Speaker 1: 1:17

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

Speaker 1: 2:01

Now, if you've ever looked at your phone at night and thought it's just light, what's the big deal? It doesn't impact on my sleep. Well, you're not alone. But in this episode, I want to explain exactly why the light that you're sitting under after dark could be messing with your biology in ways that you will definitely not realize, and then I'll be talking about what there is that we can actually do about it. Now, we're not talking about sleep here. I want to be very clear on this, because you're going to come back at me and say I can look at my phone and then just roll over and go to sleep, and I agree, I can do the same. Everybody can do that because that's called sleep pressure and that builds up over a period of time during the day to the stage where we end up just falling asleep because of the sleep pressure. But I've discussed in many podcasts before around the impact that this blue light is actually having on us with our melatonin. But let's break down the impact that blue light is having on us and let's start at the very beginning.

Speaker 1: 3:08

So what is blue light? I want people to understand this. What is blue light? Now here's something that a lot of people just don't know about it. The blue light isn't actually blue. It's actually hidden within the white light spectrum. Now, the light coming from your ceiling, your phone, your TV it looks white, but inside that white is a full spectrum of colors and the blue is one of the strongest colors in there. Now I want you to think when you shine a torch onto a prism and we've all seen that while we've been at school shine a torch onto a prism, the light that comes out of it splits into a rainbow of colors. One of those colors is blue. And where does that come from? It comes from within that white light that's being shone into it and generally, the whiter the light, the more blue there actually is in it, and this is something that is super important for people to actually understand, all right.

Speaker 1: 4:13

So during the day, we actually need that blue light. It's super important because it hits out. I'm not going to go into the science of it, but it hits a cell in our eye which is very, very sensitive to a particular spectrum of blue. Now, this is not our rods and cones, this is actually a cell which is contained within the eyeball that is extremely sensitive to a particular spectrum of blue and when that is hit with blue, it sends a signal through to the brain that it's daytime. You're starting to get the picture now. So during the day that cell sees blue and it goes everybody it's daytime out there. So we shut down all of the night processes and then we have all of our daytime processes running, which gets us up and about. It gets rid of all of that brain fog. It gets rid of all that fatigue, that really really bad feeling that we all get, particularly as shift workers. So it's really really important because during the day we need that blue light. It wakes us up, it actually boosts our mood, it improves our focus as well as our energy, and it tells the brain okay, it's daytime, get going. And it suppresses melatonin. Keep that in mind. It's suppressing that melatonin. Now here's the problem At night, the very same blue light is sending the same message to the brain. It's telling your body it's daytime, and that's where the problems begin, even though your eye is looking outside and it can see that it's dark, because you're under this blue rich light which is actually hitting that cell in the eye, which is called our intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cell. It's actually hitting that cell and it's telling it that it's daytime. That's where the problem begins.

Speaker 1: 6:20

Now, what I want to do is I just want to give you a really powerful example to help you to understand why this blue light is so detrimental to us, and I'm going to give you an example from real studies. Now there was a group of healthy young adults that were put into a room at 8 pm at night, just sitting there, and they were under standard blue rich LED lights the same lights that you have in your home, all right around, and the same lights that you have in your workplace. And this is what they observed Within a few hours, their blood sugar spiked. Interesting, their insulin, which is the hormone that controls blood sugar, stopped working properly and they were showing signs of pre-diabetes. And this is just from sitting under the light. The very next night in the same room, with the same people, with the same brightness, but this time they were put under blue free LED lights, so lights that had zero blue in them. And guess what you got it? There was no blood sugar spike, there was no insulin resistance, and the only thing that had changed in that scenario was the type of light that was lighting the room. And they said they weren't as hungry. In fact, we have later studies that have found that people working night shifts high shift workers under that blue rich light ate twice as many snacks compared to when they worked under blue free lighting.

Speaker 1: 8:03

Now I want you to think of all you people out there that are working under this blue rich light in your police stations, paramedics working in the ambulances, let's think about firemen that are working within their offices and people in call centres and on planes Everywhere where there's light, there's blue inside that light and it's creating hunger for us. Now we know that when we work under blue-free lighting which we don't have, and I mean it's available, but they're not putting it into these workplaces. It's actually impacting on your health in so many ways. We know that it's not about how lighting affects sleep, and when these work centers actually test light, they're testing the lux, they're testing the brightness of the light. No one's using a spectrometer and telling you how much blue is in it, are they? They know damn well that the blue light is inhibiting your health and causing you big problems, but they're just testing for light levels and this is the wrong way to go about testing it light levels and this is the wrong way to go about testing it. We know statistically that blue light doesn't have any statistical significance on the impact of us going to sleep. We know that. So while they say blue light inhibits sleep, or people shouldn't use blue light, we all think sleep. Oh, it doesn't impact my sleep, so I'm not one of them, so I don't have to worry about it. Wrong, this is where you're wrong and very, very wrong, because blue light at night does suppress melatonin, and melatonin is not just our sleep hormone or the hormone that signals darkness to the body. It's really, really critical for regulating our metabolism. It also protects against cancer and it supports our immune system. So you can see that, with that blue light impacting on all of that, this is why, as shift workers, we end up with cancers, we end up sick and we end up overweight, and this is one of the main reasons. Let that be a brain explosion for you.

Speaker 1: 10:15

Now, one of the biggest problems that we have today is light pollution, and we have the government's big mistake. And here's the thing that really, really frustrates me. The government has banned incandescent light bulbs. Banned them the old school warm glowing lights because they said it's to save energy. But what you don't understand is those lights were actually really good for us. They produced infrared light, which helps with cell repair, energy production and even healing, and they had very, very low levels of actual blue light in them, which made them much safer for us to use at night.

Speaker 1: 10:58

But now we're flooded with cheap and energy efficient blue rich LEDs that may save a bit of power, but they're harming your health in ways that no one else is talking about, and it's a really short-sighted move. We're trying to help an obesity crisis, we're trying to make people healthier, but we're getting rid of incandescent light and we're putting the blue lights over people's heads, and this is a massive problem. We've actually traded healthy light for harmful light, which is impacting on our circadian rhythms. Healthy light for harmful light, which is impacting on our circadian rhythms, and you are exposing yourself to it every single night in your home, on the street, in the supermarket, looking at your phone, watching TV. It's everywhere and it's hurting you and it's hurting you bad. So when we look at a lot of the problems that we have in society today with cancers and things we blame processed foods Sure, we're eating more processed foods. The reason why we're doing that is because we're exposed to blue light and we're hungrier, and that's one of the biggest problems, and this is just starting to leak out. I'm deep diving into this research at the moment. This is starting to leak out and I can tell you it's only going to be a matter of time before one workplace is actually taken to task over this, because someone's going to end up suing them for harming their health because of the lighting that's provided in their workplace. Watch this space.

Speaker 1: 12:30

So how does light at night actually hurt our body? So let's list it out. Quite simply, because exposure to blue, rich light at night can and does spike your blood sugar. It increases insulin resistance. It makes you crave and eat more, it suppresses melatonin, it disrupts your hormones, it lowers your immune function, it increases inflammation. It raises your immune function. It increases inflammation, it raises your risk of obesity and diabetes. It increases the risk of hormone-related cancers like breast cancer, prostate cancer and bowel cancer, which are extremely high in shift workers, and it interferes with your mental health. Now, that's a long list, and the science is actually stacking up really quickly in relation to this.

Speaker 1: 13:17

So what can we do? Well, here's the good news you can yourself fix this and it's totally in your control. Number one we need to get outside in the daylight early, at the start of the day, especially in the first half of the morning. Get out and get that blue light so it resynchronizes that circadian rhythm, so that all of those hormones that need to be released are being released at the right time of the day. This also helps to build up your resistance to the blue light at night as well, but that's very complicated. But the natural blue light during the day helps set your internal body clock and keeps your hormones all in rhythm, and this is how you biologically function well.

Speaker 1: 14:02

And step two this is the critical one we have to block that blue light after sundown. Now this means we need to switch to warm blue lighting after sundown. You should be using blue light blocking glasses at night and not the clear lenses that your optometrist gives you. They tell you it's got a blue filter on it. It's not good enough. They've got to be red or amber lensed. That's what they need to be. Or you can use red or amber nightlights in your house and those that follow me on Instagram will know that I've shown my lounge room many times with just its red and amber lights and that's all we use at night. And you've got to ditch those bright white LEDs in your roof because they are actually literally harming your health, especially in your bedroom or your living space. Turning those on at night is a hazard. It's that simple, and mark my words. In five years time, those LED lights will come with warnings on them hazardous if turned on at night. Mark my words.

Speaker 1: 15:12

Your biology is actually built for the rhythms of natural light day and night and that's how the circadian rhythm functions. And when you honor that, everything from your energy, your appetite, your metabolism, your mood, everything all starts working extremely well. And ever since I've started really controlling the light in our house. My sleep has improved out of sight, and when I say controlling the light, our house, my sleep has improved out of sight. And when I say controlling the light, our bedroom is pitch black now. We have no light around the window, no light from any LED, no clocks, no, nothing. Nothing in the bedroom at all that provides any light at all, and I've stubbed my toe many a time going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. But it's pitch black and my sleep has improved out of sight, because light pollution from outside, from those streetlights and things like that, is actually doing you harm and impacting on your sleep.

Speaker 1: 16:18

We need to switch to those warm, low blue or zero blue lights after sundown.

Speaker 1: 16:25

It's really important. Now. I just want to say this If you take one thing away from this episode, let it be this that you, as a human, have a right to healthy light in your workplace and also at home, and the kind of light that you are exposed to matters more than you will ever know and more than you ever think. To guide you and to help you, I have listed all of the products that I personally recommend and use, including healthy lighting options like zero blue sensor lights or zero blue lighting book readers things like that Blue blocking tools and glasses are on the recommended product page under the resources on my website. If you go to my website at a healthyshiftcom and you go up to the top and you see resources and then you go down, you'll see there's a page there recommended products and I've tested those products so you don't have to. I desperately need you to protect your light, protect your health. So if this episode has helped you, share it with a fellow shift worker and make sure that you follow the show for more evidence-based, real-world advice. Fellow shift worker, and make sure that you follow the show for more evidence-based, real-world advice to help you thrive and not just survive on your shift work.

Speaker 1: 17:49

Thanks for listening. Turn off the lights. 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 a healthyyshiftcom. I'll catch you on the next one.