise, which you've quite rightly pointed out, and you know what, charlotte? That's really important to those people that are on that shift.

Speaker 2: 32:00

Otherwise, everyone becomes so alienated in that environment as well, and I think it's just a chance, as you said, for everyone to come together. It's really interesting that that's what we do and no one goes and has a picnic at three o'clock in the morning with cut up apples and cut up fruit or things that we should be eating at that time of the night. It's always at Pancake Parlour that's running 24-7, or it's at McDonald's, or meet up in the car park at McDonald's and do that. It's what happens. The idea, I think, is to try and eat before that so that we're not hungry over that time, but your research suggests that shift workers tend to snack more and consume fewer nutritious foods. Do you know why this is happening and what is it that we can actually do to counteract this?

Speaker 1: 32:45

Yeah, so it's typically more what we would consider a snack, so maybe something like the kind of 200 to 400 calorie kind of portion of food. So a snack versus a bigger meal, and that's for a whole number of reasons. I mean largely a lot of shifts. You can't stop and have a big meal, or it might be we found that a lot of shift workers might have, you know, something like, again, plugging my muscle chef, but then eat that in separate portions when you're able to sit down, and so you end up eating it more as a snack. So snacks more common, and that is also a product of what's available. How long you have to eat, you might just be, you know, shoveling down a muesli bar before you're running off to take a cold. And less, less nutritious foods, we mean more of those ultra processed foods. So muesli bars, sandwiches, chips, cookies, those sorts of things which, again, delicious, making me hungry talking about them.

Speaker 2: 33:41

Oh, that's right.

Speaker 1: 33:41

Yeah, and people eat them during the day as well. The difference is eating them at night, when our body isn't primed to be digesting anything, and those less nutritious foods. We don't actually know this from research, but we would hypothesize going to challenge the body more.

Speaker 2: 33:57

I know that the bottom line technically in the nutritional field is calories in, calories out. Calorie deficit is the only way that you achieve. But I also challenge is the only way that you achieve. But I also challenge and, like you've said, as a hypothesis, I also challenge that you could be a nine to fiver and consume 1800 calories a day and maintain your weight, but the same person and this would be great with a washout period and going off into a night shift and running that same person on 1800,800 calories a day for seven nights of night shift or even whatever, to see what the difference in weight would be. Because I'm convinced that the 1,800 calories in the 24-hour cycle of a night shift worker is completely different to the 1,800 calories of the 24-hour person. Do you agree with that?

Speaker 1: 34:48

Yeah, and it's sort of back to the time-restricted eating principles. So Sachin Panda's work, the sort of original in rats where a group of rats were given a really high-fat diet, sounds like a great life at that point for the rats, yeah, or mice, and some of them had a longer eating window, so all during the day, but had a longer time between their first lot of food and last lot of food, and some of them had a shorter time. So I can't remember the exact windows, it might've been 10 and six hours. And so the same food, the same, you know, typically bad food, and those that had it in the shorter eating window had much better health outcomes and those that had the longer eating window put on weight. And so it's this idea that even if we're having food that isn't typically nutritious, typically healthy, if we're having it at the wrong time, then that's making the difference over what the food itself is like.

Speaker 2: 35:43

We could hypothesize that eating overnight contributes to the weight gain, even if it's a calorically equal I can't remember the word gain, even if it's a calorically equal I can't remember the word now but if everything's calorically on par, that's really interesting, I think, because I've talked to Dr Olivia Walsh about this as well, who talks a lot about that. We know that our body is actually metabolizing and storing nutrients very differently when melatonin is elevated, because it has an impact on the system. With the system being asleep, we've got lower insulin levels. I think there's also a theory as well that our BMR reduces by around about 200 calories overnight as well, and I think this is something that well, there's got to be more to it, a lot more to it, and that's a whole podcast in itself, I think, because it's a massive argument, isn't it? As to people go nope, it's just calories in, calories out. I would argue that I think in time, we will learn that shift workers gain weight because it's not as simple as calories in, calories out. It's the way they're metabolized overnight.

Speaker 1: 36:42

Yeah, definitely the timing of calories.

Speaker 2: 36:44

Definitely makes a big difference and in fact even it makes a difference. I always find it funny and I can talk to you about that with the timing as well. I also find it very interesting that people, when they do their so-called intermittent fasting, which is time-restricted eating, that they fast from 8 pm at night to midday the next day. They'd actually be better off fasting from 3 pm in the afternoon until 6 am in the morning, wouldn't they Turning that around, eating more of their calories in the morning? I'm talking about for health benefit, because we know biologically that by eating earlier and then cutting the foods out as melatonin starts to rise or as we get later in the day, our body functions so much better and so much more efficiently when we do it that way. And yet everyone fasts in the morning.

Speaker 1: 37:30

Yeah, typically morning fasting is skipping. Breakfast is quite popular and people find that easier. I think because, as a society, for those of us who are shift workers, dinner is always seen as this big meal, whereas breakfast, if we think of biologically, should be our biggest, heaviest meal, because then we have the whole day and our daytime activities to process it. And so I think if we as a society switch to breakfast being more of our biggest meal, it would be easier then to, like you said, follow that rhythm and fast from earlier in the day.

Speaker 2: 38:05

Yeah, I love this and I think, to highlight this for people as well, if you think about it, when you catch up with friends or you go out with your partner and you go out for brunch and you have yourself your eggs and your avocado and your multigrain bread, you don't eat for the rest of the day because you are really satiated and you're full. So you tend to eat less because you've had a really good breakfast as well. I know there's arguments breakfast no, full so you tend to eat less because you've had a really good breakfast as well. I know there's arguments breakfast no breakfast. Whatever you do, you boo and I get that. But I personally agree and I think that it kicks the metabolism off, puts the best part of calories into our system earlier on in the day, gives our body a chance to process that. We eat less as the day goes on. In your research, there were sex differences that were noted in our eating patterns, and how do men and women experience the impact of shift work on their diet differently?

Speaker 1: 38:58

Yeah, so it was a little while ago now and I think if I was to update this we'd see more papers looking into this and it's something I want to keep doing some more work on. But differences in the reporting of eating behaviors by men and women and there wasn't a clear sort of this is the reason why, but it could also be the industries that men and women might gravitate towards differently. So nursing is far more women dominated, and so there typically was a lot more social eating you know, chocolates and things like that in nursing studies that were mainly women versus a lot of the truck industries. Transport industries were male dominated samples, and so we saw a lot more snacking on shift that was sourced from like truck stops and things like that. And so you know the differences aren't necessarily biological differences in leptin and ghrelin, so our hunger and satiety hormones it's likely environmental.

Speaker 1: 39:58

I'd really like to look at family setups and eating and you know if a female partner, for example, is preparing food for the kids and also their husband who's going off to shift. I've heard many stories from shift workers telling me that that they eat whatever their wife packs them to have on shift, and so we could target all we want resources at that shift worker, but really it's home. We need to be chatting to wives about what they're packing or challenging that and to say the husband should maybe have their own lunch. But that's hard around shift work and a lot of wives you know saying that they come home and they prepare breakfast for the kids and so then they'll have breakfast when they have prepare things for the kids after a night shift. So I think a lot of the differences we see in between male and female shift workers are there's more environmental, social differences, but I think a lot more to unpack there.

Speaker 2: 40:54

I reckon I could hypothesize that women tend to graze more than men. I think men sit down to their three regular meals and I think in life life sort of shows us that women are grazing in between running around doing the mum, family, wife duties all the time. That's just my hypothesis on it. I can understand too, that it would be very, very environmental, as in when we talk about that we'll be talking about because of the particular types of jobs that people do. But I think women are grazers more and men are more sit down to have the three regular meals. That's what I would guess.

Speaker 2: 41:30

I'd love to see the proof in that, particularly in shift workers, and I loved that. You said also that we need to look at what the wives are packing for the husbands and address that. If they're doing that and I think this is a really important point as well, because men don't think to cook A lot, don't? I'd love to, but a lot of men don't think to cook and they just grab the leftovers with whatever the wife's doing. So if we were to educate the wives as to what to feed their husbands, that could make a massive impact on the shift working world as well, couldn't it?

Speaker 1: 41:57

Yeah, and I definitely don't want that message to be that shift working males are unhealthy because of what their wives are packing them.

Speaker 2: 42:06

No, no, no, I'm fat because it's your fault, yeah.

Speaker 1: 42:12

But packing them, no, no, no, I'm fat because it's your fault. Yeah, but potentially that's where you know some change and some optimizing could be is, you know, here's what you could pack for your significant other going off to shift, keeping in mind that they're probably also doing a lot of other domestic load as well. But yeah, it's sort of the whole way through. You know, wherever I've done a study to say, eat a, a snack at night, I think there's no point telling people that without understanding why people are snacking where that food's coming from the source of it and really being able to target that.

Speaker 2: 42:40

Yeah, I agree, the message is clear too. I've got a lot of women that follow my Instagram account. They just want to learn for their husbands to support their husbands, and I think this is a way that maybe I need to address this as well, to say, hey, this is what we need to be doing and we're not putting the responsibility on the mums at home or the wives at home, and that you've made that very, very clear, and I think that's important. But with a bit of education, as I said, a lot of women follow me because of their partners and they've told me this that they're not sure what to do with their husband for this. But if we educate them, they can make a massive, big difference. I think that's really good. What are some simple and actionable strategies that shift workers can use to improve their eating habits despite circadian disruption and the challenges that they actually face?

Speaker 1: 43:26

Yeah, ideally, the sort of bottom line is we want to minimize our food intake at night and that could be having a sort of larger dinner or breakfast meal, but a larger meal before you go into night shift and then something a lighter meal at the end of your night shift, so you've had something before you have your day sleep, but not something that's really going to be too heavy and disrupt our sleep During the night. If you are going to eat, opting for smaller snacks and minimally processed foods, so like a handful of nuts, muesli bars that are on the less sugary, less processed side fruit.

Speaker 2: 44:02

Yogurt and berries. I always say yogurt and berries because it slows down the oxidisation of the protein as well. The Babybel cheeses they're a good one as well.

Speaker 1: 44:11

And I think if it's a night shift and you need that chocolate bar, don't feel guilty. I mean, we do that during the day as well. If you need something or that's what you're really craving or your body's telling you to have, that you can listen, you can have that. Maybe also add something with some protein and fiber, so also have a handful of nuts or something like that to make sure you're also getting some energy that's going to sustain you through that shift. Caffeine as well we haven't really touched on and again, that's probably a whole like seven other podcast episodes on caffeine. There's not a lot and I've got an honest student at the moment.

Speaker 1: 44:47

We're going to be looking into this but caffeine and food at the same time, and you know really sugary lattes, for example, that are almost a meal in themselves in terms of calories yeah but, yeah, keep in mind caffeine use as well as part of nutrition and obviously it's a great alertness tool at night and we never want to take that away because people use it as an alertness tool, but being mindful of your amount per 24 hours, so wanting to have that sort of 400 milligrams per 24 hours at the most if you want it at your drive home. So a lot of people use it to feel alert on the drive home, which, again, great for alertness, knowing that that might impact your sleep. Then when you get home, but if you need to have it, have it and try and have some good sleep hygiene behaviors, good sleep routine when you get home to try and maximize your sleepiness.

Speaker 2: 45:38

Caffeine is one that is really interesting and I'm glad you've got an honest student that's working on this, because this is exciting that we're looking at it. I say to people that they need to cut their caffeine from midnight, because I know majority of shift workers have consumed a truckload of caffeine to get them going and keep them going, and they would be well and truly up and around, well and truly over their 400 milligrams, particularly those ones that are consuming those energy drinks and taking pre-workouts. And, of course, we've seen the research on this with how it impacts the subsequent sleep, which is the study that was actually done in Australia anyway, and I think this is really interesting with that. I'm a firm believer that even just sipping a cup of tea overnight with just that smaller amount of caffeine can actually just help to sustain it instead of just completely cutting it. Or, if you're going to have a coffee, make it last all night, don't guzzle it, and then go and get another one. 40 milligrams per every two hours seems to be pretty good for just keeping a person going.

Speaker 2: 46:39

Caffeine is another podcast. Let's talk about caffeine because I'm all over these young fellas at the moment that are slamming down these monster energy drinks and just slamming them down overnight with 160 milligrams of caffeine per hit and drinking two or three of them, is just horrendous overnight and then they can't sleep or they go to sleep because they're tired, but then they're not getting the quality restorative sleep yeah, and what we don't actually know from the research and again this is kind of what I would like to head into is we know sort of caffeine at night and we're starting to know food at night from what myself and others have done.

Speaker 1: 47:15

But the combination of caffeine and food, you know, sitting down in the staff room and having a coffee and chocolate or cookies or something, and what the combination of those things is doing to our metabolism, you know, is the food impacting the effect of the caffeine or vice versa? Yeah, and so not at all to say that that's a bad thing to do, but we just don't know, we don't know.

Speaker 2: 47:38

That's what research is about. Yeah, and hopefully we will know. We've got to learn.

Speaker 1: 47:42

And then inform people on maybe the best way to optimize that behavior.

Speaker 2: 47:46

Yeah, who knows, down the track we might be saying to someone you know what, you're probably better off having a caffeine. I know Dr Alan Flanagan is someone who says instead of eating, you're probably better off having small amounts of caffeine going through your system all the time. When I heard that, I thought, well, what do you mean? Caffeine overnight? And he goes. Well, what's the worst of the two evils like, really, when you look at it and I thought you know what? Because caffeine can be an appetite suppressant as well, to stop you from actually eating. It's an interesting one. I love the theory. Well, I'll look forward to seeing what actually comes out of that as well. Now your paper also suggests that workplace interventions could help shift workers to eat healthier. What is a realistic policy or a change that an employer could actually implement?

Speaker 1: 48:25

I mean at the base level, I think, chatting about food and workplace having a responsibility and talking about their responsibility for what people are eating and when We've talked about the workplace supplying different foods, and that's a huge one. So changing what's in the vending machines or adding to the vending machines maybe If we could change break times to align with when people ideally it's better to be eating, that would be great, Very unrealistic. So I think yeah, it's the education and awareness of food intake at night and the supplying different foods and also ways to store food.

Speaker 2: 49:06

I just wonder, if we were to put the vending machine into a place that's got healthy food in it, whether the food would go off because people wouldn't touch it. I think there's a company in America or the UK that tried this by putting healthy vending machines into 24 7 workplaces. I haven't followed up. I wonder how they're going as to whether people use it as a choice or whether it just didn't work because people as you've said at the very beginning of this podcast, that people just resign themselves to the fact that they're a shift worker, so they eat unhealthy and they're going to be unhealthy. It's quite interesting, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 49:38

I think I'd want to add to vending machines in my ideal world, rather than taking away like I would never want to take away the delicious foods in vending machines, but add some other options, just so there is that choice, Because during the day, you know, if we don't like what's at a vending machine, we could find another one or walk down the road to a servo or a Coles or something that's open, a deli. I think the difference at night is that that's the only option and providing more choice. So you know it's not our job to say definitely eat this, but people deserve to have the same options that you would have during the day.

Speaker 2: 50:15

Yeah, now we're in Australia, but I talk about education. If you look at a 7-Eleven, people would go into a 7-Eleven and the first thing they see when they walk in is the donuts and everything else like that. But 7-Eleven get fresh sandwiches and wraps dropped every single day and you could literally whiz by a 7-Eleven and grab those fresh sandwiches or a wrap and take it with you on the road, no problems. Or you could grab that with what they're there. Not only are they delicious, but they're quite cheap as well, considering what's there, and they're fresh every single day and I think people don't realize that they're there, but they tend to gravitate towards. I'm on night shift. Got to be a pine sauce, got to get a sausage roll, got to get a donut, got to grab a can of Monster to go with that. But anyway, have you come across workplaces that have actually successfully implemented strategies for their employees around eating habits? And, if you have, what can we learn from those?

Speaker 1: 51:08

There's a study that I know of that's looked at healthy vending machines.

Speaker 1: 51:13

I think they weren't super successful but I think it was a sort of direct swap of foods that people were eating to.

Speaker 1: 51:21

You know, maybe a vending machine of fruit, and it sort of wasn't done in the most ideal way In terms of actually organizations that I know of, I know of a lot where employers and the wellness teams chat about nutrition as nutritionists, as part of teams, and so I think the sort of education piece around what are healthy foods and what the best things to be doing is there in a lot of workplaces could be improved and could be added to a lot.

Speaker 1: 51:48

But is there it's adding that piece about timing and optimizing eating behaviors and also the kind of okay, we have a nutritionist who can tell you the best thing to eat, but that's not available at night anyway. So I don't know of any workplaces and there may be some, but I don't know of any that are doing that. In Australia A lot have sort of starting to work with to try and get the nutrition piece going, so implementing it into training new workers or young shift workers coming in, but again it sort of all comes back to we need the workplaces to be providing different foods or options as well.

Speaker 2: 52:27

Yeah with that. And I also think your policy on making sure and I know you think it's unrealistic but to have policies where people are at least getting a main break before midnight to get that food in For staff health and welfare, I think that's really important that you go instead of just going oh, charlotte, you've got your break at 2am, roger, you've got your break at 10. Maybe swap it around the next night or whatever. This is how it's got to go, so that we're at least giving people the opportunity or giving people that main break before midnight. Before that window of, we really should not be eating at this time. If you could make one major policy change to support a shift worker's nutrition, what would it be?

Speaker 1: 53:10

I think I'd really and again, it's probably coming from my researcher brain but would really want the education and training piece to be a sort of mandatory part of any shift working roles, part of any role really. And if they all added, you know, lifting and there's how we communicate and all of those things, and if we add in healthy nutrition on shift and that that was part of policy that everyone had to sort of think about, that was part of policy that everyone had to sort of think about that, because we know it impacts long-term health and wellbeing but also our on-shift performance and productivity and safety. And so if we can get diet right and if we can optimize that, we're having improvements to all parts of life for a shift worker. And so, yeah, if I could get in and be right at the start of training for new shift workers in companies, but also even at university level, in nursing degrees, for example, we could get in and really chat about the best ways to do this from the start, I think that would be ideal.

Speaker 2: 54:11

Spot on, totally agree with you on that. It just comes down to education, because, without any doubt whatsoever, I started shift work nearly 41 years ago now and I worked through my whole entire career. I was in the police. I was never, ever, once ever educated on how to go about doing shift work, whether it was about sleep, whether it was about hydration, whether it was about stress management. I can tell you now I know even now that people are not educated. Every client that's come to me, one of the questions that I ask them is what education have you had around how to do shift work, how to optimize your life around shift work? No one, ever.

Speaker 2: 54:50

That's why I love what you guys are doing over there in just getting the information out there.

Speaker 2: 54:55

Then you've got people like me that have got lived experience and are actually talking about this as well, with social media presence and getting it out there to educate people with what you amazing people are doing over there to get that information out, interpret it in a realistic environment, so I can look at what you've come up with research. Like, as you've said, ideally you'd say to people you can't have a break after midnight, but you know that in a real lived experience. You have to have breaks all night. We can manipulate that and I can make suggestions and recommendations around that based on what the research is telling us, and I think this is what is really important. But I think the policy change, my policy change, would be that every shift worker that goes into shift work, it would be compulsory for them to do some form of education around how to optimize their life around shift work, because it has that much of an impact on people. That would be my policy change. I know you'll agree with that for sure.

Speaker 1: 55:55

Yeah, definitely no-transcript target establishing healthy habits from the start of your shift working journey and, really, you know, making those accessible to people that are just starting out, people at university who are going into shift working careers but, like you said, really getting into healthy habits early.

Speaker 2: 56:45

If I said to you, I've got a bucket of money here for you. What area of research would you absolutely love to explore when it comes to shift workers eating behavior?

Speaker 1: 56:54

I mean, my ideal is working out what the healthiest snack is to have at night. What is the best option? That sounds like something we should know and I agree, but it's something that we don't know from the research. We don't know. Yeah, I want to look at different types of food, different timing. So what time is best for a snack at night, adding caffeine, like we talked about, and that's caffeine in foods like chocolate, but then also coffee and food? But all these different ways of coming together and say, okay, this is the ideal thing to eat at night and this is the ideal time, how do we get that into workplaces at the workplace organizational level?

Speaker 2: 57:33

and also let's promote that to chip workers don't you dare tell anybody else, because you and I are going to market this product and make ourselves multi-millionaires at the same time, because we will come out with the night shift snack and that's what it'll be, whether it's a bar, whether it's a mix, a blend or whatever it is and we'll put our names on it and we'll just make an absolute fortune. I think that's the best way to go. Love it, charlotte. Thank you so much. Finally, what is one takeaway that you want shift workers to remember from your research in your journey? What you've learned in everything? What is there one takeaway that you want a shift worker to understand that's so important to their wellbeing?

Speaker 1: 58:11

That the timing of food intake matters, that it's so important and it underpins all the sort of health and performance impacts of shift work is all of it can kind of lead back to eating at night Also that I know saying that, but that's not an easy thing to change and to do differently. But really trying to reduce your food intake at night and optimize that with a sort of smaller snack and not a meal yeah, also, plug research healthyshiftworkcom, where we have our resources that I talked about that are co-designed with shift workers yeah, I guess also a plug or a thank you to you for all the work you do and I love being able to learn from what you talk about and understand more about the lived experience of shift workers. That's always so important to have embedded into the research that we do to make sure we're answering the questions that matter for people.

Speaker 2: 59:02

Thank you. I do sincerely appreciate that. Now I attended the launch of your Healthy Shift work. Tell us what it is that you've done. You've sort of touched on it and how important it is, because you've been working on this for years and you've got the backing of universities, which just leaves me in a bit of a trail behind, but I was excited to see it. It freaked me out a little bit because of what I'm doing and what I want to do, but at the end of the day, we know that somewhere between 18% and 22% of the world's population are shift workers. So let's get as much information out there for the shift workers as we can. Charlotte, talk about it and tell us about it.

Speaker 1: 59:38

Yeah, so healthyshiftworkcomau is our website where we have a whole range of information about sleep, nutrition and physical activity targeted for shift workers and we have some infographics on there that you can download on sleep, nutrition and physical activity and, like I said earlier, they're all co-designed with shift workers. So we, as researchers, had huge input from young shift workers, experienced shift workers, ex-shift workers on what information would be useful, what people wanted to know, what was relevant to shift work, what wasn't, and created these resources based on that. And this was from funding from a few different funding bodies to support this and through the Appleton Institute at Central Queensland Uni where we work. Yeah, we've officially launched our website and our resources and we're really hoping that they help, that they can be widely distributed to people, so they're all free to download and they're started off by really wanting to target young shift workers, so people just entering the workforce to establish those healthy habits. But the information is relevant to everyone who is a shift worker and who wants to understand more about these behaviours.

Speaker 1: 1:00:50

Yeah, we're really hopeful that we get shift workers engaged. We've also got information about four workplaces and strategies that workplaces can implement. So we also want to target the workplace as well, and we've talked a lot about how it's the workplace and organization as well need to play a part in this, and so we've got information for organizations as well, and we're really keen to work with organizations to tailor the resources specifically for workplaces. We could come and do talks, anything that we can do to really get that information out there, and I think it really complements nicely the work you do and this huge platform you have Blue Shift Workers, this community you've built and, yeah, definitely don't see it as competing although that is a fun idea to be fighting for health Friendly competition where we're all wanting the best for shift workers and wanting to optimize health how we can, and, yeah, we're all sort of going for the same goal.

Speaker 2: 1:01:52

We are. We just want to make shift workers healthier, and people send me messages and say, oh, I can't thank you enough for the information that you've put out there and helped. And I think, do you know what? If you've helped one person, then you've actually achieved and you've gone in the right direction to help a shift worker to thrive, because that's your passion, that's my passion, that's everyone's passion.

Speaker 2: 1:02:12

I know in the launch there was some quite good names in the launch there as well, myself included, of course. Dr Ian Dunican was in there as well and of course, he does a lot of work with the FIFOs. He's a well-respected researcher as well and has released a fantastic book. If you haven't had a chance to have a look at it, have a read of that. It's great Sleep and Shift Work and I think it's really, really good.

Speaker 2: 1:02:32

But, charlotte, I'm very indebted to you for giving up your time. I hope we can continue to communicate over the years in relation to the work that you and your team, particularly your honours student and, as she's going, in relation to the caffeine and food, because that's really exciting that maybe implementing caffeine is the right way to go or to come up with the ultimate snack that you and I are going to market and no one else is going to know about. Obviously, charlotte, thank you. And as a gift for coming onto the show, because I'm a multi-billionaire, if I bought you a house anywhere in the world, but you have to live in it for six months of the year, I'll either buy it or I'll build it and you get to live in it right, but you have to live in it for six months of the year. Whether you're a winter person or a summer person, where is your dream destination to go and live and shut down from this research, for six months of the year?

Speaker 1: 1:03:20

I mean, I think I would still want to bring my laptop and do some research, but it's in the DNA, isn't it? I'm quite a nerd, but, given we've been talking about food, I think the best food I've had is France, and so, yeah, the pastries, crepes, the yeah, excellent food and wine, and so, yeah, I'd be happy with anywhere in France really the south of France, somewhere in the countryside in France.

Speaker 2: 1:03:45

we'll do that.

Speaker 1: 1:03:46

Yeah, like countryside, just beautiful old building, cobblestone. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:03:50

Beautiful green fields and all that beautiful wine that you can have out there. Charlotte, thank you so much. Please, on behalf of all the shift workers and that's just not me myself, but also everyone that's listening we appreciate you and the work that you are actually doing on behalf of our shift workers to optimize our lives and make it better for us. Where can people find you? And also, are you happy to hear from people like shift workers to reach out with any ideas, suggestions or anything like that that they've got as part of your work? Or if you're looking for people, obviously come back through me and I'll put it out there for them.

Speaker 1: 1:04:27

Yeah, thank you. I'm on Instagram, at DrCharlotteGookter, linkedin, if you search my name and then my email cgookter at cqeduau. More than happy to hear from people, I want to make sure that all the research I do is informed by problems you're facing or questions that you have, and so really happy to chat anytime, happy to come to organizations and chat and learn as well. So, yeah, please reach out.

Speaker 2: 1:04:59

Absolutely Well done, Charlotte. Thank you so much for being on the show. It's been fantastic and we'll talk to you again in the very near future, no doubt.

Speaker 1: 1:05:07

Thanks so much.

Speaker 2: 1:05:08

And there you have it. That's Dr Charlotte Gupta Fantastic chat. I could literally pick about five or six topics out of that podcast and I could have made a whole new podcast out of each of them, and maybe one day we actually will. I look forward to the research from an honest student in relation to the caffeine, developing that ultimate snack and becoming a multi-millionaire and being able to retire. We'll move on from that, but anyway, the bottom line is great chat.

Speaker 2: 1:05:37

All of the links to Charlotte I will put into the show notes with what they're doing. You can go there. If you got any value out of the podcast, please don't forget hit follow, share it, share it with other people. All I want to do is get evidence-based strategies out there for shift workers so that we learn the optimal way to go about doing shift work, because people like Dr Charlotte Gupta and her team are doing a lot of research and that research will literally just sit in journals if it's not put out by people like myself, speaking to them and getting it in their own terms so that you can hear exactly what the latest research is telling us about it.

Speaker 2: 1:06:20

Thanks very much and I'll catch you on the next one. 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.