The Myth Of Getting Used To It

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Have you ever noticed that when someone starts working night shift, there's one sentence that you will hear more than any other sentence you'll hear in your entire career. And that is you'll get used to it. Now I reckon every shift worker listening to this has heard those words. Maybe it was from your training officer. Might have been a senior nurse, another paramedic, someone who's been doing the job for 20 years, or someone who's genuinely meant well. They look at you struggling through those first few night shifts and they say, Don't worry, mate, you'll get used to it. Now, at the time, it's really comforting because you're exhausted, you can't sleep, you're hungry at strange times, your stomach feels ordinary, you can't think straight. Everything just feels harder than you expected. So when someone tells you you'll eventually get used to it, you hang on to that hope. And I know I definitely did. And I spent almost 40 years working shift work with Victoria Plouse. And for decades, I literally believed those words. I believed that one day my body would eventually adapt, that somehow I'd become one of those experienced shift workers who seem to handle nights effortless effortlessly effortlessly. But what I've learned over the years, through my own lived experience, and now through studying chronobiology and circadian rhythms, and through working with hundreds of shift workers, is that those five words, you'll get used to it, are probably the biggest myth in shift work. Because the truth is, you don't get used to it. You simply become better at surviving it, and they're two very different things. It doesn't have to be this way. Whether you're a shift worker, trying to feel better, or a leader responsible for the people who keep your organisation running around the clock, you're in the right place. Welcome to a healthy shift. I'm Roger Sutherland, and after more than four decades of working 24-7 shifts with Victoria Police, followed by years of studying nutrition, circadian biology, human performance, and working with literally thousands of shift workers, I've made it my mission to change the conversation around shift work. Because healthier people create stronger teams, and stronger teams build better organisations. And it all starts by understanding how to work with your biology and not against it. Let's get into today's episode. And hello and welcome back. My name Roger Sutherland. If this is your first episode, you are so welcome here. And if you've been listening for a while now, I want to say thank you so much for coming back. It genuinely means a lot that you've chosen to spend part of your day with me. Now, this podcast exists because I don't want another shift worker spending decades believing that they have to accept feeling average. Because that's exactly what I did for years. I actually thought exhaustion was just part of the uniform. I thought living on caffeine was normal. I thought struggling to sleep during the day was just something that you had to put up with. I thought sitting in the driveway after night shift because I had absolutely nothing left was just part of the job. And I honestly believed that everybody just felt like that. Nobody ever told me otherwise. In fact, what they did was they reinforced it. How many times did I hear, oh, that shift work? You'll get used to it. Wait until you've done 20 years, mate. It gets easier. And looking back now, I don't actually blame them. Because that's what they believe too. But believing something and it being biologically true are worlds apart. They are two completely different things. And that is what I'm going to unpack in today's episode. Not to scare you, not to tell you that shift work is hopeless. Actually, I want to bring awareness to the exact opposite. Because once you understand what's really happening inside your body, everything starts to make sense. And when things make sense, you stop blaming yourself. That, for me, is one of the most powerful things that education can do. And let's face it, we've all not been

When Common Symptoms Become “Normal”

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educated when it comes to shift work. And that's why I'm here to make that change. So let's go into why this episode in particular really matters. Because you know what's interesting? When someone has high blood pressure, we don't tell them, oh, you'll get used to it. When someone has asthma, we don't say, ah, give it another 10 years. If someone breaks their leg, we don't tell them, oh look, eventually you'll stop noticing it. Yet for some reason when it comes to shift work, this is exactly what we've done. We've normalized the symptoms. Fatigue. Normal. Really bad sleep. Normal. That feeling in our gut, digestive problems, IBS, gas, reflux, constipation, diarrhea. Normal. Weight gain. Yep, normal. Those mood swings. Yep. Normal. That feeling of being isolated all the time from family and friends. Yep. Normal. Brain fog. Yeah, that's normal. Needing six coffees just to function. Yeah, that's normal. We've become so used to seeing those things and we've stopped questioning them. And when everybody around you feels exactly the same, it's really easy to assume that that's just what shift work does to us. But here's the question that I really want to sew in your brain today. Just because something becomes common, does that make it normal? Or have we simply become accustomed to seeing people struggle? Because they're two completely different things. So let's go to my story. Because I can still remember vividly those early days in policing. I remember looking at those senior members, the experienced ones, the blokes and girls who'd been doing nights for 20 years. I remember seeing them with their 15-year service medal. I'm thinking, my God, what a legend. They look calm, professional. They knew their job inside out. I assume they've adapted. They've figured it out. They're used to this. Now, don't get me wrong, they absolutely had adapted to the work. They knew how to investigate jobs. They knew how to make decisions under pressure. They knew how to deal with violent offenders. They'd mastered policing. But had their biology adapted to night shift? No. Not at all. What they'd actually mastered was functioning while tired. And that is a completely different skill. And I don't think we talk about this enough. So what do I mean when I say you never really get used to night shift? So let's start with something really simple. Your body does not wear a watch. It doesn't know if it's Tuesday. It doesn't know you've just started a run of four night shifts. It doesn't know your roster. Your body tells the time by looking for clues. Every single day it is asking, What's going on around me? Is it light? Is it dark? Have I been moving? Have I just eaten? Is it time to sleep? Your brain is constantly collecting information from the world around you. And it's using that information to decide what your body should be doing next. Now, scientists call these Zeitgebers. It's a German word that simply means time givers. They're the signals that keep your body clock running on time. Now here's where it gets really interesting. Because for hundreds of thousands of years, human beings lived by one thing: the rising and the setting of the sun. When the sun came up, we became alert. When it went down, our biology started preparing us for sleep. Our hormones followed that rhythm. Our digestion followed that rhythm. Our body temperature followed that rhythm. Even our immune system follows that rhythm. It's one of the most incredible systems in our human body. And then in the blink of an eye, from an evolutionary perspective, we introduced night shift. Now let me be really clear. I'm not saying night

How Your Body Tells Time

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shift is bad, it is, but I'm certainly not saying that you should quit it, but you should. Because society needs shift workers. Hospitals need nurses, communities need the police, ambulances need paramedics, firefighters need to respond. Factories need people making the products we all rely on. Aeroplanes need pilots, and they also need flight attendants or cabin staff and baggage packers and people to check you on and take you off. And taxi drivers and Uber drivers and Amazon deliverers. Shift workers literally keep our world turning. But our biology hasn't evolved at the same pace as modern society. And that is an important distinction. And once you understand that, everything here starts to make sense. Now I want you to imagine something. Imagine that you've got a really close friend, and every single morning they ring you at seven o'clock. Without fail, seven o'clock every single day. You come to expect it. And then one morning they ring you at two o'clock in the morning. You probably answer the phone thinking, my god, something must be wrong. Because your expectation has been disrupted. Well, your body works exactly the same way. It expects consistency, not perfection, but consistency. It expects light at certain times, food at certain times, movement at certain times, sleep at certain times. And when those signals become unpredictable, your body doesn't throw its hand in the air and say, Well, I suppose we're a night shift worker now. Instead, it starts trying to work things out and make sense of all this conflicting information. And that's why shift workers often tell me, Rog, I just don't feel right. They're not imagining it. Their biology is trying to interpret mixed messages. Think about your average run of night shifts. You're awake all night under artificial light. Now you might eat at one o'clock in the morning. You drive home wearing sunglasses because the sun's up. Then you try to sleep while the rest of the world is awake. Your neighbors, they're out there mowing the lawn. The posty arrives, the bin gets emptied, the kids have just come home from school. Then you're on days off. And you try to flip back to sleeping at night again. Now you ask yourself, if you were your own body, would you know what time it was? Probably not. And that's exactly why so many shift workers feel like they're living with that permanent jet lag feeling. Because in many ways, you are. Now here's the part that I wish someone had explained to me 40 years ago. Feeling tired doesn't necessarily mean that you're sleep deprived. Sometimes it can actually mean that your body clock in your life are out of sync. Now that's a really important distinction because most people try to solve that problem with more sleep. I'll have a sleep in. I'll catch up on the days off. I'll have a sleep and I'll sleep for 12 hours. And I, I confess, I used to think exactly the

Mixed Signals And Permanent Jet Lag

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same. But your biology doesn't really work like that. You can't store sleep in the bank. And you can't completely repay sleep debt by sleeping in until lunchtime every Sunday. And in fact, one of the unintended consequences of sleeping in is that you push your body clock even further away from consistency. It's one of the reasons that people often wake up after a massive sleep in and still feel ordinary. I know. I just broke a few hearts. I heard them smash. And it certainly broke mine when I first learned it. So where does this leave us? Well, I think it leaves us with something incredibly hopeful, to be honest. Because if the problem isn't that you're weak and it isn't that you're lazy, and it isn't because you lack discipline, then maybe, just maybe, there's another answer. Maybe your body isn't broken at all. Maybe it's doing exactly what it was designed to do. And just maybe nobody has ever explained to you the rules of the game. And once you understand the rules, you can start playing differently. And that is exactly what happened to me. Because when I stopped asking what's wrong with me, and started asking, What does my biology need from me? It was life-changing. Everything changed. Not overnight. There wasn't some magical Monday morning where I suddenly had endless energy, but little by little, bit by bit, sorry, um, I started making decisions differently. And something remarkable happened. I stopped fighting with my body, and you know what? I then started working with it. So if you've been listening to this episode and you're thinking, Rog, you literally just described my life and how I feel. I want you to hear what I'm about to say. Listen carefully. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not weak, and you're certainly not lazy, and you are not undisciplined. And I want to reassure you that you are certainly not failing. You're literally a human being trying to work in an environment that asks your biology to do something that it was never designed to do. And that is very different. And understanding that changes everything. Because once you stop blaming yourself, you can finally start helping yourself. You know, when I first studying, first started studying chronobiology and circadian health, I actually got angry. Not at

Sleep Debt And The Self Blame Trap

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anyone in particular, I just got angry because I realized I'd spent decades believing that I was the problem. Where I couldn't sleep. I blamed myself. When I was exhausted, I blamed myself. When I needed coffee just to get through a shift, I blamed myself. When I sat in the driveway after work because I had absolutely nothing left, who did I blame? You got it. I blamed myself. I thought I needed more discipline, more motivation, more willpower. It wasn't coming. Then I learned something incredibly freeing. That my body wasn't broken. I was breaking it, but it was responding exactly as biology predicts it would. And that changes everything. Because once you stop asking what's wrong with me, and start asking, what does my body need from me, the conversation completely changes. And that's exactly why I created what I call the four pillars. Not because they're clever, not because they're

The Four Pillars For Shift Workers

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a marketing slogan, but because after years of studying the science and living this life myself, I realized that every shift worker's biology is looking for exactly the same four things. Sleep, daylight, movement, and nutrient timing. Because everything that I teach comes back to those four things. Not perfection, not biohacks, and certainly not expensive gadgets. Just consistently giving your body the signals that it's been looking for all along. So let's think about this for a minute. Sleep isn't just about resting, it's when your brain actually cleans itself. It's when your immune system gets to work. It's when your muscles recover. It's when your hormones are released. Protecting your sleep isn't being lazy. It's not soft. It's one of the healthiest activities that we take part in as a human. Daylight isn't just nice weather, it's information. It's your brain saying, okay, this is daytime. This is when we're supposed to be awake. Because every time you step outside, you are reinforcing your body clock. Movement isn't punishment, it's communication. Every step you take. No, I'm not going there. Every walk, every resistance session, every game of pickleball, you're telling your body we're alive, we're strong, keep adapting. And nutrient timing, that's the one that I wished people spoke about a lot more. And we need to talk more about this. Because most people are focusing on what they eat, but very few are actually thinking about when they eat. But your digestive system has a body clock as well. And working with that instead of against it can make an enormous difference to how you feel. And now here's the important bit. I don't expect you to walk away from this episode and suddenly change everything tomorrow. And please

One Small Change That Sticks

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don't even try. Because that is literally how people fail. They get excited, they try and fix their entire life in one day, then life gets busy, you get called into work, the kids get sick, you miss a walk, you sleep badly, and suddenly you think, oh my god, I've blown it. I'll start again on Monday. No, you haven't. You simply try to do too much. Instead, just choose one thing, just one. Maybe it's get outside for 10 minutes after you wake up. I don't know. Maybe it's protecting your sleep. Just a little bit more. Maybe it's drinking water, hydrating before you're caffeinating. Maybe it's just going for a 25-minute walk on your day off early. One thing done consistently. Because consistency beats intensity every single time. Now, people often ask me, Rog, what's the biggest change that you've seen in the hundreds of shift workers that you've worked with? And honestly, it's not weight loss and it's not sleeping eight hours and it's not running marathons, it's hope. You can actually see it. Someone walks in believing this is just my life now, and within, and I kid you not, it's generally within eight weeks, they're sleeping better, they've got more energy, they're spending quality time with their family again, them getting movement and exercising because they want to, not because they feel guilty. They're enjoying their life outside of work, not just spending that time on the couch trying to recover, doing more damage. And the best part, they realize it was never about perfection. It was about understanding their biology. And that is what I want for you. Not perfection, progress. Because if you've listened to this episode today and thought, my God, that's me. I also want you to know something else. That you do not have to figure this out on your own. And that's exactly why I do what I do. That's exactly why I transitioned out of my role

Coaching Support And Spreading The Word

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in policing to do this. Every week I work with shift workers from all over the world. Police, nurses, paramedics, firefighters, security guards, corrections officers, manufacturers, mining, people just like you. People who are tired of surviving. And together we build simple systems that fit your roster, your family, your workplace, your goals. Not somebody else's, not generic information, because there is no one size fits all approach to shift work. Now, if you'd like to find out what that could look like for you, go down into the show notes and you'll see a link there for one-to-one coaching assessment call. And what we'll do is we'll spend a bit of time talking about your roster and where you're at and what your biggest challenges are and what it is that frustrates you the most. And I will show you exactly how I can help. No pressure, no obligation, it's just a conversation. And if we're the right fit, I would absolutely love the opportunity to help you to build a healthier life around shift work. This is my mission. Because after 40 years of living it, and after years of studying the science behind it, I know that this much is true. It doesn't have to be this way. Remember, you weren't designed to work against your biology. Your body is responding to the signals that you give it. You were designed to work with it. It doesn't have to be this way. Don't let the conversation stop here. Share it with a colleague, a manager, a friend, a leader, or someone who has the opportunity to improve the lives of people working in a 24-7 environment. Because real change starts with awareness. And awareness changes conversations, and conversations change organisations. And organizations change lives. So thank you for spending this time with me. And until next time, I want you to remember this it doesn't have to be this way. Take care of yourself and take care of each other.