Welcome And The Shift Work Mission

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 you are so very, very welcome to this episode of a healthy shift podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. What if I told you that one of the most powerful tools for your health is actually free? Believe it or not, here we go again. All the free stuff. But most people are actually actively avoiding it because we've been told to fear it. And that is sunlight. Not supplements, not another diet, not a new fitness plan, literally light. Now you hear me talk about this all the time. Get your light diet right. And it's not just about, oh, get outside when you can. I mean, let's understand how sunlight actually interacts with your human biology. Because when you get this right, you would not believe how much better you start to feel and how much better you improve in every way. Your sleep gets better. Your energy actually stabilizes and comes good. You don't feel so awful. You're moodless. And your hormones will start working with you instead of against you. And if you're a shift worker, then this is gonna matter to you even more than anybody else. So today, what I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna break down sunlight in a simple way. What it is, what each part of the light spectrum does, and how to actually use it in your day. Most benefit. So part one. Our humans are actually built for light. We are, in fact, solar panels, right? We're not separate from our environment. We're actually built to respond to this light. And light is the strongest signal that your brain listens to. Inside your brain, you have a small clock, and it's called the circadian clock. And I've spoken about it before. This clock, deep in the brain, in the suprachiasmatic nucleus, actually controls sleep, wakefulness, your hormones, your body temperature, your metabolism. And if you think about it, shift workers, we don't have our light diet right. And this is one of the main reasons why we struggle so badly. And this clock is actually set by light. Not by time on the watch, not by the clock on the wall, it's actually set by light. And this is the reason why you look at the clock and you start working to the clock, but your body is actually responding to light. Can you see where we end up with so much conflict? So when you wake up and scroll on your phone in a dim room, your brain is starting to try and guess what time is it? So when you step outside into real sunlight, your brain actually knows, and that's the difference. So what is sunlight actually made up of? Sunlight is not just brightness, it's actually made up of different wavelengths, and each one does something different in your body. Think of, and everybody has seen it, the cover of Pink Floyd's album, I think Dark Side of the Mood, that's got the light hitting the spectrum, and we've seen the colours coming out of that. Same as a rainbow that is literally just light being split into the different colors of the spectrum. Let's go through those different colors and what benefit they actually bring. Because in sunlight, they are all inside that beam of the sun hitting your body, or even just the light hitting your body. Infrared light. Now, this is before you even see the sun. Because what this does, this actually starts hitting the earth before the sunrise. You don't see it, but your body can detect it. Infrared light penetrates deep into the tissue. What it does is it actually helps with blood flow. It helps with our mitochondrial function, which is inside the cells, and it helps with cell repair. Basically, it prepares your body for the day. And this is the main reason why early morning light exposure feels so different. It's not just about the brightness, it's literally the type of light that you're getting, that infrared light. Can't see it, but it's actually hitting your body and it is doing enormous things to it. All right. Think sunrise, think sunset. Red light is very dominant in the early morning and late afternoon. Now, this is a low-energy long wave light. What does it do? Well, it actually supports cell function, it supports recovery, and it actually supports your eye health. And it's also extremely gentle on your system. And this is why you sit there and you watch a sunrise or you watch a sunset, and why you feel very calm. Your nervous system is actually responding to this red light. No one sits there looking at a sunset or a sunrise feeling angry, do they? Think about it. Blue light. Now, this is the one that people fear because blue light gets blamed for absolutely everything. And we've been told to fear the blue light. And a lot of people think that blue is the color. But blue is contained within the sunlight, within the daylight. It is blue light in it. The problem isn't blue light in itself, the problem is when you actually get it. Because blue light is essential during the day because it does two enormous functions. One, it suppresses melatonin and it increases alertness. That's what you want in the morning. When blue light hits your eyes early in the day, what your brain does is it shuts off melatonin. Your cortisol rises naturally, and that's what we want because cortisol wakes us up and you feel awake. And this is how you should wake up. The issue is when you're getting blue light after sunset at night. Phones, screens, that artificial light inside, those stupid LED lights that we've got in our houses. Now you are telling your brain, it's daytime, stay awake, but at the wrong time. And this is why shift work is so brutal on our system. I can't begin to tell you. Once you understand more about light, the more you realize just how damaging blue light at night is on your system. All right. I'll go out, not even on a limb here, and say categorically, we talk about obesity and we talk about highly processed foods and weight gain and the reasons for cancers and sugar is the reason for cancers and that. One of the main reasons is because of the artificial light exposure that we're getting after sunset. There. I said it, and you'll find that in years to come, some of the lighting that's installed in our houses now will come with a warning that actually says hazardous if used at night. Mark my words. Sounds strange, I know, but it's really important. Green and yellow light is another one that's really important. It sits right in the middle of that visible spectrum. If you look at a rainbow, green and yellow is in the middle. It plays a role in visual processing and balance within our system. Now, they're not as talked about, but they contribute to the full spectrum effect. This is the key point. Your body expects a mix of all wavelengths, not just artificial light from a screen. Green and yellow light are extremely calming on our central nervous system. Very. Again, like in the last podcast, I talked about this. No one goes for a walk through a forest and comes out wanting to kill someone or angry. People go through a round green light and enjoy it because that green light is very calming on our body. We then get to ultraviolet light. Now, this is the one that people are told to fear. But I just want to be clear on this. Yes, exposure is a problem, but avoiding it completely is also a massive problem. UVB light helps your skin to actually synthesize vitamin D. And vitamin D is not just about bones. Vitamin D is incredibly important for us. It affects immune function, it affects our hormones, it affects our mood, it affects inflammation in the body. Really important. And UVA light also plays a huge role because it actually helps to release nitric oxide from the skin. Now, what this does is it actually improves blood flow and can lower our blood pressure. It shows people who work near a window or work outside have lower blood pressure. This is a fact. And if you look at it and you think about the people who are working outside, they don't have that high blood pressure. So sunlight is not just about vitamin D, it's actually affecting your cardiovascular system too. And we are learning more about the fact that this UV lie is actually helping to synthesize melatonin in the body as well. Very important. Now, why have we got this so badly wrong? Because what we've done is we've created an environment. Here in Australia, we had advertising campaigns: slip slop, slap, and cover up and wear hats and long sleeves and all the rest. We've actually created a monster with a lot of this. And what we need to do is we need to be outside and we need to be getting that sun and getting more sunlight on us. A lot more sunlight on us. We've created an environment that is creating the exact opposite of what humans evolved in. You think about it. We didn't have sunscreens and issues like that, and the issues that go with that going back as we evolved. We stay inside all day. In fact, research shows that Americans are spending more than 85% indoors. 85% indoors. We get very little natural daylight. Then at night, what we do is we flood our eyes with this artificial light after sunset, watching TVs, looking at computer screens, looking at our phones, lying in bed watching TV. Dim days, bright nights. And that's backwards. And what happens is your biology is actually seriously paying the price for this. Why do you think we have a society of poor sleepers with low energy that are overweight with hormone disruptions? It's not because you're broken, it's because your environment that you're actually living in is broken. So what does this look like for us in real life? So let's make it practical. You don't need to overhaul your whole life, but what you do need to do is be intentional in what you actually do. What does Roger say? If you follow me on social media, sky before screen, you've got to be getting daylight before you start looking at your phone. Rolling over and grabbing your phone off the bedside table and lying there scrolling that in a dim room is actually committing biological suicide. It's causing your body all sorts of problems. Get outside. Get up, have your hydration and grab your coffee and go outside. Even just 15, 5 to 10 minutes of sitting outside within an hour of waking helps to anchor your circadian rhythm. If you can get 20 to 30 minutes and wander around the garden or do something, great. And if it's cloudy, just stay at a bit longer. Now, clouds may reduce the intensity, but the full signal is still there. It's light hitting you. And the fact that there's light means all those colors are actually in it. And you don't realize, but being outside, that light hitting you, you've still got that infrared going into your body. What this does is it also sets your circadian rhythm for the entire day and it will help you to sleep better when it's dark. We need to use light to stay alert on shifts. So if you're starting night shift, we use brighter light at the start. But what we do is that helps to delay that melatonin, keeps you alert a bit. But we don't want to be blasting ourselves with bright light the whole shift. We need to be strategic with this. And then after shift, this is where most people get it wrong. You finish a night shift, you drive home in full sunlight. What does that tell your brain? Wake up. So instead, wear blue light blocking glasses. Just glasses that have got blue light blocking in them, sunset lens. That's all you need. Just to block the blue. You can get the light, but block that blue. Because the blue light tells your brain, wake up. Keep your environment, keep those blue light blockers on, keep it dim. Get into a dark room, take off your blue light blockers, put on your sleep mask, and watch how much better you sleep. Because this is protecting your sleep. And during the day, when you wake up, get up and get out in the day. Get some midday sunshine. Because this is where the UV exposure is high. Now you don't need to burn yourself. You don't sit out there in the nude and just completely cover yourself in UV for the for uh hours on end. Just a bit. 10 to 15 minutes, that's all you need. Just short, regular exposure helps to maintain that vitamin D, and it's so important. One of the main reasons why we feel so miserable in the winter is because we're not getting sufficient vitamin D. And it does, it makes a big difference. Skin exposure matters. Face and arms, good start. And we need to reduce light at night after sunset. Lower the lights in your house, avoid bright overhead lighting, reduce your screen exposure wherever you can, because this then allows melatonin to rise naturally and stop fearing the sun. We've been taught to avoid sunlight, stay inside, cover up, block it out. Ugh. It's dangerous. It's the demon, the sun. But the reality is it's the lack of sunlight that is a bigger problem than the Casanova that it may cause. The minimum amount of sun exposure that you have, the more chance you've got of having problems when you are exposed to it. Golfers in particular are extremely healthy people. They are outside all the time in that daylight. They have much better longevity than anybody else. And the reason is because they're getting more daylight every day. Now, this doesn't mean line the sun for hours, but what it does do is just respect it. Use it properly because your body is actually expecting it. Think about it. We are diurnal creatures. We need daylight during the day and we need no light at night. So if your sleep is off and your energy feels like it's all over the place, or you've actually got none, or if you feel like you are constantly fighting your body with brain fogged fatigue, start with light. Get your light diet right. Not willpower, not another plan. Just get your light right. Get it early and use it during the day. Reduce it at night. Do that consistently, and you watch the difference that this makes. So many things start to fall into place. If you found this useful, hit follow on the podcast, turn on your alerts, and please give us a rating and a review if you got the opportunity. We really could use it at the moment. And I'll keep breaking down simple, evidence-based ways to help you work with your body and not against it. 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.