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 the Healthy Shift podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:59

As you know, my name is Roger Sutherland and I'm the host. I love to bring evidence-based strategies to shift workers. I really do to try and help them and I've helped literally hundreds of people one-to-one. But I just want to package a number of things up today, and that is how shift timing impacts your health and what the science is now showing us in relation to this. Now, I've been a shift worker myself for over 40 years and I know firsthand how much shift work can literally knock you around, not only physically, not only mentally, but also emotionally, and there's reasons for that. So today we're going to talk about something that's really mentally but also emotionally, and there's reasons for that. So today we're going to talk about something that's really important but it just literally doesn't get enough attention, and that is how the timing of your shifts can actually affect your long-term health, especially your risk of things like weight gain, diabetes and even heart disease all very, very common in our shift working community. Now, this isn't just theory, guys. There's a growing body of research showing how shift work is disrupting our body's natural rhythm and how that disruption can mess with your metabolism, your hormones and even how your body literally processes or metabolizes and stores the food that it is consuming. So let's break it all down into plain language, something that's really easy for you to understand.

Speaker 1: 3:23

First of all, what are circadian rhythms? Your body runs on a 24-hour internal clock. Every day, 24 hours, same time, same. It's just doing the same thing over and over again, and this is called your circadian rhythm. It's controlling things like your sleep, your hormones, it controls your digestion. It even controls your body's temperature.

Speaker 1: 3:46

Now the problem that we have, as shift workers that are going about this without knowledge, is shift work literally throws that rhythm out of whack, because when you work nights or rotate shifts quickly, your body can't keep up and it doesn't know when to be alert or when to rest, which is the very reason why sometimes, in the middle of the day, you feel like you are literally up and about, and then you can crash. And then at night, you can feel the same. And this is because of that disruption to that circadian rhythm, because your body literally doesn't know where bout and then you can crash. And then at night, you can feel the same. And this is because of that disruption to that circadian rhythm, because your body literally doesn't know where it's supposed to be at in time or space. It definitely doesn't know when to eat or what to do with the food when you give it to it. So when you eat, it's confused. Why are you eating at this time? This is a problem. It doesn't know what to do or it's got to fire the systems up. By the time it's confused, why are you eating it this time? This is a problem. It doesn't know what to do or it's got to fire the systems up. By the time it's fired the systems up, the food's already passed through and it's been stored because it wasn't needed, and this is the problem.

Speaker 1: 4:47

So what is research telling us? Well, in 2023, there was a review in the Lancet that actually looked at multiple studies and found something pretty shocking, and that is that night shift workers are at a much higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease. And here is why Because your insulin sensitivity drops at night. What this means is, when you eat during a night shift, your body doesn't know how to handle the sugar as well as it does during the day. Your cortisol levels will stay higher at night. That's your stress hormone. Even though you don't feel stressed, your body is stressed because it's out of sync, and what this does is it makes it easier for your body to store fat, and it gets stored where Around your belly. Ever noticed the weight gain that's gone on around your belly since you started shift work? Nod, that's right. And leptin and ghrelin, which are both our hunger and satiety hormones, get completely out of balance, and what this means is that you feel hungrier, even when your body literally doesn't need more food. It is making you feel hungry and that's literally hormonal. And this actually gets worse with rotating shifts and especially when they flip too fast or rotate backwards, and I'll talk about that shortly.

Speaker 1: 6:13

So I'll give you a real-life example, because I can remember during my 30s, when I was on fast rotating rosters days, nights, split shifts, twilight shifts, all over the place and what I was doing was flipping my meals and I was eating during night shifts. Well, I was sleeping during the day, so surely I'd have to eat at nine. And this is what we do, don't we? I was barely sleeping and I couldn't understand why I was gaining weight, despite being so goddamn active just in my job At the time. I was a dog handler, very active but I couldn't work out why I was gaining weight and why I was freezing up. My body was just freezing up in a really bad way. The truth is, my body was fighting against me. It didn't know if it was lunchtime, if it was bedtime or what it was, if it was whatever it was in between. But now I know why, and that means I can help you to learn too.

Speaker 1: 7:12

So what can you do? You might not be able to change your shifts, but you absolutely have to take responsibility and can reduce the impact. So what you need to do is you need to time your meals carefully. Try avoiding big meals between 9pm at night and 6am If possible. Try and fast from 9pm at night until 6am in the morning. This will reduce weight gain like you would not believe, and if you're a female, ladies, I can tell you categorically this will make an enormous difference to your gas, bloating and digestive issues that you all seem to suffer from on night shift as well.

Speaker 1: 7:56

If you need to snack, if you need to have something, just stick to a light, high-protein snack instead. Just cheese, a couple of pieces of cheese with a few crackers. Have a Yopro yogurt with some protein powder in it, something like that, just a protein shake, something light, that will slip through your system really quite easily. We certainly don't eat a main meal between 9pm at night and 6am in the morning. The next thing we need to do is we need to use our light to our advantage, because bright light any time during your shift will keep your body alert. But you've got to start turning your lights down when you finish so that it starts to wind you down and get you ready for sleep.

Speaker 1: 8:44

On that, getting ready for sleep, you need a wind-down routine after night shift. You need a routine because our body thrives on routine. Once you put a routine in place, it starts to recognize that routine and will wind down with you. But when you go to bed, we need blackout curtains, not a darkish room blacked out. And it might help for you to take a small amount of melatonin coming out of night shift for you to go and sleep. That is after you've consulted your physician and got a quality melatonin, and we don't take more because it's not a sleeping tablet, it's a darkness signaler. So we just take around about half a milligram to one milligram and to give you an example, around about half a milligram to one milligram and to give you an example, naturally, your body only produces one milligram of melatonin. That's all it needs. So I think the body will know better than you buying more. All right, and we've got to reduce these screens before bed because it's inhibiting melatonin.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Now the other thing that we need to do is we need to be consistent wherever we can. If you're on nights, we need to try and keep our meals, our sleep times and our activity at roughly the same time every single day, even on our days off. If we do that, it cues our circadian rhythm. The three main zeitgebers or time cues for our circadian rhythm is light, movement and nutrient timing. If you keep those roughly the same time every single day, you will find that your body will really respond well, will really respond well.

Speaker 1: 10:44

The other thing that I would be considering if I was you, because I use it is to consider creatine, because we've got some really good new research that suggests that creatine might actually help support your mental clarity and wakefulness during those long night shifts. But I'm going to cover more of that. I've covered it plenty of times on socials, but I'm going to cover more of that as we get more information around this. But it's really important because creatine is shown to be less in females, naturally, than it is in males. So it's more important for females to supplement creatine than it is for males. But the more that we supplement, the more chance it's got of crossing the blood-brain barrier and going into our brain and actually bolstering up our creatine levels in our brain. If you're not on creatine, you've got to question why Every single person on this planet should be on creatine every single day.

Speaker 1: 11:36

Now let's just give a quick tip about these rotating shifts. If you are in a role or you are in a position where you can advocate for forward rotating shifts, now what I mean by forward rotating shifts is it means you go from days into afternoons, into nights. So you're going in a forward rotation You're advancing. Some people do days, nights, days off. That's okay. That's called a forward rotation. Where we have problems is when we do a backward rotation Hello, quick changeovers where we do those afternoon shifts into day shifts. If someone died and put me in charge, they'd be banned immediately for the impacts that they have on our health. They are savage and they don't help our health in any way whatsoever. Your body will adjust much better on a forward rotation than it will on a backward rotation and it helps to gradually shift your natural rhythm instead of leaving it with absolutely no idea where you're at Now.

Speaker 1: 12:47

To wrap this up, because it's only a short episode, shift work isn't going anywhere and for many of you it's not a choice. It's actually a calling and I acknowledge that. But we don't have to just accept the health risks as part of our job and I want to be clear on that as well Because with the right strategies and the right support, you can shift your health in the right direction, even while the clock is working against you. I've helped literally hundreds of shift workers just like you to unpack all of this with simple strategies that suits your lifestyle, not generic information stuff that suits your life. We look at your home life, your social life, your work life and we unpack that and simplify it with simple strategies. This is not about dieting. This is not about counting macros and weighing yourself for photos and everything else. This is literally about just putting simple habits in place for the enormous impact that it actually has, because the reason why you're heading in the wrong direction is because you're doing it all wrong, but you don't know because you haven't been educated. Now I can help you to unpack all of this with my one-to-one coaching. There's a link to my coaching page in the show notes, and I encourage you strongly to do something today before it gets out of control, because once it gets out of control, it's such an overwhelming battle to find your way back now.

Speaker 1: 14:21

If this episode helped you, can you do me a favor? Can you please share it with a colleague or someone who you really care about, who works shifts? Oh, and if you want more support, come and join us inside the community of shift workers that I've built online and it's called the Shift Workers Collective. It's my private online community just for shift workers just like you, and you'll find a link in the show notes or, if you like, go to ahealthyshiftcom. That's ahealthyshiftcom and you'll see all the information there. There's a link up the top. Thanks again for listening. Please, I beg you, look after yourself and remember a healthy shift is a better shift. 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.