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Jan. 21, 2024
Eat, Sleep, and Serve How To Balance Shift Work with Roger Sutherland
Unlock the secrets to thriving on shift work with Roger Sutherland, the seasoned law enforcement veteran turned nutritionist from A Healthy Shift. He joins me to shed light on the unique health challenges faced by first responders and offers evidence-based strategies to navigate them. Roger's transition from the demands of the first responder life to the discipline of nutrition science equips him with both the firsthand experience and the professional acumen to guide shift workers through the complexities of managing wellness around the clock.
Our conversation takes a deep dive into the significance of listening to our bodies, understanding the natural ebb and flow of hunger, and the role of chrono nutrition in synchronizing meal times with our internal clocks. The nuanced discussion around intuitive eating provides listeners with the tools to escape the dieting merry-go-round and adopt sustainable, healthful eating habits. Roger and I tackle the often-neglected topic of late-night cravings and the importance of fasting overnight, offering practical tips that promise to realign your body's rhythm no matter your work hours.
Caffeine and light – they're not just parts of our daily routine, they're pivotal players in the quality of our sleep and mental health, especially for those in the line of duty during unconventional hours. Roger shares an eye-opening account of a firefighter's struggle with energy drinks, leading us to scrutinize our own caffeine consumption and its far-reaching effects on rest. We wrap up with actionable advice on optimizing exposure to natural light to master our circadian rhythms, ensuring first responders, and shift workers alike, can safeguard their mental well-being amidst the chaos of non-traditional work schedules. Join us for this insightful episode as we equip you with the knowledge to take control of your health against the clock.
BIO:Roger Sutherland veteran 24/7 shift worker working in front line law enforcement in Australia. Certified Nutritionist and One 2 One shift work coach. Body Image and Disordered eating certified and well read in women’s health. Currently studying Chrononutrition and Chronobiology to best assist shift workers with evidence based strategies around their 24/7 shift working lifestyle.Roger coaches shift workers One 2 One to Thrive, not just Survive while coping with the rigors of 24/7 shift work.
I currently have One2One coaching positions open for 2024 but they don't last long.
Website: ahealthyshift.com
Instagram: @a_healthy_shift
Facebook: AHealthyShiftLinkedIn: Roger Sutherland
Download my Free “The Circadian Fast” e-bookLearn what to eat and when while navig
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Transcript
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This week on All Clear, we speak with Roger Sutherland of A Healthy Shift.
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Roger is a health and wellness coach that focuses on helping first responders thrive, not just survive, in our profession.
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We will also look at the science of how to keep our minds and bodies focused and strong despite long hours of stress.
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Hey, how's everyone doing?
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Travis here Don't have Eric with me today.
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He is out dealing with some urgent issues at a local department, but he does send his greetings.
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But today I am not alone.
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I have a wonderful guest with me today.
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I have Roger Sutherland from A Healthy Shift.
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He is a shift work coach and he is also a fellow podcaster.
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How are you doing?
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today, roger, I'm absolutely fantastic.
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Thank you very much, travis, for having me on the show.
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Obviously, by my accent people will recognize I don't think I've got an accent at all, but I'm from Melbourne in Australia, down the very bottom of the big island of Australia there, and it's such a pleasure to be on your show.
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Thank you for having me.
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Oh, we appreciate it.
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We appreciate it and, like I said, I've heard you on another podcast discussing what is a healthy diet for shift workers and I was like, hey, we need to get this fellow on with us.
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But why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and we'll just leave in from there?
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Well, to be honest with you, I started in law enforcement here in Melbourne in 1984.
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So therefore, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to work out, now that we've hit 2024, that I'm actually in my 40th year of law enforcement 24 seven shift work At around about 55.
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After 35 years of shift work, I started to recognize that there is a massive problem.
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Apart from the fact I was starting to panic because I'm thinking it's time for retirement, what am I going to do?
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I actually identified that we really do have a lack of education for shift workers in nutrition and health and wellbeing and the bottom line is no one really knows how to do shift work.
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We all do it.
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We complain that we're tired, we complain that we're putting on weight, we have all these problems which are impacting on us biologically really badly.
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So what I wanted to do was because I've got the experience of actually doing the 24 seven shift work, what I wanted to do was learn as much as I could about evidence based nutrition to understand the impact that nutrition is actually having on us when to eat, what to eat.
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So I went off and did a course.
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I got accepted into the world renowned Mac nutrition uni, which is probably the gold standard of nutrition.
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You only get 400 people get to do that course every single year.
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And I'd met the director of the uni and he told me that.
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He told me that the best way for it to coach a shift worker is to coach them out of shift work and tell them not to do shift work.
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And I argued with him that yeah, that's fantastic, but who's going to come and put your house out when your house is on fire?
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When you ring 911, who's going to answer the call?
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Because if we don't have shift workers, so we need to optimize our bodies for shift workers best as we possibly can.
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There's no secret that it is bad for us, but I believe that the research in the past has been done with zero education.
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I'm here today to change the way people go about their food timing, the way they approach shift work, the way that they attack their sleep and things like that, to help them to fully understand that you can actually thrive and not just survive while you're doing shift work If you understand these simple strategies.
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And the director of the school got back to me about two weeks later and said I really love what you're doing and I would like to put you through the course during COVID.
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I studied for the whole time and I'm now certified as an evidence based nutritionist where I help shift workers worldwide.
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I've coached hundreds and hundreds of shift workers one to one worldwide and I now help them with simple, evidence based strategies and, of course, a lot of them are free and simple things that you can do to help you to optimize your life around shift work.
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So that's what I've been doing.
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I'm now 59, going on to 60.
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And this has become, it'd be fair to say, quite an overwhelming business where I'm a one man show.
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But I'm spreading the good word and I'm deeply honored to be having an opportunity to talk about this on your podcast, travis.
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We appreciate you being here and, as I mentioned, I had first heard you speak on a podcast called men's intuition that was dealing with intuitive eating.
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I personally have tried to improve the quality of how I care for myself, specifically through food.
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I've done things like cutting out sodas, trying to eat better food but eat manageable quantities.
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I hate the word diet, I hate the word or I hate the idea of you can't eat carbs, you can't eat this, you can only eat that, and it was massively discouraging.
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But when I discovered that podcast, I'm like, oh, wait, a minute, this is what I'm already doing.
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And then, when I found you, all the tumblers fell into place and it's hey, there's something here, and not just for me, but for all my brothers and sisters in the fire service.
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There's something that they can take away from it.
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But so I guess the initial question is when we start talking about eating as firefighters and or first responders in general, whether it be EMS we have a few of those guys.
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I think there might be a police officer or two out there listening, but we won't hold that against them.
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Whatever we, whatever we talk about that, what is a good and I'm going to use the D word diet.
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What is a good diet or way of eating for firefighters?
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What have you found to be the true.
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Okay, I love that.
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First of all, let's use that word diet.
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And the reason why I say let's use the word diet is because we all have to eat and while we're eating, that's our diet.
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Regardless of what you're doing when it comes to food, regardless of what you're eating when you're eating or how you're going about it, it is a diet.
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So it's not a fat loss diet, it's not a bulking diet, it's not an anything.
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So I think if we use the word diet, we it has connotations of I'm on a diet, I've got to lose weight, but I think that's wrong.
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So let's just change the framing of that as one and we'll call it a diet.
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That's what we eat Now.
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As a firefighter, it's an incredibly active role.
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It's a difficult role.
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It's mentally taxing, it's physically taxing.
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It's a really different, a difficult job.
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So the first thing that we need to do is we need to make sure that we are fueling that, and I think that's the most important thing.
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And I will be quite clear with people that restrictive diets, taking carbs out, going keto, doing carnivore, being vegetarian, being paleo, being vegan, whatever is your vice knock yourself out, but make sure that you are actually fueling your body to perform at its utmost best.
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Anybody that will know that if you were a person who has taken carbs out of your diet and because you've decided that keto is the way to go, you actually feel awful.
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What you do, you feel really awful and when you understand the science behind that, it's because of lack of carbohydrate.
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Our body, while it doesn't have to have carbohydrate, that is the body's preferred energy source, so you need to have carbohydrates because carbohydrates are broken down into glucose.
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Glucose becomes energy for our body to function.
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Thank you, In fairness, our brain and our central nervous system both function on glucose.
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So if you're a person that's cutting carbs at your diet because you think it's going to make you gain weight, you're wrong.
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That's not actually the case.
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All right, carbs don't make you gain weight, Just as fat doesn't make you gain fat.
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Fat is extremely important for our body to help us for a energy.
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It is also helping us to manufacture hormones like testosterone and to suppress estrogen and progesterone.
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In males, and while you're a female, it also helps to manufacture estrogen and progesterone, which are the female sex hormones, and suppress testosterone as well.
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But fat is very important to help us also to absorb fat soluble vitamins, which you know, vitamins like vitamin D, which is extremely important to our health and well-being.
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So the answer to the question what's a good diet is to make sure it's balanced.
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We've got good lean proteins.
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We have a good serve of carbohydrates, the right carbohydrates being fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, etc.
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And then we also have healthy fats as well, like avocado is ideal, and also olive oil and nuts and seeds as well.
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They all provide us with healthy fats and we need to make sure that we're getting a really good balance of all of that to fuel those bodies, to climb those ladders, handle those hoses, to go through the rigors of what you're actually doing when the tones go off, so that you can get to the call without feeling absolutely awful.
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So let's remove diet mentality and let's fuel our body for what it actually has to do.
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It's interesting.
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I've got my journal here that I've been keeping when I have revelations that are not necessarily new to the world but new to me about food.
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I have a note here that I made and I wanted to read.
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It says hunger is the drive to get energy, not fill the belly.
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Respect hunger, and I don't know if those are somebody else's words in particular, but they stuck with me and I wrote them down and I think you hit it when you talk about don't?
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You don't have to cut out carbs, you don't have to limit this.
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But when we don't limit things per se, what do we have to do?
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What's it important that we do with our eating schedule, our eating habits?
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Is it okay to go grab a big greasy burger at whatever McDonald's or whatever is on the way, or is that totally counterproductive to anything that you?
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did you preach?
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I think one of the most important things, travis, is this and keep in mind in today's society and if I can, just before I answer that, I'd just like to go back over this as well One of the biggest problems that we have today is we've completely lost touch with our hunger and our satiety cues.
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All right, and the reason why we do that is because if you look at the people in the firehouse while they're reading, they're staring at their phones, they're scrolling, they're watching TV, they're not actually engaging with their food.
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Now you might think that's happy clapper, woohoo.
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But how many times have you been sitting watching television at home and you've put your hand in the bag of Doritos and they're all gone and you haven't even realized that you've eaten them?
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And this is something that happens all the time because we are so distracted.
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How many times do we go to Christmas lunch or Thanksgiving lunch, or we have Easter or birthdays and we walk away from the table with a food coma, like a food belly?
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We've got all of that happens to us all the time, and the reason why this happens is because we've completely lost touch with checking in with ourself and, I think, the most important thing that we do going back to the original question as well is are we checking in with ourselves?
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Am I actually hungry or am I literally emotionally eating?
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Or am I bored, or has something just happened which has upset me, or where is it?
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And I think one of the most valuable resources that I would get your listeners to actually Google this is the hunger and fullness scale.
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And have a look at the hunger and fullness scale on the internet and have a look at that and it tells you where you should and should not be.
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And to check in with yourself, without going into too much detail on that, but ask yourself the question am I actually hungry?
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And then, while you are reading, where am I now at?
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Am I starting to feel?
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If you're starting to feel, push your plate away, have a conversation and wait a few minutes and wait and see.
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Don't eat all of that meal that's in front of you just because that whole meal is in front of you.
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Check in with yourself because one day you will be not very hungry and we all go through that, don't we, Travis?
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We have days where you're really hungry one day and you just can't fill yourself up Yet the next day or a few days later, you think God, I'm really not hungry.
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Honor that with your body, honor those signals and check in with yourself.
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Am I hungry?
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No, not really, so I'm not going to eat.
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Don't eat at breakfast time, lunch time, dinner time, just because it's breakfast, lunch and dinner time, but don't restrict to the stage where you overeat when you get to the next meal as well.
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I think honoring your hunger is one of the most important things that we can do.
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So now, having said that, coming to your next question, which was how do we work out when we eat and when we shouldn't eat, I will be quite clear that what the evidence tells us around chrono nutrition these days, and that's the timing of food and the impact that it has on our body, which is chrono biology.
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The more I read about it and the more I understand about it.
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It's more important for us, as shift workers 24-7 shift workers to get majority of our nutrient intake in during the biological day and to try and eat at breakfast time, lunch time and dinner time of the normal nine to five.
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So what you would normally eat breakfast, lunch and dinner.
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I think the biggest mistake or not?
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I think I know the biggest mistake that shift workers make is that they try to flip their meals like that.
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You go in on night shift and you're doing a night, overnight.
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So what you do is you have your breakfast when you go in, you have your lunch or your dinner at three o'clock in the morning and then you have a main meal and then you try and go to bed.
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What you don't realize is, overnight your body has literally shut down.
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You might be awake, but your digestive tract is responding to your circadian rhythm and your circadian rhythm naturally shuts your system down during the biological night.
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Now, the biological night is from around about nine o'clock at night until around about six am in the morning, every single 24 hours.
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Circadian means circadias, which is about a day.
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It comes from the word circadias, which is about a day.
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Every single day, your circadian rhythm runs through that cycle of being awake during the day, being asleep during the night, rest and digest.
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But while you're awake, your internals are still going through that rest and digest and I'm awake.
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So the key here, the key takeaway for your listeners, is don't eat overnight at all, unless you absolutely have to, because we don't want to get to the restrict stage where you get home from work and then all of a sudden you're opening the pantry and the fridge and you're eating everything inside.
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So the idea is overnight you must avoid those highly palatable carbohydrates and fats, the highly processed, those burgers, the chips, the donuts, the all of the suvlakis, all of the foods that are available to us overnight.
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Unfortunately, we have to restrict because that literally floats around in our bloodstream and just gets parked as body fat and is very counterproductive, because our body does not metabolize food as efficiently overnight and you're stressing your body by doing that.
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So if you stick to Monday sorry, to breakfast, lunch and dinner during the biological day and do your utmost best to fast overnight, you will find that you will absolutely thrive, your body will thank you, you will go into and come out of your night shift so much better and you will feel alive, instead of taking forever to get over it because your system has been taxed.
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That is yeah, I think you've hit the nail right on the head.
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Your body does.
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It does shut down, even though you may be awake.
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I think that's the key takeaway on that.
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But let some of my co-workers that work the 24-hour shift are like man.
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I got to have me a Bola ice cream at 11 o'clock at night, or whatever the case is.
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Whenever snacking comes around, I know you said be aware.
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Why are you eating?
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Is it because you're hungry?
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Is it because you have a craving, or you bored or emotional?
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Whatever the case, whenever someone does have that odd urge to eat late, is there something they can do that would be, I guess, not too destructive to their bodies to be able to eat that time of night if they need a snack or something?
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Absolutely there is.
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I would never tell someone what I'm doing just so that people understand as well is I'm not making it a law that you can't eat.
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What I'm doing is I'm just explaining to people what is optimal and what is not optimal.
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All right, so that's the first rule to put in place, so that you understand.
00:18:07.830 --> 00:18:15.498
If I eat this bowl of ice cream at 11 o'clock at night, it's a long way less than optimal, and you've seen them, travis.
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You've worked in stations.
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You know exactly what it's like.
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There's food available, there's ice cream in the fridge.
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They grab a tub of ice cream and they knock themselves out having that, and this is very detrimental.
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So I think the best thing to do is to stage healthy snacks overnight, and one of the best things that you can do is to have a high protein snack.
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I would be having something like some cheese and crackers, because what happens is when I say cheese and crackers, I'm not talking about getting a whole platter out either.
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We don't get a whole platter out with some cold cuts and some pickled onions and everything else on it, although the pickled onions would be good.
00:18:51.897 --> 00:19:03.118
What we're trying to do is by having something like cheese and crackers or some Greek yogurt, flavored Greek yogurt, with some protein powder in it, with some berries, or something like that.
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That's the best thing to do.
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It gives you something to look forward to, that you're going to have at a time that you personally know is your crunch time three o'clock in the morning, five o'clock in the morning, 11 o'clock at night and the reason why we have a Greek yogurt or a cheese and crackers and a Greek yogurt with fruit and protein powder is because what actually happens is the carbohydrates slay down the oxidization of the protein and it keeps us feeling full up for longer.
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But it's also.
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It slips through the system really easily and we're not taxing our system.
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I've been the victim as well.
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I've gone through having my pastor Bolognese at three o'clock in the morning as well.
00:19:45.064 --> 00:19:50.104
I can't begin to imagine the damage that I was actually doing at the time, but we've all done it.
00:19:50.104 --> 00:20:01.705
I'm sure your boys and girls that are out there fighting fire at night, coming back to the station at three o'clock in the morning, going oh, I'm starving, I've got to have that my lunch or whatever I've made.
00:20:01.705 --> 00:20:03.332
It's the worst thing you can do.
00:20:03.332 --> 00:20:10.519
What you really need to do is just have yourself a really good solid drink of water like a really good drink of water.
00:20:10.519 --> 00:20:18.063
First, because our hunger and satiety signals come from the same area of the brain as dehydration and hydration.
00:20:18.063 --> 00:20:27.701
So we need to just check that it's not actually dehydration as well, because I'm sure your firefighters they're not standing there drinking water all the time while they're fighting fire.
00:20:27.701 --> 00:20:30.253
They're surrounded by it but they're not actually drinking it.
00:20:30.273 --> 00:20:32.334
right Sweat a lot of it out.
00:20:32.737 --> 00:20:39.229
Exactly right, because of the equipment that you're wearing, you're sweating it out, so you might find that instead of being hungry, you're actually dehydrated.
00:20:39.229 --> 00:20:46.377
So replace that, because your body it's highly unlikely that your body is literally going to be hungry overnight highly unlikely, right?
00:20:46.377 --> 00:20:49.365
Because your body is not used to digesting food.
00:20:49.365 --> 00:20:52.234
So the signal is probably confused, right?
00:20:52.234 --> 00:21:06.587
So what we want to do is we want to make sure that we're getting a protein and a carbohydrate in, and we can do that with yogurt and berries, because that will fill us up for quite some time with the fiber in the protein, as well as the cheese and crackers.
00:21:06.587 --> 00:21:31.539
I'd just like to add as well, if I can, on my website and if people go to ahealthyshiftcom, so it's a healthy shift all one word dot com On that website, if you scroll down to the bottom, I've actually got a free ebook that is available to people to download on how to structure the overnight fast and what to eat and when, at what times, for what you can actually do.
00:21:31.915 --> 00:21:38.782
I think your people will find that very beneficial and it's obviously it's free of charge for you to actually go in and download that.
00:21:38.782 --> 00:21:45.342
And also it's got a couple of cheeky recipes in there as well, which I think your people would find really beneficial.
00:21:45.342 --> 00:21:57.038
There's my famous pumpkin soup that's in there, which is just delicious, and there's also another one for a frittata, a vegetable frittata, which is ideal for people to have overnight as well.
00:21:57.038 --> 00:21:57.961
Just a little snack.
00:22:00.580 --> 00:22:00.981
Excellent.
00:22:00.981 --> 00:22:07.541
I will definitely include the connections for that in the show notes so that folks can definitely get a copy of that.
00:22:07.541 --> 00:22:11.165
I noticed a copy of it when I was going through the stuff you sent me the other day.
00:22:11.165 --> 00:22:13.742
I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I am looking forward.
00:22:15.196 --> 00:22:24.266
But now when we talk about eating well and making sure we don't disrupt our sleep, let's talk about the great circadian disruptor, caffeine.
00:22:24.266 --> 00:22:31.067
I know that in the fire, in the firehouse, I know around here they almost have it in IV bags.
00:22:31.067 --> 00:22:33.473
They mainline it, they love it.
00:22:33.473 --> 00:22:35.721
Caffeine keeps things moving in a lot of ways.
00:22:35.721 --> 00:22:42.059
So I know caffeine is not necessarily a bad thing If properly administered.
00:22:42.059 --> 00:22:47.126
I was sitting in a class a couple of years ago and there was a fellow behind me.
00:22:47.126 --> 00:22:48.500
He was a younger firefighter.
00:22:48.500 --> 00:22:52.005
He had three monster energy drinks.
00:22:52.005 --> 00:22:56.023
They were probably 24 ounce or better.
00:22:56.023 --> 00:22:57.267
He had three of them.
00:22:57.267 --> 00:22:58.759
He drank two before lunch.
00:22:58.759 --> 00:23:01.720
We went to lunch he came back and drank the third one.
00:23:01.720 --> 00:23:03.923
I'm like, dude, you're going to kill yourself doing that.
00:23:03.923 --> 00:23:05.279
He's oh no, I'm used to it.
00:23:05.279 --> 00:23:08.924
So I guess the question is, how should we view caffeine?
00:23:08.924 --> 00:23:10.319
Where does that fit into all this?
00:23:10.319 --> 00:23:12.782
Because it definitely gets us moving, Absolutely.
00:23:13.295 --> 00:23:18.906
First of all, I think the most important thing to understand is I'm not going to prove it's important.
00:23:18.906 --> 00:23:27.704
I've done law enforcement shift work for 39 years and if you think, oh, I'm going to stand here and tell you that we don't need caffeine, I'm not here to do that.
00:23:27.704 --> 00:23:31.742
Right, caffeine's important, but the timing of caffeine is imperative.
00:23:31.742 --> 00:23:33.059
It's really important for us.
00:23:33.059 --> 00:23:47.044
Now, what I want to say to you is there's been recent research that's just been released, and one of the two major impacts that caffeine has on us One is on our sleep, and the other thing that it has on us as well is our digestion.
00:23:47.044 --> 00:23:52.165
Right, because we have massive problems with digestion, which is actually caused by excessive caffeine.
00:23:52.165 --> 00:24:07.559
I think it's important that people understand that the maximum dose of caffeine a day for people should only be 400 milligrams, right, and if you're pregnant which I'm sure you and I aren't, but that's if you're pregnant it's 200 milligrams.
00:24:08.454 --> 00:24:09.999
So what would that be equivalent to?
00:24:09.999 --> 00:24:11.383
How many cups of coffee?
00:24:11.383 --> 00:24:12.266
I think that's a stand.
00:24:12.375 --> 00:24:28.942
If you're having your let's just say, you've got a coffee machine, which I'm sure your fire stations will have a coffee machine you will find that one shot of coffee is approximately about 70 to 80 milligrams of caffeine and you would generally have two shots, right?
00:24:28.942 --> 00:24:38.015
So generally, when you fill up and you have your takeaway coffee, it would be two shots, which is around about 125 to 140 milligrams.
00:24:38.015 --> 00:24:40.323
Now this depends on how it's been done.
00:24:40.323 --> 00:24:43.545
It would be generally 120 to 140 milligrams.
00:24:43.545 --> 00:24:47.505
Now let me just tell you this too, trove, just so that you understand.
00:24:47.505 --> 00:25:01.567
The recent research has shown that caffeine at 107 milligrams which is less than that one cup that you have has an impact on subsequent sleep for up to nine hours later.
00:25:01.567 --> 00:25:03.519
Nine hours, not four hours.
00:25:03.519 --> 00:25:14.384
Generally, we knew that caffeine had a half life of four to six hours, but we now understand that caffeine has an impact on subsequent sleep.
00:25:14.384 --> 00:25:21.942
Now what that means is that if you're drinking caffeine, it's going to impact on that subsequent sleep for up to nine hours afterwards.
00:25:21.942 --> 00:25:24.701
That's just 107 milligrams, right?
00:25:24.701 --> 00:25:27.182
So that's less than one coffee.
00:25:27.182 --> 00:25:40.438
So if you imagine that you're at the station and you get to the station at 6 PM, you have your caffeine, you have another one at 7, you have another one at 8, and then you have one at 11, and then you come back to the station at 3, and you're really tired and you're going to have another caffeine.
00:25:40.438 --> 00:25:41.781
Then you have another one at 5.
00:25:42.694 --> 00:25:45.951
What a lot of people will tell you, and I'm sure your firefighters are all going.
00:25:45.951 --> 00:25:47.478
Caffeine doesn't affect me.
00:25:47.478 --> 00:25:49.415
I can still sleep, that's right.
00:25:49.415 --> 00:25:51.042
You can probably still go to sleep.
00:25:51.042 --> 00:26:01.085
But by golly, once you've released that sleep pressure because you've dozed, when you release that sleep pressure, the next thing that happens is you wake up and you can't go back to sleep.
00:26:01.085 --> 00:26:02.449
That is the caffeine.
00:26:02.449 --> 00:26:04.701
That's what the caffeine is actually doing to you.
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