Cortisol Question And A Twist

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I was having a conversation with a good friend the other day, and he wanted to know how to reduce cortisol. What foods should I eat? And it actually has nothing to do with food. It's all to do with stress. Because and he says, like, I'm not stressed at all. And I said, Well, stress isn't always something that you feel. And this is what I want to talk about today. You can feel completely fine while your body is dealing with circadian misalignment, artificial light at night, poor sleep, metabolic strain, inflammation, or even a life that no longer really lines up with what actually matters to you. And for shift workers and everybody, some of these stresses become so normal that we don't even recognize them anymore. So today, I want to talk about the stress that you don't know you're carrying. Because sometimes the first step isn't managing stress, it's actually recognizing what stress actually is. So grab a coffee, pull up a chair, have a seat, and let's talk about that. Because it doesn't have to be this way.

Stress Without The Stress Feeling

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For far too long, we've accepted fatigue, poor sleep, burnout, and declining health as simply part of working in a 24-7 environment. I don't believe they are. 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 Plus, 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 organizations. And it all starts by understanding how to work with your biology and not against it. Let's get into today's episode. And welcome back to another episode of a Healthy Shift Podcast. You are so welcome. It's such a pleasure having you along, and I do greatly appreciate you actually listening into this episode of the show and every other show that you have. Today I actually want to have a chat with you about the type of stress that I don't think we talk about enough, but we really do need to talk a lot more about it. And it's not the stress that you feel when you're running late for work. You know that feeling that you get in the pit of your gut. It's not about your boss absolutely giving you the shits. It's not the argument that you had with your partner. And it's not even that feeling where you're sitting there thinking, God, I'm stressed. I'm talking about the stress that you may not even realize that your body is actually dealing with. Because you can actually outwardly feel pretty good. You can be sitting there having a coffee, chatting to someone, thinking, you know what, life isn't that bad. While biologically, your body is being asked to deal with a whole range of things that are actually creating internal stress. Now, if you're a shift worker, this is something that I really want you to understand. Because when we talk about the health impacts of shift work, I think sometimes we make the mistake of looking for that one big thing that we need to fix. Oh, I've had this happen. I've had that happen. Oh, it's so stressful. Oh, it's impacted on me. And I'm not taking anything away from you for that. I'm not. I've been there. I really have. But often it's not the one big thing, it's the accumulation of a whole lot of those one percenters, those smaller things that are actually occurring. And your body has to keep dealing with them over and over and over again every single day. So today, I just want to talk about stress a little bit differently to give you an insight. It's not just the psychological stress. I want to talk about biological

Circadian Misalignment As Silent Load

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stress as well. Circadian stress, metabolic stress, even environmental stress, and even some of the stress that can come from the way that we're actually living our lives today. Because some of it is actually happening around us without us even recognizing it as a stress. So let's start about the obvious one, start with the obvious one for our shift working community. Now, you know this because I've spoken about it a hundred times, your body clock. In fact, every single tissue and organ in your body has a body clock. It actually has a clock, some form of circadian timing. And we're actually evolved to function around roughly a 24-hour light and dark cycle. If you go back to caveman days, the sun would come up, we'd get up, we'd go out, be out all day, the sun would go down dark, that'd be it, we'd be done. Light during the day, darkness at night, pretty simple, isn't it? But all that activity and that eating predominantly occurred during that biological day, during that time when it was biologically light. Rest and recovery, when did that occur? You got it. The other time, which is during biological night. Then along comes our shift work. And at two o'clock in the morning when your biology is expecting you to be asleep, because biology hasn't evolved that way, right? It's still the same. You might be standing under bright artificial lights, you're eating a meal, you're drinking coffee, making decisions, dealing with people, and asking your brain and body to actually perform. Now, you might not actually feel stressed and you might be thriving and think you're doing really well. Because you might have worked nights for like 15 years, or my case, 40. You might even tell me, Rog, nights don't bother me. I actually prefer them. And psychologically, that might be completely true. But your biology doesn't necessarily share the same opinion. Now, there is a difference between being accustomed to doing something that the thing being biologically neutral and working against your circadian system can create physiological strain even when you're not consciously consciously experiencing it as a stress. What's become your new normal? And this is something that I really want shift workers to understand because you might be thinking, but I don't have a stressful job. But your body is still being asked to do things at times when it is biologically prepared to be doing nothing or something else, and that mismatch creates a stress and it really

Artificial Light And Melatonin Suppression

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matters. And then we add light. Now, this is another really interesting one because light isn't just there so you can see, light is actually giving our body information, and your brain is constantly using light and darkness as signals to learn about what time of the day it is, and this is why we feel so awful because we tend to feel so disjointed. No wonder. It's called social jet lag. The signals that we're actually seeing don't line up with where our body is actually at in time and space, and our body is confused. And what does that create? Stress. I hope you understand that. So we've got to think about the environment that we've actually created for ourselves. We're at home, bang, on go the artificial lights. LEDs, blue rich LEDs, absolutely no infrared, no good light in them at all. It's just literally blue light. We're working under artificial light at night. Same deal. Artificial lights, LEDs, fluorescent, stripped of all the all the good light, and it's just got blue. That's all it is. The lights are on in the house, the television's on. Then we climb into bed. We've got the bedside lamp on, and what are we doing? We're holding our mobile phone 30 centimeters from our face. Most of the time, it's not even that far away. And we scroll. Now I'm not going to turn this into a phoneies evil conversation because I use mine. I need to. And you use yours. But the issue is when we're using them, it's the timing of it. At night, that light going into your eyes is actually influencing the circadian system. And what it does is it suppresses melatonin. Now you can say, oh yeah, but I've got the um uh the night saver mode on on my phone. It doesn't matter. That doesn't make any difference. There's no scientific evidence to support that at all. Yes, you can put night mode on it, might help a little, but you're still getting blue light in your eyes. You're still confusing your circadian rhythm, you're still suppressing melatonin. And we know that melatonin helps to combat free radicals, which help, which stops the oxidative stress that causes cancer cells. So while you might be lying in bed and feeling completely relaxed, you're watching your funny dog videos, you're not stressed, but you're still giving your circadian system a signal at the biological time when darkness should normally be the signal. And that is the distinction that I'm trying to make through this episode. How you feel psychologically and what your biology is responding to are not necessarily the same thing. And shift workers get hit with this from both directions because we can get too much light when biology needs darkness,

Why Daylight Matters After Nights

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and then we and then not enough daylight when our circadian system so desperately needs a strong daytime signal. You finish the night shift, you drive home, maybe you've got your dark glasses on. You go inside, your curtains are closed, you sleep, you get up later in the afternoon, and depending on the time of year and your routine, you might barely get any outdoor light exposure. And that's important, like super important. Again, none of that is necessarily feel stressful to you, but you're asking your circadian system to make sense of very conflicting information. Just because you look at the clock on the wall and it says it's one o'clock in the afternoon doesn't mean that your body understands that it's one o'clock in the afternoon. And that is what's super important. And this is why I keep coming back to daylight when I talk to shift workers. It's not a wellness trend, it's one of the strongest environmental signals that your circadian system receives. Now let's move somewhere

Visceral Fat As Metabolic Stress

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completely different. Let's go to weight gain. Because this is another area where I think we actually need to change the conversation. Because when people talk about gaining weight, particularly around the abdomen, the conversation usually becomes cosmetic. Oh, my pants don't fit. Oh, I don't like what I see in the mirror. Jeez, I need to lose my belly. But biologically, we actually need to think beyond the appearance. We make it all about appearance because we're so hung up on it. But visceral fat is the fat that's stored around those internal organs. And excess visceral adipose tissue isn't simply an inert storage tank sitting there doing nothing. Sadly, you need to understand that visceral fat is metabolically active. It actually contributes to inflammatory signaling and is associated with insulin resistance and cardiometabolic diseases. So while we're carrying that excessive visceral fat around our gut, and I'm not talking about body size, we're potentially talking about another source of a physiological load. And here's where this becomes particularly relevant to the shift worker. Because shift work itself is associated with a greater risk of metabolic problems. Then we've got to think about the environment that we're actually working in or that we're living in, disrupted sleep, circadian misalignment, eating during the biological night, irregular meals, reduced opportunities for movement, fatigue, highly palatable food sitting in the tea room at 3 a.m., loading up on caffeine just to get through, and maybe alcohol when you get home because I need to switch off. But over time, that weight starts to creep up. Now we've got another potential contributor to the overall physiological burden. And I want to be careful here because I don't want anyone hearing this as if you're overweight, you're stressing your body and it's your fault. That is just far too simplistic. Body weight is influenced by a huge range of biological, environmental, and behavioral and social factors. But what I want you to understand is that visceral adipose tissue has a biological activity. And that's different from making a judgment about someone's body. And that's important that you understand that. It's not just, oh, I'm carrying some weight. The visceral fat around those organs is biologically active and it is creating bigger problems. So this is different from making a judgment about someone's body.

Poor Sleep Is Real Strain

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And then the sleep. Now we tend to think about poor sleep in terms of how it makes us feel. Oh, I'm tired. Oh, I'm cranky, I can't concentrate. God, I need coffee. Oh, I'm just a poor sleeper. Oh, I don't sleep well. Oh, it doesn't matter. But sleep is also when an enormous amount of biological regulation and recovery occurs. It is the most important activity that we take part in daily. So if you're repeatedly restricting sleep or sl or sleeping at biologically difficult times, what you're doing is you're adding another stress, another challenge that your system has to deal with. Again, you might not call that stress. You might just call it Tuesday. You might just call it I just get insomnia. And that's really the point of this episode. Because for a shift worker, some things become so normal that we stop recognizing what we're asking our bodies to actually do.

When Life And Values Clash

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But there's another side of stress that I want to talk about. And this one isn't specifically about circadian biology, it's about your life. Who are the people who are around you? What are you saying yes to? What is it that you are tolerating? And are you actually living according to what you value, what matters to you? Because I've had plenty of conversations with people who tell me they're stressed. And when we start pulling things apart, sometimes the problem isn't their workload. They're actually living a life that doesn't line up with their values. They tell me their family is the highest value. But they're never present with their family. They tell me that their health matters. But they've structured their life in a way that leaves absolutely no room to look after themselves. They tell me, oh, I value my relationship. But every day off gets filled with obligations, and they never spend any meaningful time together. Or they're keeping people in their lives who are constant freaking drainers because they feel obligated to. And I think that personally is another form of stress that we personally don't always recognize. It's that constant friction between the life you say matters to you and the life that you are actually living. Now, I'm not saying that that has the same biological mechanism as circadian misalignment or visceral adiposy, adiposity. It doesn't. But psychological and social stresses still really affect us. I'll tell you how to think about it. Think about it when the phone rings and you turn it over and look at it, and you think, oh God, I can't do that today. I can't do them today. That is a stress. And that's going in. And sometimes we don't recognize them because there's been some massive crisis. It's just this low-level feeling that something isn't right. But you're constantly saying yes when you don't, when you want to say no. You're spending time with people that you don't actually even enjoy being around. And you're chasing things that you don't really care about, and you're working towards someone else's definition of success. You're looking at something on the internet and you're going, oh, that's me. And you're trying to work towards it. But that's their definition. That's not yours. And meanwhile, you're telling you and meanwhile, the things that you tell yourself matter most, the things that you value and the things that you're continually telling yourself, or you tell me that you value, your behaviors show that you actually push those to the bottom of the list. And what that does is it actually creates stress in your head, it creates tension. And I think that shift workers are particularly vulnerable to this because our time is already under pressure. You don't have every Saturday or Sunday off available, and you're missing birthdays, you're missing dinners, you're missing sporting events, you're sleeping while other people are awake. And so the time that you do have becomes incredibly value. And if you're filling that limited time with people, obligations, and activities that don't line up with your values, my God, you're making an already difficult lifestyle even harder.

Practical Ways To Reduce Load

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So maybe stress management isn't always about, I need to meditate. Maybe it isn't about breathing exercises. And maybe sometimes stress management is getting outside and seeing daylight. It could very well be making your bedroom pitch black so you sleep. It could literally be about putting your phone down earlier. Maybe it's getting serious about your sleep and making it a priority because you need to. And if you don't sleep well, then speak to someone about how you can and what you can do. Because you're the fact that you say, I'm not a good sleeper, it's environmental. Because when you create the environment, your body will take care of the rest. Maybe you need to be looking at when you're eating rather than only what you're eating. Maybe it's moving your body consistently daily. Maybe it's addressing the gradual increase in visceral fat from a health perspective rather than an appearance perspective. Change it from how I look to this is having an impact on my health. And maybe it's having a really uncomfortable look at your life and asking, Am I actually living according to what I say matters to me? Because you can't remove all stress, and I don't think that's even the goal. Because stress is actually part of being human. And plus, we go into the gym and we exercise, and that's a good stress. But shift work itself creates challenges that we cannot completely eliminate. And if you're working at three o'clock in the morning, I can't magically make three o'clock in the morning become midday for your biology. But we can stop adding unnecessary load. And that's the part that I really, really want you to think about. So don't just ask, do I feel stress? I want you to ask yourself this question: what is my body having to deal with? What am I putting it through? How much circadian disruption am I creating? Not just oh, that shift work. How much are you actually creating further circadian disruption? What light signals, daylight signals are you giving yourself? What artificial light exposure are you giving yourself? Am I getting enough daylight during the day? How am I actually sleeping? When am I eating? Not what? When? Am I moving enough every day? What's happening metabolically? Who am I surrounding myself with? And does the way I'm spending my limited time actually reflect what I value and what matters to me? Because sometimes the stress that is affecting us most isn't the stress we're complaining about. It's the stress that we've stopped noticing because it's become our normal. And if you're a shift worker, normal doesn't always mean biologically harmless. Now that might be the most important thing that I want you to take away from this episode. You don't need to become obsessed with eliminating every stressor in your life. You need to become better at recognizing the ones that are there. Because once you see them, you can actually start doing something about them. I hope that helped you. I hope you enjoyed that episode, and I'll catch you on the next one.

Key Question And Closing Message

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If today's episode resonated with you, 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 organizations. 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.