SPEAKER_01: 1:36

Now, as you know, I honestly and sincerely believe that we can do shift work a lot more healthier than the way we actually do it. One of the biggest problems that we have today is we are self-sabotaging because of the lack of education and the lack of knowledge. Now, if you followed nearly all 330-odd episodes of this podcast and you were putting every single thing in place, you'd be well on your way to actually thriving instead of just surviving in your shift working life. But of late, I have actually started flagging the debilitating impacts of shift work and how if you don't start putting these things in place, then what is going to happen is it's going to have a massive biological impact. I don't want people to literally just go, oh well, it's just shift work. Oh, this is just what happens. In today's episode, I want to flag, I received a message from a former client of mine in the last few days, and it has absolutely flawed me. And I want to talk about that in today's episode of the podcast. So strap in, and I need you to listen up very carefully to this one. 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. Today, it's Raw. Today it's hit me hard, and I want to talk about it. And if you're listening, this one's for you, Kaz, because I want to talk about it. Now, I want to just give you a bit of background on this because Kaz was a long-term client of mine for a very long time. And I literally did try and talk her out of continuing to do the nights that she was actually doing while I was coaching her. And, you know, because she was aging. She's like she was around 60. She's my age, and she'd done night shift and shift work for many, many, many years and kept turning up because that's what nurses do. And Carolyn is a nurse, and she works in a 24-7 environment. And even at 60, she was still doing rotating shifts and doing night shifts and swing shifts and everything else that goes with that. But she wouldn't stop it, and she kept going. And that is entirely up to her. And I understand that from people. So today's episode, it's for you, Kaz, but it's also for everybody, so that they understand exactly what the impact of blue light at night has. Now, I've spoken many times about blue light at night. There is numerous podcasts that cover why we have to be very careful about blue light at night. And the main one is because of the link to cancer and in particular breast cancer in women. And guys, we don't dodge it either because for some reason it exacerbates prostate cancer in men as well. Now I've shared the research on this, and the book, The Light Doctor, has over 247 references on the biological impact of artificial light at night that it actually has on us. And if you haven't read The Light Doctor, read it. Get hold of a copy of it, I'll link it in the show notes and read it. Because it's actually written for you. It's not written for scientists. They're well and truly aware of this. It's actually written by Dr. Martin Moore Eid, and it's written at a level which you, the layman, will understand. And you'll be terrified because you'll then realize what's actually being done to us by the lighting that we actually have around after dark and why the incidence of cancers in society today has elevated so high. We blame highly processed food. We blame everything. Everything. But the one thing that we're not blaming is the light exposure at night. We hear blue light, and then you look at your phone while you're lying there in bed, and what you do is you say, that doesn't affect me because I still roll over and go to sleep. And I've even done a podcast on that. There's a massive difference between sleep pressure and actual normal rhythmic sleep that's caused by the elevation of melatonin. I've done podcasts on the importance of melatonin running through our system at night. I've explained melatonin suppression. I've warned that night work under artificial light is not harmless. But this week it really hit me differently. Because I received a message from Kaz and she's been diagnosed with breast cancer and she's had to have urgent surgery as a result. And her job? She's a nurse. Someone who has spent her life caring for others. Someone who works nights. Someone who is exposed to artificial light at night for years. And this is the card that she gets dealt. Now I need people to understand that this is not rare. And this is also not bad luck. This is actually a known risk of doing night work and working under artificial light at night. We've known for years that light at night disrupts the circadian biology. We've known for years that it suppresses melatonin. And we know that melatonin plays a major role in DNA repair, our immune system surveillance, and also tumor suppression. And we're learning more and more and more about the role of melatonin. We think it is just a sleep hormone in our body, but it's actually got nothing to do with it. It is actually the signal of darkness to the body, and then it plays numerous roles as it's flooding through our system at night. But you lying in bed watching TV or lying in bed watching you're looking at your phone is actually suppressing melatonin. And that is leaving you and leaving the gate wide open for tumor cells. Because when melatonin is chronically suppressed, cancer risk rises. And that's what the research tells us. This is the strongest for hormone-sensitive cancers, which is like breast and prostate cancers. And that's why night work is classified as a probable carcinogen. Yet we still treat light at night like it's neutral. We all think, oh no, it won't happen to me. No, it's all right. I can still go to sleep. It's not a problem. We treat it like it's unavoidable, like there's nothing that we can do about it. I hear this all the time. People have DM'd me and they've abused me through DMs. Oh, it's all right for you to say you don't shift work anymore, but I have to. No, you don't. I can't avoid it. It's just part of the job. I don't have a choice. And that is not actually fully true. Because even when you feel trapped, you still need to understand the risk that your employer is exposing you to. Because right now, many shift workers are playing, in fact, majority of shift workers are literally playing Russian roulette with their biology. Now you don't feel the damage. It's not like you have an impact and you break a leg or you sprain your finger. There's no pain signal and there's no warning light. It just gradually creeps in very, very silently. Artificial light at night literally tells your brain it's daytime. Your body stops producing melatonin, and then your circadian clock becomes confused. And when this happens repeatedly, day after day, week after week, month after month, and then year after year, the costs start to really add up. Now, this podcast is not about fear, it's about informed consent. Because if you choose to work nights, then you deserve to know what that choice does to your body. Just so you understand. It is important to me. I'm not trying to stop you from doing nights, I'm not trying to stop you from shift working. What I'm trying to do is to educate you so that you can make an informed decision. And here's the part that really makes all of this completely unacceptable. We already have solutions to this. There are companies which are producing circadian-friendly lighting. Lighting safe enough to literally run a full-blown operating theater at night with zero blue light. What this means is when it's got no blue light, your body actually thinks it's still asleep and melatonin still runs. Even though you're moving and you can see there's no blue. And that's a whole episode in itself when we start talking about the blue light sensors in our eyes. Now, this is not experimental. This lighting is available right now. It's been put into numerous Fortune 500 companies by Circadian in the US, and the results have been phenomenal. It's made a huge difference to workplace health and well-being in much more ways than just the reductions in cancers.

SPEAKER_00: 12:00

This makes it an occupational health and safety issue.

SPEAKER_01: 12:06

If workplaces continue to use blue heavy lighting at night, they are knowingly increasing the health risk for you. And that is not ignorance anymore. That is actually negligence. And workplaces must be pushed, and they must be pushed hard. Because prevention should never rely on the individual worker. But until those systems change, you as a human, working shift work and working night under artificial light, you still need to protect yourself until they do something about it. But if you stay mute, nothing's going to change. So let's talk about what you can do. First of all, at work. Somehow you have to reduce your blue light exposure wherever possible. If I was a nurse, I would actually be using those daylight lenses at least to block the high-energy visible blue light. The yellowy coloured lens, I'd be wearing those. Or you could be using blue light blocking glasses on night shift. Now I realize that this can be hard for people that have need to be able to see a certain color blue. I get that.

SPEAKER_00: 13:16

But that's not your excuse. Try it.

SPEAKER_01: 13:21

We don't wear cheap tinted lenses. We wear proper tested blue light blocking lenses, blocking the particular spectrum of light that we need blocking. And if you want any help with this, ask me. We need to dim light where safety actually allows us to dim them. And we need to stop staring into bright overhead lighting when it's not required. And those lights overhead, turn them off at night, turn them down, and take light breaks. Step into a lower light area during breaks instead of these brightly lit rooms. Don't walk into your tea room and go and sit there and scroll on your phone when you've got a break. Go and sit in a dark room for a while. Give your brain a chance. Secondly, after work. This is where shift workers self-sabotage. While you're at work, you're not the boss and you don't write the check. So you don't have full control over it. You can certainly start making some noise about it, but you don't get to do that. But at home, you are in control. You. I'm looking at you. You are in control of all the lighting in and around your house. And what you're exposing you, your husband, or your wife or your children to. You are responsible for all of that. Because your light exposure doesn't end when your shifler ends. In fact, this is where most people undo any protection that they've actually created. So we should be wearing blue light blocking glasses on the drive home after night shift, even before our sunrise. Start blocking it so that that melatonin can elevate. It's our body's protector. At home, keep our lights low and warm. We don't turn on those bright, stupid LED lights that we've got, those low voltage LEDs in our roof. We don't have white LEDs on at all. They are laced with blue light and they are causing us harm. Now there are products as well that you can literally just swap those and put them into your house. If you're building your house or you're extending, put in the new bio lights. I've just replaced all the lights in our house with the bio light from blue uh block blue light. You pick them up on sale. All you gotta do is just pull the old one out and plug the new one in. When you turn the light on, it comes on with a low EMF, flicker-free white light, which is ideal during the day. But at night, when you turn it off and back on again, it's got zero blue in it. Zero blue. You can still clearly see, but it's got no blue light in it. And it was worth the investment. Was it cheap? No. Was it ridiculously expensive? Well, what cost are you gonna put on your health?

SPEAKER_00: 16:07

You tell me. It's pretty simple, really. What cost are you gonna put on your health? We need to block that light in our bedroom completely.

SPEAKER_01: 16:20

I tell you this, when you go to bed at night, or when you go to bed anytime, anytime, lie in bed, hold your arm out at full length, turn your hand to face you, and if you can see your hand, it's too light. Even if you can see the shadow of it, it's too light. You need to wear a sleep mask. It's simple. But it needs to be pitch black because that's where the sensor is in your eye. And that's where you need no light at all. Dark means dark. Block all light in your bedroom completely. That includes those LEDs from your TV or devices that are in the room. Put tape over them, block them, do something with them. I don't know why you've got a TV in your room anyway, but still. The third thing that we need to talk about is screens. Because this matters a lot more than what people want to admit. Now I've been extremely disappointed by doctors that I have actually respected online that say that blue light doesn't inhibit sleep.

SPEAKER_00: 17:23

Now that's a play on words, and I want you to understand the difference.

SPEAKER_01: 17:29

Using devices in bed actually only inhibits sleep by approximately seven minutes, which is not statistically significant. But that's what it's doing, it's not inhibiting sleep. But by golly, it is actually inhibiting your melatonin production because it's this simple. And I'm gonna simplify it as much as I can. When your eye sees light, it thinks it's daytime, so therefore it suppresses melatonin. There you go, that's how simple it is. Any light, and it suppresses melatonin. No melatonin leaves you wide open to disease and problems. That's how simple it is. Because when they're emitting light, they're telling your brain to stay alert. Night mode on your phone is not enough. In fact, evidence shows that night mode or that um soft light on your phone still isn't enough.

SPEAKER_00: 18:28

Brightness turned down is not enough.

SPEAKER_01: 18:30

And if you're looking at screens before you sleep, you're just suppressing melatonin every single time. Remember this in the presence of light, there's no melatonin. No melatonin, you're playing Russian roulette. Simple.

SPEAKER_00: 18:44

And yes, even if you're tired, even if you fall asleep anyway, the damage doesn't announce itself. Which brings me to the real question.

SPEAKER_01: 18:54

Do you want to just wait for a diagnosis before we actually act on this? Or do we protect our circadian health before it breaks? Because once disease shows up, you don't get to rewind the clock. And this is why I do the work that I do today. I help shift workers to understand circadian risk. I'm not flagging it to terrify you, I'm flagging it to inform you so that you can do the best you can possibly do to try and stay in line and protect your circadian health. I help my clients to build routines and habit habits that actually protect their biology. Not perfectly, but meaningfully. Because it's the small and consistent protection that actually matters over the years to build up. That's what we do, and that's what I do with clients. And the thing is, once you start protecting that circadian health, you'll be amazed at how much better you actually feel all the time. So much better. More energy. All of a sudden, your immune system's running a lot better. Your hormones are all balanced up beautifully. Those hunger and satiety hormones are running as they should be. There's no cravings, your gut health improves, you don't feel tired, you don't crash. It's that simple. And I put simple habits and routines in place, looking at your life on how I can help you with that. As I said, small and consistent protection matters over the years. And I'm just going to finish up with this on this one. Looking at your TV, looking at your phone, sitting under artificial light at night, it is harming you silently. You may not feel it, but your biology is. And I can tell you now, it is keeping score. 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 ahealtyshift.com. I'll catch you on the next one.