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 tour guide today. My name is Roger Sutherland. I'm a veteran shift worker of over 40 years. And today I'm actually excited to bring this episode to you. And the reason being is because I've received an email from Geo. Now, Geo is a paramedic in New Zealand. And the question that he's emailed me and asked me is a question that actually comes up a lot. And it's around rosters and different roster patterns and things like that. Now, in fairness to me, I get asked all the time through DMs, text, all sorts of things. Oh, Rog, how can I do this and how can I do that? And how can I do this? And which way would you do that? And I want you to remember one thing when you do. Remember, this is a business, and I had to pay a lot of money for my education. And not only that, but I had to sacrifice 40 years of my life for the lift experience at the same time to get to the stage where I can actually advise. So while this podcast comes to you for nothing, the only thing that I actually ask for you in return is for you to just go and do me a favor and just rate and review and share the podcast with your colleagues. Because that way we get more information out there for everyone. But please, I ask you, when people ask me questions and that, remember, I did I spent a lot of money on education. I could not begin to tell you how much money. In fact, I can tell you one thing. I've been running this business for six years, and to this date, I've never taken one cent out of it for myself. I've reinvested it all in equipment, I've reinvested it all in education, in um in I I pay a VA to help me. I do all sorts of things. But I've never taken one dollar out and spent one dollar on myself from the business to date, and that is in six years. I'm in a blessed position where I have actually worked a lot of shift work and I'm in a position where I can literally walk away tomorrow and just live happily ever after on my superannuation. But I do this because I'm very passionate about it. But let's get on to today's episode of the show. And that is this email that I've received from Geo. And Gio's roster is two day shifts, then two night shifts, then four days off. Now, this will sound very, very familiar to a lot of you. Two days, two nights, four days off. Now his shifts are six till six, or he's from New Zealand, so I'm gonna say they're sucks till sucks. Sorry, Geo. But anyway. Um, and he does his days first, so two day shifts and then two nights. Now, many ambulance services use this, and the police use it, and health use it. And I know that the company that was running the communications for um Victoria, they also use this roster pattern as well. Two days, two nights, four days off. Now, when it's done properly, it is without doubt one of the better rotating patterns that we actually have. There's no doubt about it. But only if you understand completely how to live inside it. And I want to talk about that today. Now, why does this roster exist? This pattern is not random, it actually exists because it limits circadian disruption compared to faster or messy rotations. Hello, nurses. Hello, police in VicPoll, because I know your rosters are literally all over the place and are a mess. There's no patent to it. And this is why there are so many health and well-being issues in your organizations, because there is no structure and no patent to rostering. But credit where credit's due to these organizations, and I'm pretty sure South Australia police and uh also New South Wales police also follow this two days, two nights uh roster pattern with four days off. And it works quite well. It might be two 12-hour days, two 12-hour nights, but it does give you four solid days off. So you're doing a four-on, four-off pattern. Now, the reason why this works is because across those eight days of every rotation, you're only forcing the body to change timing twice. That's it. That's all you're doing. And this is really important when it comes to working shift work. Because once when you move from those days into nights, and then once when you come back again, that's the only two times. And in eight days, it's literally only two disruptions to your circadian rhythm. And this really matters. Now, your brain can tolerate planned disruption. Keep that in mind. It can tolerate the planned disruption. What it doesn't tolerate, and what your biological uh clock doesn't tolerate, is the unpredictability. Remember, a circadian rhythm is an anticipatory system. And if we actually work to something all the time, then what happens is it starts to anticipate it and it works really well with it. Now, irregular rosters can cause more fatigue than actual night work itself. So the roster isn't broken, it's just the way that most people manage it is. So let's talk about that. First of all, let's talk about the swing day. So keep this in mind. You've worked one day shift. We know for that day shift, you've probably got to be up at five o'clock or thereabouts, 5 a.m. And on your second day shift, you've got to be up at around about 5 a.m. So there's two. And what happens is you then go to work and you're at work and you're getting that daylight, or you should be getting that daylight all day, and you have cued your circadian rhythm into actually being a diurnal creature, which is what you are, which is why we thrive. Then you come home at the end of your 12 hours, and all you want to do is eat and go to sleep. And that's literally exactly what you should be doing. Eat, go to sleep. Obviously, not too heavy, but eat and sleep. Relax for a bit, do some breath work, do some light stretching, relax. It's not about doof-doof music on the way home, staring and scrolling on your phone, lying in bed watching TV, you know, doing all of those sort of things. These things here are what actually stimulate you. I want you to keep in mind what is there that I can do to actually calm myself down and be ready for sleep. Not for not chronically fatigued, but what is there that I can do to relax my body for sleep? And then you will get good, solid, restorative sleep. So once you do the second day at 6 p.m., you know that you've got to be back at work at 6 p.m. the next night. Right? So you're basically getting, what is it, 12 hours off. So how do you go about doing it? 12? 24 hours off, sorry? 24 hours off. Sorry. Brain's still fried. I still can't work out whether it's Monday or Friday. But anyway, um, so you've got 24 hours off. So how are we going to do it? Because that day can actually feel useless. You're too tired to live because you've you've done two days shifts, and you're too wide to rest properly. So here's the hard truth. One of the best things that you can do is to stay in line with your circadian rhythm. So even though you know that you are going to be awake for your first night of night shift and you're going to be awake all night, I highly recommend that you still get up within an hour of that normal wake-up time from the two previous days. Now we know that we've had to get up at 5 a.m. to do the two-day shifts. So why not get up at 6 a.m. on the day you start night shift? Why do we do this? Well, one of the main reasons why we do this is because it keeps our circadian rhythm in line. And what this does is it literally tells our body where it's at in time and space, and it goes into a normal diurnal function. It maintains that hormonally, everything's running, digestive's running, everything's running really, really well. This is a day where you get up, you get some daylight, you go to the gym, you go for a walk, you run all your PJs, personal jobs, you do your meal preps, and you do all the things that you need to do. And because you've been up early, you start getting tired in the afternoon, don't you? And what you do there, this is the thing where you have a nap. Now, I want to be clear. We are napping here. We are not sleeping, and there is a massive difference. A lot of the reason why people say, Oh, I can't nap because I wake up feeling worse, you slept too long. Or you woke yourself up in the middle of a sleep cycle. I want you to remember this. We have an all-trade-in rhythm, which means that we sleep in 90-minute cycles. Now, before you go into that first deep sleep, get up. So, what you do is you set an alarm for 20 to 25 minutes and you get up. This is in the afternoon going into that first night or night shift. And what you do is you power nap for 20 to 25 minutes and get up. What this does is it releases the sleep homeostat, releases that sleep pressure, and it gets you up and gets you going. Without going into that sleep inertia where you start to feel really ordinary and really awful, and then you wish you'd never laid down and gone to sleep. The other alternative is to sleep for 90 minutes because we go between two different sleep cycles at the 90-minute mark. Obviously, this is difficult to time and it can be cra can be quite difficult to get right. But if you're tired enough because you've been up after two, 12-hour days and you got up early, you will feel more energized. But you will get to the stage in the afternoon where you feel like a nap because you get that natural slump in the afternoon, and that is the time where you cash in on it and you have a nap. Now, when you have a nap, it releases that sleep pressure, then you're ready to go to work and you go to work. Now, Gio has also asked the question of doing that night shift at 6 till 6 p.m., 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Should he sleep on night shift? And this is an interesting one because I say we don't sleep. What we do is we nap and we learn to power nap really well in a chair, zone out for 20, 25 minutes, wake up again. A little bit of caffeine overnight, like 40 milligrams over a few hours, can be really good for us just to sip on. Now that doesn't mean we slam latte after latte. I'm talking about spreading it out over a few hours with just a little bit of caffeine to keep us going. And by doing this and having this little nap, maybe once, maybe twice overnight, it won't actually impact on that sleep for the day's sleep. But what it will do is it will help to release that sleep pressure and avoid the risk of you having an accident or getting complaints or fatigue-related incidents. So that will really help. Now the day going into the night shift can feel useless, but it's up to you to make it productive. There's no perfect solution for that day, but I have always done it this way, and I always find that it works well. What a lot of people do is they stay up late after that second day shift in preparation to go into the night shift, and this is causing you another disrupted circadian rhythm cycle, and it's phase shifting you into night shift. Now, while you might think, oh, I go through night shift really well, what you're doing is actually adding a third night of night shift into it. You're phase shifting into your night shift, then you've done three nights, and then you come out of it, and you struggle to come out of the nights, and this is a massive problem. Now we've got to remember, sleeping in does not fix that fatigue. So after you've done those two days and you've gone to sleep that night, having a sleep in until lunchtime in preparation for the night shift is actually causing more problems because it's leaving your body confused. And napping late doesn't fix it either. Because your fatigue isn't from lack of sleep, it's actually from a circadian mismatch. Keep in mind a lot of the reason why shift workers feel terrible is because of that circadian mismatch. You are a diurnal creature. So what helps most is waking up at your normal day shift time or within an hour of it. As I said, 5 a.m., 6 a.m. Stay up, get up, move your body lightly, get outside in the daylight. And then in the afternoon at some stage, just take a short nap. 20 minutes, no more. It's not about energy, it's just about taking the edge off the sleep pressure before you go into night one. Now, why does night one feel so brutal? Well, the first night shift always feels the worst. Make no bones about it. And that's normal, accept it. It's normal. Your circadian rhythm is still on demo, melatonin's risen, alertness drops, you didn't fail. What's actually happened is your biology just showed up. It's your normal diurnal function. But the mistake that many shift workers make is trying to fix night one, and you can't. You manage it, you don't try and solve it, and this is the solution. Now, should we sleep on station during the night shift when we get the chance? And this is where people get confused. Sleeping on shift is not good and it's not bad. It's how you do it that matters. Because long sleeps are the problem. People get a break and they think they can sleep for the maximum amount of time. But you don't sleep, you nap. If you sleep long enough to enter a deep sleep, you will absolutely wake up worse. And this is what we call sleep inertia. Your brain is offline, your reaction time drops, your judgment suffers horrendously. We all know that feeling. So remember this the safest strategy is short naps only. Maximum 25 minutes. If you zone out for 10 minutes and come back, perfect. What you've done is you've just released the sleep pressure and then you've woken up. Don't try and force yourself back to sleep. Just accept that that's what it is and move on. That release literally releases the sleep pressure, but it doesn't drag you back off into deep sleep. So set an alarm every time. And if you wake up groggy, here's the tip it wasn't a nap, you went to sleep. And that is where I educate around napping to make it a superpower. Now we've come out of our second night of night shift. Actually, no, let's go back into after we've done our first night. We are crawling home now. We're tired. Remember, you are completely out of sync with your circadian rhythm, with your body, and you are exhausted. The idea is to minimize the blue light exposure in that morning and get yourself straight to bed. This is not the day where you go home, pick up the car, take the car for the car service and walk back home again and then go back and pick it up. This is not the day where you come home and then you run the kids to school. You're running the risk of your children's life. You're playing Russian roulette with them. So what we do is we aren't trying to catch up. What we're trying to do is just to survive to get into night two. So when you get home, take all the pressure off yourself and just say, I'll sleep until I wake. We don't take medication, we don't take anything. What we do is we just go home and we sleep. And when we wake up, we get up. And we get out and we get out in the light. And the reason why we do this is because we are a diurnal creature. We are a human. So we stay up out during that day. Get those personal jobs done, get that meal prep done, get ourselves sorted. Don't sleep from the time you get home until the time you go back to work. That's going to cause you more problems. And don't put pressure on yourself to be able to actually do that. This is how people destroy themselves and lose their four days off by trying to sleep the max amount of time between those two um nights. Now the first day off. So sorry, so once you've had that nap and you've woken up, be a two-sleep person. Have a nap, get up, get out during the day, go back, have another nap. When I say nap, you can do an hour and a half or three hours. Do whatever you can do. But just don't put pressure on yourself and get into an out of night shift as quickly as you can. And when you get to that first day off, which is day one of your four days off, don't look at it as wasting the day. You might think it feels like it's wasted, and everyone hates it. And you want your life back, but your body isn't ready yet. So here's the rule: you set an alarm for either three hours or four and a half. And remember the old trade-in rhythm. 90-minute cycles. We sleep in 90 minute cycles. So if you're three hours or four and a half, and when that alarm goes off, get straight up. Open the blinds and get that daylight in. Sit on your bed and look out the window. Go and stand at the window and look out. Get that daylight in. This is what is going to tell your body it's daytime. Suppress the melatonin, get the cortisol elevated, get you up and about, get you going. If you want your life back quickly, that's how you do it. Mid-morning is usually the least bad of the options. Expose yourself to light. Eat at the normal breakfast, lunch, and dinner time. If you wake up at 10:30, that's not the time to eat. You eat at midday. You are cueing your circadian rhythm back into eating at a normal time. You're getting daylight early to tell your body when it is. You're getting movement to tell your body where it is. So you're exposing yourself to light. You're eating at the normal time and you're moving. The three main cues to tell your body that where it's at in Time and space so that it knows. Feeling ordinary is because you are not giving it the right cues. That is the problem. Now, on this day, we do not nap at all. We keep going. We get daylight. This is a really good day on the day that you're coming out a night to organize to catch up with a friend. Go out for brunch. Catch up with someone. Go and have a drink. Go and sit by the beach. Go and do whatever. Go sailing. Whatever. Do something. Keep yourself occupied all day so that you're not prone to napping. And the more daylight you get, the better. And if you're out and you're starting to watch the daylight disappearing, even better again because it's going to cue your body into it's getting dark, melatonin will start to rise. And then you just go back to bed at normal bedtime and you will sleep through. Now, the reason why you will sleep through and you say, no, that doesn't work for me, is because of how you've made such a mess of the days before that. But if you stay in line and you just nap and get that daylight in between those nights or before night one, you will bounce out of your night shift so much better. And then you will sleep properly in the dark time overnight properly. I hope that makes sense. Because this is what I've done for 40 years and it's worked for me every single time. I'm a two-nap person. I come home, I nap, I get up, I get on with the day, I nap, I go into work and do the night shift. I come home, I nap, I get up, nap, go in and do the night shift. That way, when I get to my six days off, I'm still in basically a normal diurnal routine. All I've done is nap to get myself through. Now the rot this roster only works if your timing is consistent. Regular wake-up times will always beat perfect sleep durations every single time. Your brain and your body loves patterns. It predicts, it actually prepares for it. Six days of a regular wake-up time absolutely beats sleeping in whenever you can. Naps are a tool, they're not a lifestyle, and sleeping during the day is not something that you, as a human, were ever designed to do, so you will not do properly. So as long as you eat at normal breakfast, lunch, and dinner time, expose yourself to daylight during the day as much as possible, and utilize naps as best as you possibly can, you will thrive and not just survive on this routine because it is a really good roster pattern when you know how to live inside it. So, Geo, you're not broken, and this roster is not broken either. By golly, it is demanding, there is no doubt about it, but it's absolutely manageable when you respect biology instead of trying to force it to do something that it's not meant to do. Now, if this pattern sounds familiar to you, take what fits. Leave the rest and remember shift work doesn't need more toughness. What it needs is it just needs a strategy. And if you need help with this with your own roster pattern, reach out. All you gotta do is go to the link in the show notes and I'll have a 15-minute free call with you and help you. 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 ahealthyshift.com. I'll catch you on the next one.