[310] - Night Shift and Your Circadian Clock - 3 Ways to Lower Your Health Risk

I share three evidence-based strategies to reduce circadian disruption, sleep deeper after nights, and protect long-term health without chasing perfection. Light timing, a simple breath reset, and a true blackout sleep environment form a practical plan you can start tonight.

• Why circadian rhythm misalignment drives night shift risks
• How morning light ruins daytime sleep and how to block it
• What makes orange blue-blocking lenses essential on commute
• How to build a cave-dark, cool, quiet sleep space
• When and why to get daylight after waking
• The 4–6/8 breath reset for nervous system calm
• How longer exhales lower arousal and improve focus
• Treating post-night sleep as a strategic nap
• One-strategy homework to build consistency

If you want to know more about me or work with me, you can go to ahealthyshift.com

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Mission
• 3:56 The Real Cost Of Night Shift
• 5:04 Circadian Rhythm And Health Risks
• 6:35 Strategy 1: Master Your Light
• 11:35 Strategy 2: Breath Reset For Fatigue
• 18:05 Simple Actions, Homework, And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:41

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 to a Healthy Shift Podcast. I'm your host, Roger Sutherland. Now, if you are a shift worker, in particular a female shift worker, and you're out there and you're juggling a mortgage, a family, and a 2 a.m. alarm to get up and get going, you know the real struggle is more than just feeling sleepy. It's about the constant, deep-down worry that this job is slowly grinding down your health. Now, you're running on coffee and fumes, you're trying to appease everyone else, your kids, your partner, your employer, but there's simply no time left for you at all, is there? And you feel exhausted, inconsistent with your exercise, and your focus is absolutely shot. Now, I want to tell you, I know that feeling. I spent over 40 years as a veteran 24-7 shift worker working in the police as well, for Victoria Police. And now I've coached hundreds of women just like you. And I'm here to tell you that this feeling is not a personal failure. It is a direct consequence of your work schedule just fighting against your biology. Now, today we're going to talk about the most researched and most critical topic for shift workers, which is the circadian rhythm and the night shift health risk. Over the next 12 or so minutes, I'm going to give you three practical science-backed strategies that you can implement immediately to start protecting your long-term health starting tonight. So, let's be clear on the challenge. Every cell in your body runs on a 24-hour cycle, and we call this our circadian rhythm. Now, I've spoken about this numerous times. I want you to think of it as your body's master clock. It controls when you produce melatonin for sleep, when your blood pressure peaks, and even when your gut is ready to digest food. When you work the night shift, what you're doing is you are literally forcing your body to go against that master clock. This chronic misalignment is what the research calls circadian disruption. And it is directly linked to the serious long-term health concerns that you search for, which is the increased risk of cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, and a condition known as shift work sleep disorder. Now, we're not just talking about being tired here, we are talking about long-term strain on your heart and your stress response system. Now, the good news is we actually have tools that can help the body to find safety and balance even when working against the sun. Now, these tools are going to revolve around signals. The single biggest signal that we control is da-da-light. And that brings me to strategy number one. Light is without doubt the most powerful signal for your brain to determine if it's day or night. And for a night shift worker, we need to hack this. This is the best thing that we can actually do. Here's the first thing. Number one, on the drive home, when you finish your night shift and the sun is coming up and you're en route home, that bright morning light hitting your eyes is shouting to your body, wake up. Now, what this does is it actually sabotages your ability to get restorative sleep. And what we need to do is we need to minimize this light exposure on your drive or your walk home. And I would highly, highly recommend that you utilize blue light blocking glasses. Now I've discussed over and over and over again the impact that blue light has. In recent episodes, I've actually discussed the blue light, and our eye only sees the blue. And what we need to do is we need to be making sure that we're minimizing that. So what I would suggest that you do is you buy yourself a quality pair of blue light blocking glasses. Now, these are the sunset lenses, the orange lensed ones. It's no good going to an optometrist and buying a set of glasses and they tell you it's got a blue light block in it, but it's a clear lens. That doesn't work. Nor do the yellow ones. The yellow ones are for screens during the day or night, but the the orange sunset ones block all blue light, and you can literally see the blue being reflected in them. Now, what we want to do is we want to make sure that our eye is completely covered. Yep, you're gonna look really cool driving home. But what you will do is if you leave those on all the way home, right up until you get into that perfectly darkened bedroom and then take them off to sleep, you watch what happens and how much better you sleep. Now, if you want to see a quality pair of blue light blocking glasses, we don't just go and search on the internet and find the cheapest ones because they're cheap and they don't work. What I would highly recommend you do is actually go to my website, ahealthyshift.com. That's ahealthyshift.com. Go up to the top and there's a menu item there that says resources. And under that menu is a recommended product page. And if you go to that page, you will see that I recommend the RAR optics because they are the best. They are expensive, but they are the best. They do the job and they do the job very, very well. I would highly recommend that you actually here's a little hint for you. If you're listening to this one before Black Friday, I would highly recommend that you put a pair in your cart and wait. Wait for Black Friday. There could be a little treat there for you, just saying. Okay, so that's the first one. The next one, number two, is in the bedroom. Now, your bedroom has to mimic a cave. All right, it's got to be pitch black. Pitch black. It needs to be cool and it needs to be dead quiet. I would highly recommend that you invest in true blackout curtains or one of those roller blinds to really make your room absolutely pitch black. If you're not able to do that or you're not able to afford doing that, and I can totally understand that, I would highly recommend again investing in a comfortable eye mask. And for this, I highly recommend the Manta eye mask. All right. The reason why I mention it is because not only again is it expensive, but it is good. It's cooling, it doesn't overheat you on your face. It has it's good for side sleepers. Um, it's it you can open your eyes under it because it's got eye cups and your eyes. So those ladies that have got those lashes, you can open those underneath it. Pitch black will make a massive difference to your sleep. This sends a clear, the clearest possible signal to your brain that it's time to actually produce melatonin and reduce rest. When it can't see any blue light, the body goes, Okay, it's dark, no blue light, time to sleep, produce melatonin, sleep. That's it, and that's what will actually happen. Now, the next step, the most important also, is when you wake up. Now, as soon as you wake up, now I've spoken recently on podcasts about actually treating your sleeps on night shift as a nap. Just have it as a nap. And when you wake up, just get up. But get out in the daylight. Make sure that you are getting some form of daylight during the day. At least for 15 minutes, because that light exposure actually signals daytime to your brain. And what this will do is actually boost your alertness for the shift ahead. And also it triggers your circadian rhythm, it suppresses the sleep hormones, and it fires up the cortisol and gets you up and going for the day. And this is exactly what we want. Now, these three things here are imperative ways of controlling the way light hits our eyes. This will help your body to manage the confusion the confusion of that circadian disruption. Strategy number two. Now, this one is really important, and we're going to talk about the breath reset for fatigue management. Now, this second strategy leverages your body's emergency break, your breath. Long shifts, fatigue, and also stress are going to keep your nervous system in a constant state of fight or flight. And this is why you feel wired, but you're tired. What you need is an immediate and fast tool for fatigue management. The best thing is you've got it right there on your face, right in the middle, under your eyes, above your mouth. It's sitting right there, your nose. Now, as a breathwork facilitator, I want you to try this simple technique that you can do very discreetly in a locker room, in the bathroom, or in your car before or after your shift on your way home. I want you to imagine that you have a balloon in your stomach through the whole shift. And if you continually fill this balloon with air, like continually filling it, it will go bang. So, what we need to do is we need to exhale to release some of the air out of this balloon. And this is a signal to our body that we are calm, we are safe, we are okay. Now, the goal here is longer and slower exhale than an inhale. Alright, so which this activates your body's calm system. So this is what we do. We inhale slowly through our nose for a count of four. Then when we exhale, we exhale very slowly through our mouth. Imagine like you are blowing air out through a straw for a count of six to eight. Alright? As long as you can counting out, and you will literally feel your body starting to relax. And not only that, but again, we're letting the air out of that balloon in our stomach. We have to continually do this during the day to make sure that it actually happens. Now I want you to do this simple breath reset at least five times. Five times. And notice how a tiny shift in your breathing changes just how alert or calm you feel. This is incredibly powerful, trust me. It's an instant tool for your nervous system regulation. And you can use this on shift to manage an acute stressor or right before you get into bed to signal to your body that it is safe, it is calm, and we are able to sleep. And I think this is one of the ones that is really important for us, okay? Make sure that we are telling our body that it is safe and it is calm for sleep. And breath work is what does this. Now, I would highly recommend that what you do is when you're doing your inhale, put your hand on your navel because it's tactile, and breathe down and into your hand. Because what will happen is it will you'll because your hand is on your navel, you will literally breathe down into that hand, and it will make such a difference. Exhaling slowly out through the mouth. We only breathe in through our nose, we breathe out through our mouth as if we're blowing out, so through purse lips, as if we've got a straw there, and we're blowing out through a straw. Low and slow all the way. Now you can do this five times, and you can literally do it anywhere. You can do it while you're on your way to a job, you can do it while you're on a break. You can just take a few minutes to just step away and actually do this, and you will get more clarity in what you're doing, and you will calm right on down. This is really important, and this is the key to making shift work sustainable for you. It's to stop trying to fight against your body and trying to give it the specific signals that it actually needs, and this will make a huge difference. I know it seems simple. Oh, it's not a diet roge. Oh, it's not a supplement roge, oh, it's not an exercise roge. No, it's simple controlling light, which allows you to control how your circadian rhythm let it know where it's at in time and space, and then the other one is we are signaling to our body that it is safe, and this is really important. Now you now have three clear science-based strategies that will help you to fight shift work sleep disorder, and it will help you to manage your night shift health risk by controlling your light exposure, using your breath to reset, and focusing on a sacred sleep environment. They're very simple. All three of these are very, very simple strategies. So your homework this week is simple. I just want you to pick one of them. Just one. That's all you gotta do. Just pick one of these strategies. Even if you just start with the breathing, get yourself some blue light blocking glasses and wear them on the drive home. Just practice that breath reset. When you get into bed, lie down, put your hand on your stomach, another hand on your chest, breathe down into that hand for four seconds, breathe out through purse lips, and you will literally feel your body calming. And because you're breathing down into your stomach, feel your digestive tract relaxing as well. Because if you are constantly struggling with food and those 2 a.m. vending machine cravings, you don't want to miss the next episode here. This is where I, as an MNU certified nutritionist, will give you three simple practical rules for night shift nutrition, and that will stabilize your energy and protect your metabolism. So until then, what I want you to do is I want you to prioritize that one strategy. One strategy is all I'm asking you to do, and then layer it on like an onion. Go back over it and listen to the others. I want you to do that, right? Remember, you are not alone in this fight. I'll talk to you on the next one. 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.