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. I'm your guide, Roger Sutherland. Can you believe it? 2025 is nearly behind us. It is incredible how quickly this year has gone. Absolutely incredible. There's been some significant events. And in fact, recently there's been probably one of, well, you'd have to call it probably one of the most significant events in Australian history. And that's one of the things that I want to talk about today. I'm not getting political at all. I'm going to talk about you, the shift worker, and how it's impacting on you and how your job is. And I think it's something that's really important for us to discuss. There are changes that happen in us when we work on the front line. And they don't all arrive at once. They actually creep in quietly. Trust me, I know. And you don't realize just how much it's all changing. You don't just wake up one day and go, something's wrong with me. It's a lot more subtle than that. And it gradually chips away and chips away at you. Like in recent podcasts, when I spoke about monitoring things like your blood work and your resting heart rate and your blood pressure. And you don't feel it. It gradually takes over. And then all of a sudden, when you become symptomatic, it's not too late, but it's it's taken hold of you. You seem to get a little bit more guarded. You're a little bit less patient. Your week is a lot shorter. You're a little more tired. Even when you've slept, you can feel more tired. You feel quite heavy and tired, fatigued. And things that once felt normal now feel really heavy. And slowly this chips away. But slowly you start to become more used to it, and it becomes your new normal. It doesn't make it right. And I think this is important for people to look at where they were at to where they're not at. And this was a reality check that I had to really come to terms with in myself. I had completely lost myself. And you don't realize it until you start, you step away from it. Now, my best mate actually uses an analogy. When you touch the fire and you burn yourself, you don't go and touch it again. Because you're going to burn yourself again. What you do is you pull your hand away and you move away from it so you don't burn yourself again. And I think this is something that's really important, an analogy for shift workers to keep in mind. Don't keep exposing yourself to things that you don't need to, things that you can pull away from. I know it's easy for me to say, and it's not always easy to implement, but there are avoidable things that you can do. And as I said, you don't just wake up one day and go, oh my god, I'm broken. It can become a reality that you are broken, you can go, oh, I've completely lost myself here. Now the recent events in Sydney have really shaken up a lot of people, particularly in the first responding environment. And worldwide, not just here, right? Even if you weren't there, and even if you weren't directly involved, it's important that you understand that frontline workers, we all absorb this stuff. We always have. We see it, we feel it, we carry it. We actually get offended by the criticisms all the time, over and over again. Because, well, Dickhead, you weren't there. What would you know? And you want to defend it and you get angry about it. But you're not going to change people that way. All you can do is control your reaction to it. Now, as we head toward 2026, or if you're listening to this in 2026, I really want you to ask yourself this honest question. How are you really tracking? Not the answer that you give to your supervisor at work, not the answer that you give to your partner or your kids, the real answer. I want you to ask yourself the real answer because the job changes you, shift work changes you, exposure changes you. And pretending that it doesn't literally only pushes the cost further down the road. Now I want to help you with some quiet signs to watch for from my own lived experience. You can't switch off like you used to. You find yourself throwing yourself into other activities as a distraction. And this is what I did with the business to start off with. Your sleep is lighter or it's broken. You find yourself waking. You wake up and you are tired, even though you've been asleep for seven or eight hours. Your stress baseline feels a lot higher than it used to, and you feel like you just are about to go off all the time, or you find yourself yelling and screaming as you're driving along at another car, or what a motorist did. You become impatient in a car park, you become impatient with everything and everyone, you're a lot more reactive, but you also are a lot more withdrawn, and you become a lot more numb. And I know this because I can tick every single one of those boxes. In fact, I just spoke about them because they were my own experience. And while a person can seem up and about, when I was diagnosed with depression, I went, you got no idea what you're talking about, to the psychiatrist. To a psychiatrist that studies this stuff. Because I was always happy and up and about, and everyone knew that. But what I didn't realize was he told me and taught me and educated me that that is the depression. You are actually distracting yourself by throwing yourself into other things, or on your phone, or you know, your social media, or things like that, throwing yourself into a business or an activity or something as a distraction to get away, and you tune out from where you're at. This can be a problem. Now, maybe you're just pushing through because that's what you've always done, but that doesn't make it right. As a man, you don't have to stand up there and be, oh man, I'll just keep pushing on. So, how do you check in with yourself? Well, I'll help you. Start simple. Ask yourself these three questions and keep these in mind. How am I sleeping? No, really, how am I sleeping? Because medication is not the answer, but how am I sleeping? How short is my fuse right now? I want you to think about things when you're driving. How short are you with other motorists? How short are you when you're in car parks? How short are you with your partner or your children? And the other thing I want to ask you is this do you still enjoy the things that you used to? Or do they no longer excite you? And if those answers don't sit right, I warn you today, do not ignore it. Because that is your early warning system. You don't realize how this chips away. And here's the hard truth. And I want you to realize this, and it's really important. Management does not care about you the way you care about you. It's not personal, it's just the reality. And you have to accept it and manage yourself. Stop sitting there and waiting for help to come. It ain't coming. I'm gonna be very clear with you. You have to take the responsibility yourself, and you are your number one responsibility, and that means the basics first. Because if you start to recognize that you're in this position or that you are starting to lose yourself when you ask those questions, then start with the basics. Protect your sleep as best as you can. You hear me talking about light exposure all the time. Get your light diet right. Early daylight, early movement. Block that blue light at night. It impacts severely on your mental health. It's well documented, well documented in science now. Eat like your body matters. It does. Don't fall into the the slump of just ordering Uber roots and eating yourself out of house and home on the Ubers. Just because you feel sorry for yourself. I'm telling you now, no one's coming to save you. And you've got to work your way back from that. No one is coming to save you. Move your body every day, even a little. Start small. Just walk out your front door early in the day, walk to your front gate, turn left, go to the corner, turn left, go to the next corner, turn left, go to the next corner, turn left, and go to the next corner, turn left. And you know what? You'll be back at your front gate. It's that simple. Do it before your brain wakes up and thinks about it. Just get up, get out, get out in that daylight whenever you possibly can. Get out in the garden, get out in the parks, get out in the reserves, go for hikes in the forest, do whatever. Get green light as well. Green light. Anything that's reflecting green, a lot of green, very, very good for your nervous system. Very, very good. No one ever goes for a walk in the forest and comes home and goes, geez, I feel wound up. You come home karma. And that's because of the green light. Very important. Again, I will say this again. First diet you've got to get right is your light diet. And you've got to reduce the noise before and after your shift. And when I say noise, calming, just calming yourself. All of the everything going on in your life, you've got to calm yourself. You've got to separate yourself. You've got to put boundaries in place between work and home and home and work. Put those boundaries in. Reduce that noise. Now, none of this is fancy. It's not in a pill. You don't buy it in a packet. You don't go and see a PT and get it, or a coach. And this is how I coach these basics because they work. It just works. And check who you're talking to. Isolation makes everything worse. And you don't have to unload on everyone you talk to, but you do need someone. And if things don't feel right, get help. If you're losing sleep, if anxiety is literally sitting in your chest, if stress feels constant, that's not a weakness. It's actually your nervous system asking for support. It has done everything it can. Now I want to be clear here. I'm not a psychologist, and I don't even pretend to be. But there's one thing that I do have, and that is 40 years of lived experience in frontline and shift work. In the police, and I'm someone who's lived through PTSD, anxiety, and chronic stress. And I've recovered and I'm recovering. Does it pop up every now and again? Yep, absolutely. I'm not going to deny that. Running a business is really hard work. And it manifests, it comes up. But you know what? I identify it now, and I've got tools in place that I can actually work with it and realize how to fix it. And it makes a big difference. And every single thing that I teach only ever comes from what actually works. It's not theory, it's not buzzwords, and it's not the latest fate. And if you are in this position, you have to remember I'm no longer part of that organization. And if you want support to navigate this, I can promise you I can help you. I can help you to talk through it with accountability to get you doing those simple things, simple habits and routines. Your body has lost those routines. This is what happens. And then we self-medicate with alcohol, drugs, anything that we can lay our hands on, poor sleep, late nights. You know, we're just not doing anything right by ourselves. And I can help you with accountability. It'll be private, it'll be confidential. It's at your pace. With empathy, with support, and with actual understanding. I beg you, you don't have to be broken to actually ask for help. What you do have to do is you have to be honest with yourself. Because the goal isn't just to survive another year. It's to stay well enough to keep living your life. If this episode hit home, do me a favor and reach out because you do not have to carry this alone. There's a link in the show notes, book that appointment, and I'll talk to 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 ahealtyshift.com. I'll catch you on the next one.