Welcome And Night Shift Focus

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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 is Roger Sutherland, and I am your guide. I'm a shift work coach and night shift specialist. And that's how I'm titling myself now because if there's one thing that I absolutely love talking about and really love helping people with, because it's one of the things that a lot of people really, really struggle with, and that is the night shift. And let's be brutally honest here. Whenever you say, oh, you're a shift worker, we all think night shift. And in all honesty, a lot of us can do day shift and afternoon shift, and we can do it pretty well. It's the night shift that absolutely does us in. So let's really start to talk about more the night shift because that's the one we struggle with. And let's get you doing a lot better on the night shift. So today I actually want to talk about heading home from night shift. This the best time of the light, right? It's the absolute best. And one question that I get asked, because a lot of people see me say, you must get early light, you must get early light, you must get early light. And that's true, unless you're on your way home from night shift. And that's one that I want to talk about. I don't want people to get confused and get that daylight on the way home from night shift because this is something that we really need to avoid. So, how do we avoid it? Let's talk about that. Let's talk about what the daylight actually does to us. Let's talk about a specific area and then how we can work around that. Now, this is one of the most common questions that I get asked by shift workers. Should I avoid daylight on the way home from night shift? And unfortunately, like most things in shift work, the answer just isn't black and white. Because the real issue is not light, it's the blue spectrum within the light. And once you understand that, it literally changes the whole conversation around how we can protect our sleep after night shift. And this is something that we really do need to be doing. We need to be protecting that sleep. And I've got to tell you, and let me be very clear, that when you are not protecting your sleep, you are actually decaying your brain.

Why Morning Light Derails Sleep

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You're causing all sorts of problems because your brain, when you are asleep, actually detoxifies and flushes. And if you're not getting good, deep restorative sleep, that's not occurring. And this is why we, you know, well, when I say this is why, this is one of the reasons why we have to be very careful of this happening because of the link towards Alzheimer's and dementia because of the attacks on the brain. So let's just try and work with this. Have a listen to this one, and this will make a lot of sense to you. And there's a simple fix that you might think is an expensive fix, but when you think about Alzheimer's and dementia and problems with the brain and poor sleep, it's actually a really small investment. So let's go through it. Light is not the real issue itself, it's the blue. Once you understand that, we will actually have a much better understanding of what we need to do. So today I'm going to explain it in very simple terms. When shift workers understand what is happening internally and biologically to them, what happens is people stop guessing and they start making a much smarter decision. And this is what I want to educate people on. One of the biggest problems that I see around night shift in particular is the lack of education. Does your workplace, did your workforce actually educate you and teach you how to go about doing shift work and how to go about doing night shift? When to eat, what to eat? Do they provide you with nap rooms? Do they provide you with um uh proper foods that you should be eating overnight instead of just, you know, filling a vending machine and leaving it sitting there? Have they got the proper lighting in place? No, the answer is no. This is the biggest problem. And they're not supporting you, even though they have to, by law, they have to support you. But what we want to do is we need to look after ourselves a bit as well until they get to that stage. So let's break it down. When you finish a night shift and you walk outside at seven or eight o'clock in the morning, as per most people do, your body has already been awake all night. Your brain is absolutely exhausted. And adenosine in your bloodstream is actually elevated to the stage where you feel exhausted. You feel really tired. Now, your melatonin should be elevated, and your body wants darkness. But what do we do? We step out into morning light. We embrace it. We're driving home. Some of us are driving home into the sun, but we're driving home in the light in the summer. And depending on where you live and what you're doing, most people are driving home in the light. And for many shift workers, that morning light is enough to completely derail your ability to sleep once you get home. Sure, you might actually go to sleep, but do you actually stay asleep? This is the big, big thing. All right. You will go to sleep because there's a big difference in being exhausted, having elevated adenosine. But once you fall asleep and that adenosine falls away, if you got to wake up to go pee, which is normal, you won't go back to sleep. This becomes a massive

Melatonin, Brain Detox, And Risk

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problem. Right. So for many years, people simply said you got to avoid light after night shift. But that's not technically accurate either. Because, and this is the key, and this is where I want you to really pay attention. Your eyes actually contain different types of cells. Now, some of the cells are responsible for vision, and others are actually responsible for your body clock. That's right, there are cells in the back of your eye that are actually responsible for cueing your body clock. And this is where the things get really interesting. And I mean inside your eyes, you've got rods and cones. Now, everyone's heard of these rods and cones, haven't they? You've heard of rods and cones in your eyes, and you think that's what helps you to see. What they do is they actually help you with light, low light and night vision. The cones actually help, sorry, rods help you with the low light and the night vision, and the cones actually help with the color and detail during the day. Now, these cells actually send signals, they decode the signals and send the signals to the brain that help you to see. That's your vision. But there is another group of cells that many people have not heard about, and they are called IPRGCs. That stands for intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells. Now, this sounds really complicated, but they're actually a really simple process. Those cells are not there to help you to see, they have no function in vision in any way whatsoever, but they are there to help your brain detect the time of day because these cells are obsessed with one thing only, nothing else, and that is blue light. That blue spectrum, which is found heavily in that morning light. And the reason why there's that blue in the morning light is it's we are diurnal creatures and there's a lot of blue light in it, and it is to get us up and going. So when those IPRGC cells detect blue in the light, they become highly activated. They get excited. And what they do from there is they send a signal directly to the master body clock in the brain, which is called the supracosmatic nucleus. And I want you to think of the SCN as the body's head office clock, right? It's the master clock inside the body. It controls your sleep timing, it controls your hormones, your body temperature, your alertness, your digestion, your recovery. Yeah, you're right. It pretty much controls absolutely everything. Now, when the SCN receives a blue light signal from those IPRGC cells, what it does is it interprets that signal as it is now daytime. We need to be awake. And what it does then is that signal then suppresses melatonin. And melatonin is your sleep hormone. So what happens? You finish the night shift exhausted, you drive home in bright morning light, and those blue sensitive IPRGC cells in your eyes fire up. They get excited, and then they tell the SCN, hey guys, it's daytime. Melatonin drops, alertness rises, and then you get home and wonder why you can't fall asleep properly. You've heard of

The Eye Cells That Set Time

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the second wind. This is what is actually occurring, and this is the problem. So technically, it's not simply light exposure, it's actually the blue spectrum within that light that matters most. Think about light hitting the prism and the rainbow of light coming out of that prism, all right? And the blue in that. So there is blue in every bit of light that we actually see. Now I'm tired driving home, but then I'm wide awake once I get into bed. I've had a second wind. What's happened? What's happened is your biology has literally been told it is time to wake up. Now, this is where we can properly utilize blue light blocking glasses. And they have become incredibly valuable for night shift workers. Now, I'm talking a quality blue light blocking glass here. All right, blue light blocking glasses. I'm not talking about going to OPSM or your local spec savers or something like that and just saying, oh yeah, just put that blue filter on them. Because that's not, there is absolutely no benefit to that at all. Now we're not talking about the cheap fashion glasses with the clear lenses or or even just the yellowy ones. We're not even talking about those. I'm talking about the proper orange lens, sunset, blue light blocking glasses, the orange lens ones, right? Because that orange lens literally reflects the blue wavelengths that stimulate those IPRGC cells. They hit it and they reflect. That's what the orange does. So instead of your brain receiving a strong daylight signal, you've literally blunted the message significantly, but you can still see. Now, what this does is it means it suppresses melatonin less, and the SCN doesn't get a strong blue signal to tell it that it's daytime. And then you get a smoother transition towards your sleep when you get home because your body hasn't seen blue, all right, or it's not seen blue for a while. It's still seeing the light, but the blue has been blocked, and that cell, those IPRGC cells, they only see blue. So all we're gonna do is stop blue from hitting those, and our body thinks it's dark. So this is why I recommend that night shift workers put their blue light blockers on before they leave work, before you walk outside. Not halfway home, not once you get home and get inside, before you walk out and go. Leave them in your locker, do whatever, but put them in there and have them with you and put them on before you step outside. You then leave them on the entire drive home. And honestly, if possible, you would keep them on while you're at home preparing for bed as well. When you first put them on, they feel weird. I'm not gonna deny that they do. But you would be amazed at just how used to them you actually get. It's like the bio lights that we've put in our house now. Anyone else walking into our house would go, oh my god, the lights are so yellow. But to us, they just seem normal. We don't notice the difference at all because we're so conditioned and so used to it. The only time you would take them off is once you get into bed and you actually are putting your sleep mask on. That's it. You're basically creating an artificial darkness strategy for your eye because daytime sleep is already difficult enough. I don't have to tell you that. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to sleep against our biology. So every little advantage that we can make matters, and this becomes even more important in the summer when it's

Orange Lenses And When To Wear

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light early. We want to make sure that we are blocking that blue. It will help us for the last hour and a half to two hours before we're going to bed. Drop that blue light out. Now, in Australia during the summer, morning light intensity can be brutal after night shift. It can. And the amount of blue rich light entering our eyes is enormous. And let me be clear, don't walk outside and go, oh, it's cloudy, so therefore there's no blue light. Because that's rubbish, because outside, all light contains blue. Let me say that again. All light contains blue. Now, some people will say, but shouldn't daylight help to reset the body clock? And yeah, for day workers, absolutely. Morning daylight is incredible. It is fantastic for people who are sleeping at night and waking up in the morning. That's what we want. But night workers are in a completely different situation when they're coming home and trying to sleep. So if your goal after night shift is daytime sleep, then blasting your brain with morning blue light is working against you. It is that simple. Now, there's one thing that I do want to make a point of mentioning here. Really important. Safety when you're driving home really matters. Now, the orange lenses can make things a little bit funky, all right? And may reduce visibility a little bit too much in darker conditions. So safety always comes first. If you find them difficult, do not do it. But once daylight is established, quality orange lenses can actually make a massive difference to sleep quality for many workers, all right? And I've seen this repeatedly with clients over years. The feedback that I get from people that have started wearing orange lens blue light blockers from the time or even the last hour of their shift until the time they get home and put it up, put the sleep mask on, their sleep has improved out of sight. They cannot believe the difference that it makes. So what are you doing? Are you focusing on supplements? Are you trying magnesium and melatonin and taking sleeping tablets? Because if you're doing that, you are literally wasting your time. You are missing the most important signal, and that's the blue signal to the IPRGC, which is triggering the SCN in your in your head and telling it it's daytime. I hope that's explained it for you. Because what you're doing is you're ignoring the biggest signal that your brain responds to, and that's light. Or actually, more specifically, the blue spectrum in that light. Now your brain is constantly scanning the environment, trying to determine where it is at in time and space. Is it day? Is it night? And the only way it can tell is through those IP RGC cells. That's the only way. Because your brain can't see. It's just getting a signal from that cell in your eye. So if it sees blue, it thinks it's daytime. Same as when you're lying in bed at night scrolling your phone and that light's going into your eye. That blue light, it's telling your brain it's daytime. And if you're gonna go to sleep and you do go to sleep, it's because you're exhausted. It's not because you're ready for sleep. And you don't get that good solid restorative sleep because you've shifted, face shifted, you're circadian rhythm. So this is why this is also why the shift worker scrolling social media in bed after night shift can even struggle more. Phones, tablets, bright LED lights. They're all rich in blue wavelengths, TV in bed to relax. Oh god, I can't I can't even. They're all stimulating the exact same cells. Everyone's got them. And in fact, it is the reason why when people have damaged eyes now and are blind, they leave the eye in because of the IPRGC cell in the eye. Because even when you can't see visually, those cells can still get excited by the blue, which can still tell the brain whether it's daytime or nighttime. I'm doing everything right, but I still can't sleep. Okay, the first thing that you've got to look at is the light environment. Get your light diet right. Because protecting melatonin

Driving Safety And Screen Blue Light

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after night shift can be one of the easiest and biggest wins that you can have. So let's just summarize this. Seeing light is not necessarily the problem. The bigger issue is the blue spectrum within that light. And the IPRGC cells inside the eye are highly sensitive to that blue light. So when activated, they signal the SCN that it's daytime. And that suppresses melatonin and increases alertness. So for night shift workers trying to sleep during the day, that can make sleep even harder. And one of the simplest tools available is literally just to get yourself a quality pair of orange lensed blue light blocking glasses. Don't get the clear ones, don't get the yellow ones. If you watch me on social media and you see me wearing those yellow lensed glasses, no, that's not what we need. The yellow glasses are for the screens during the day, right? They just take that high-energy visible light out. They're not blocking blue. So wear them before leaving work, keep them on, driving home, keep them on while you're preparing for bed and only remove them, put the sleep mask on. It's not a magic fix, but it is another tool that will support better daytime sleep for you night shift workers. And when you stack enough of these small strategies together consistently, sleep improves dramatically over time. So what I want you to do is go to my website, ahealthyshift.com. And if you go to the top, you'll see resources and you'll see under that menu item recommended products. Go and have a look there and you'll see what I recommend. Thanks for listening. And if you know somebody else that could use this one, send it on. Thanks for 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.