Welcome And Mission

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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 well-being 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's Roger Sutherland, and I will be your guide in shift work health and well-being. And in particular, today I want to talk about a topic that is really important for you to understand. Now I'm on a bit of a rant about this at the moment. I won't go on about blue light, but I am going to go on about the difference between sleep homeostat and natural sleep onset because there is a lot of misinformation out there at the moment, and I'm here to correct it. Now, the one thing that I want you to really understand is this lying in bed and looking at your phone at night before you go to sleep is severely detrimental to your health. Now I know that there's been some influencers out there at the moment that are talking about science and saying that there's actually no evidence to say that blue light inhibits the onset of sleep. And I'm going to confirm that that's actually the case. It is 100% correct that the blue light from your phone or devices or lighting does not inhibit the onset of sleep. It only inhibits it by about seven minutes. And that is not statistically significant, which is the science that they're relying on to try and tell you that it's okay to be using your phone. But I'm going to talk about something that is really, really important for you, particularly as a shift worker, to understand. And this is something that I want you to really pay attention to. It's a short episode, it's going to be a banging episode. And I want you to sit down, take note of exactly what I am telling you, because this is not only pertinent for shift workers, this is pertinent for every single person that is a human being and listening to this today. Now, as we go through

Sleep Pressure Versus Sleep Onset

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the day, our sleep pressure builds, and it's called a sleep homeostat. And it's important for people to understand that this sleep pressure continues to build until we fall asleep. Now, as shift workers, what actually happens is we are really busy in our job and we get tired and more and more tired as we go on during the day. Now, to explain this in quite simple terms for you, we have a chemical in our bloodstream which is called adenosine. And adenosine continues to build throughout the course of the day and it attaches to the brain. And the more adenosine that there actually is attached to the brain, the tier you actually feel. This is why shift workers drink a lot of caffeine. Because caffeine, the caffeine molecule, imitates the adenosine molecule and attaches to the adenosine receptor. And what it does is it literally stops adenosine from attaching to the brain and making you feel tired. So it doesn't so much stimulate you. What it actually does is inhibits the onset of sleep. But what happens is when we stop drinking caffeine during the night or during the day or at certain times, those molecules fall, those caffeine molecules fall away from the adenosine receptor on the brain. And then all of that adenosine that is actually built up in our body then rushes to the brain and attaches to the brain. And then we get very tired. Now, I want you to think about what happens here. When you are shift working and you're working rotating shifts and you're not getting good restorative sleep and you get tired, that sleep homeostat, that pressure to sleep, suddenly starts to build and it builds and builds and builds. And this is the reason why you think that looking at your phone in bed doesn't inhibit your sleep. Because what it actually does is you are exhausted. And that sleep pressure, so you look at your phone, you think that you are relaxing by looking at your phone, but you're actually not. You're stimulating yourself, and you're stimulating yourself with blue light as well. But what actually happens is you fall asleep anyway when you are tired because you are exhausted. But this is not natural restorative sleep. And this is something that we need people to really understand, and I want you to understand with this episode of the podcast today. And I want to talk about the difference between falling asleep because of that sleep pressure, which nearly every single one of you do. You get to the end of the day and you lie in bed looking at your phone until you feel tired, and then you roll over and you go to sleep. And that's great. You do go to sleep. But

Adenosine, Caffeine And Fatigue

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you got any idea how many people that I communicate with that say, yeah, I fall asleep but I don't stay asleep, or I wake up tired, I don't really wake up with good, you know, having had good sleep. I oh Roger I'm not a good sleeper. That's bullshit. And I'm calling you out on that. What it is is you haven't got your light diet right, and you're lying in bed and you're looking at your phone and you're getting that blue light straight into your eye. When you understand the biology behind exactly what is happening here, you then start to understand why you should never be looking at your phone or watching TV while you're in bed. And there's a reason. Our eye that triggers our circadian rhythm only sees blue. I want you to understand that it only sees the 480 nanometers of blue, and it does that through receptors that are in our eyeball, right next to the retina, that has melanopsin in it, and it only sees the blue. So when you're holding your phone up to your eyes, about eight inches from your eye, what you're doing is you're putting blue light into your eye. Now, you might say, Yeah, but I can go to sleep, and that's true, you can. But the biggest problem that you've actually got there is the next thing that happens is that blue light is telling your supra cosmetic nucleus that it is still daytime outside. And when it's telling it it's still daytime, what it does is it phase shifts your circadian rhythm. And when it phase shifts your circadian rhythm, you're not actually ready for sleep because our circadian rhythm literally functions on light signals to start off with, and it's done through that center in our eye. And what are you doing? Holding your phone and looking at your phone with your eye. Or you're getting that blue light in your eye from the lights by your bed or from the TV. Now you think you need the TV to relax, but it's not. And what it's actually doing is it's stimulating you and creating issues down the track in your sleep. You're not getting that good restorative sleep that you actually need. The other thing that's really important to understand is when there's blue light present, which is coming from your phone, that your eye sees and tells your um pineal gland, it doesn't release melatonin. And so therefore, you are sleeping on sleep pressure, but once that sleep pressure's gone, that's when you wake up. And understand that when you go to sleep, one of the first things that happens is the adenosine is released from the brain, which is what um which is why you wake up. It's one of the first functions. So then you wake and you can't go back to sleep because that blue light from your eye has face shifted your circadian rhythm. And this is the problem that people have and why they're such poor sleepers. And what I need people to understand is that that melatonin also is our free radical eradicator in our bloodstream. We need melatonin running through our bloodstream while we are sleeping because research is now showing that what melatonin actually does is it eradicates cancer cells. And this is one of the main reasons why shift workers in particular and the incidence of cancer in life every day today has actually elevated so

Why Phones At Night Mislead You

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substantially. It's not about the foods you're eating, it's not about artificial preservatives and highly processed foods and and et cetera, et cetera. It's about the light diet because of the melatonin. And it's one of the biggest problems that we have, our exposure to artificial light at night. Now we are a diurnal creature, and we are meant to not see light at all after the sun's gone down. But if you have a think about it, as society has gone today, what has it actually done? We have light in everything. We have street lights outside streaming through our bedroom windows, we've got city lights everywhere, we've got lights in our bedroom, we've got lights in our um watching TV in bed, lying in bed watching our phones. We've got these low voltage um LED lights that are in our housing now where we're saving money on electricity, but there's nothing healthy about them. There's no not enough blue in them, too much blue at night, no infrared, and there's no decent colour in it at all. So we're not getting any of that for health. Plus, we're also spending so much time inside these days. More than 50% of our time is spent inside, and we need daylight. Our body thrives on daylight. What do we do? We get in our car, we drive to the office, we're in the office all day, we drive to the car in the car, we drive home. And how much better do we sleep when we've been out in the forest all day or when we've been on the beach all day? We're getting daylight, that's what it is. And then we get home and we sleep really well because we have triggered our circadian rhythm as to where it is. But at night, when you have been inside all day, and this is one of the reasons that we had so many sleep issues and so many mental health issues around COVID. Because while we were locked down, and in particular people here in Melbourne, we were locked down for the best part of two years, which meant people were going from their bedrooms into their home office, into their bedroom, and that was it. There was no daylight, they weren't getting any natural daylight during the day to actually reset and trigger their circadian rhythm. So it doesn't suppress the sleep hormones and fire up cortisol to get you actually going, which is what is important. And then when they went to bed at night, they weren't tired watching TV, couldn't sleep, circadian rhythm had no idea where it was at in time and space, and we ended up with all sorts of problems around mental health as well. And this is what causes it. Now, when I say that sleep is not inhibited, or sleep onset is not inhibited by your mobile phone, that's 100% correct. But what they're doing is they're not telling you the full story in relation to their melatonin onset, and we need that melatonin onset to actually help us. It's a natural signaler of darkness to the body. When there's no blue light present in light, melatonin is triggered and released from the pineal gland. And what it does is it then runs through our body and signals darkness to the body, and the body shuts down, slows down, and shuts down at night. And also, while it's running through the bloodstream, it is a free radical eradicator,

Blue Light, Circadian Phase Shift

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eradicating those cancer cells in our body. Now, if you want to lie in bed and you want to look at your phone or watch TV in bed, knock yourself out. But the thing is, I'm going to be very clear with you and tell you that you are leaving yourself wide open. It's like going to bed and leaving your front door wide open for cancer to walk in the door. And don't tell me that you've you're just I'm just not a good sleeper. When you're rolling over and looking at your phone in the middle of the night, or you're lying in bed watching TV, or you've got your phone in your hand and you're just not present and shutting down and you've got all this blue light going into your eye. Yeah, sure, you can sleep. That's sleep pressure. That's got nothing to do with getting good natural restorative sleep. And this is something that people really have to understand. So when you see me banging on about blue light, this is the reason why I do it. I want to protect you, I want to protect your health. Your health is very important to me. And when I look at people and I see these low voltage LEDs all through the house and they're on at night, and these bright houses, and they're watching TV, and then they're lying in bed and watching, um, watching YouTubes and and doing things on their TikToks and Instagram reels on their phones, and I just think to myself, the damage that you are actually doing is going to be irreversible. And we need to understand the difference that having zero blue light after dark makes. Once you read the book The Light Doctor, and you start to understand the impact that light is having on us biologically, and also Lifetime by Dr. Professor Russell Foster, two fantastic books to read. Um you start to understand the impact that light and this artificial light at night is having to be honest. Now, scientists all know this, but influencers are telling you rubbish, and you might say, but what makes you right? Science. That's what makes me right. And and it's very, very clear, and the evidence is very, very clear today that artificial light at night is creating the health issues that we have. If your children are not sleeping, then it's light. It's not anything else, it's light. And you need to get their light diet right. If you are snacking at night, it's light. If you're got cardiovascular disease and you're having all sorts of issues, it's light because light leads to eating disorders, which leads to poor sleep, which leads to more eating disorders, which leads to obesity and overweight and causes all sorts of problems. The most important diet to get right is your light diet. And when you get your light diet right, everything in your life will completely change. Having an aligned circadian rhythm with your normal day and getting good, solid, restorative sleep at night will solve 90% of the problems that you've got in your life today. Because you will think clearer, you will be a lot better, you will be performing better, you'll be sleeping better all round. It'll make such a difference to you. So I just wanted to say that today. That is the guts of the podcast today. I really want you to understand that the fact that you can look at your phone and go to sleep is not that blue light doesn't in fact doesn't impact on you, because blue light, every bit of blue light that you're looking at after dark is impacting on you severely. And it will catch up with you. And I promise you, it will catch up with you. While you're young, you're going okay, but as you get older, it will catch up on you. There is a massive difference between being exhausted and falling asleep and getting natural sleep from the onset of melatonin. And that is the point that I wanted to make today. Roger goes bang. Okay, if you got anything out of that podcast, can you do me a favor, please? Can you share it? Can you let other people know? People who you know that have got kids that don't sleep. Actually, I wanted to tell you something as well. Putting lights on in your children's bedroom for them to sleep by, you are actually causing bigger problems for their sleep. Unless

Melatonin’s Role And Health Risks

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it's zero blue. Don't don't just buy some toy that's got a low light on it. You actually need a zero blue light because if the zero blue, the eye doesn't see blue, it thinks it's dark. It's simple. I want you to go into your kids' bedroom, sit on the bed, hold your hand out at full length and have a look at your hand. And if you can see your hand in their bedroom, it is too light. Too light. And it goes the same for you as well. If you can see light, if you can see your hand in front of your face at your outstretched arm, it's too light in your bedroom. And you need to do something about that. Ever since we blocked out the blinds, closed the door, turned all the lights off, even those LEDs that are coming from your TV or your mobile phone charges or things like that, that's too light. You've got to get rid of it because your body sees it. And this is impacting on your sleep. Because when you go pitch black and you can't see anything at all, watch the difference that that actually makes to your life and your sleep. And get outside in the sunlight every day or the daylight. Even on an overcast day, the blue light outside is exactly what our body needs. Okay. Roger goes, boom. Share the podcast. Please, if you get a moment, I would really appreciate it. No one's done it for ages. Give it a rating and a review, or on Spotify, just go to the five stars and give it a five star rating. It's very simple. Just go to the main page and where it says more, you can click on there and you can actually give it five stars and rate it. I would greatly appreciate it if you would do it. It's free information that comes to you to help you, to support you as a shift worker. I really enjoy doing the podcast. Let's keep going doing it. And let's bring more evidence-based strategies to our shift working community. 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 ahealtyshift.com. I'll catch you on the next one.