[324] - Shift Work Health Risks - How Long-Term Shift Work Impacts Your Body and What You Can Do About It

We break down how shift work disrupts circadian rhythms and why that drives metabolic, cardiovascular, gut, immune and mental health risks. Then we lay out practical, evidence-based steps for sleep timing, light control, meal timing, movement and routines that protect your body.

• Circadian disruption as the root driver of health risks
• Metabolic strain, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes
• Cardiovascular load, elevated blood pressure and resting heart rate
• Gut issues, poor nutrient absorption and late heavy meals
• Immune suppression from short or broken sleep
• Mental health effects, fatigue and decision fatigue
• Unhelpful coping tools like alcohol, nicotine and energy drinks
• Core strategies: sleep timing, light exposure, caffeine cut-off
• Meal timing with earlier calories and lighter dinners
• Simple movement targets and daily walking
• Routines that anchor the body across seven days

If this episode helped you, can you do me a favor? Could you please share it with another shift worker? Share it to your wall. Share it to your Instagram story. Share it everywhere so they know.

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.

Chapters

• 4:52 Welcome And Mission
• 7:50 Why Education Beats Doom And Gloom
• 13:09 Research, Translation, And A Call To Action
• 15:57 The Big Picture: Who Shift Work Affects
• 18:18 Circadian Disruption Explained
• 21:21 Metabolic Risks And Diabetes
• 24:24 Heart Health And Chronic Strain
• 27:57 Gut Issues And Nutrient Absorption

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 3:17

Shift work can be brutal, but it doesn't have to be. Welcome to a healthy shift. My name is Roger Sutherland, certified nutritionist, veteran law enforcement officer and 24-7 shift worker for almost four decades. Through this podcast, I aim to educate shift workers using evidence-based methods to not only survive the rigors of shift work, but thrive. My goal is to empower shift workers to improve their health and well-being so they have more energy to do the things they love. Enjoy today's show. And welcome back to another episode of a healthy shift podcast. My name, I'm your guide, Roger Sutherland, and I'm here to help you to navigate the impacts of shift work. Now, what I wanted to say is if you work shifts, then this episode really matters, okay? I know we're in a stage where at the moment it seems like all I'm talking about is the doom, gloom, the severe impacts of shift work. But if you really listen to what I'm doing, what I'm actually doing is educating you to show you how much certain things are impacting on your shift work long term, on your health. And then I give you strategies on how to combat it because I honestly and sincerely feel that the more I flag these issues with you so that you understand, then the more informed you are that you can turn around and make a big decision as to how you can go about combating that. Now, I'm not for a moment saying that night shift is something that's healthy for our system because the exposure to artificial light at night and being awake at night when we should be asleep as a diurnal creature is extremely unhealthy on us. But what we do as shift workers is through lack of education, we are actually sabotaging our own health. And I'm here to change that. I'm here to educate you on the way you can actually go about doing shift work so that you can understand how to closely align your circadian rhythm whenever possible. Because all research in the past has been done on shift workers that without any education at all. And there is some unbelievable scientists and researchers out there at the moment that are doing an awful lot of work to try and help you, the shift worker. Now, all of that research will literally just sit on the shelves in journals gathering dust if you don't have someone like me on this platform highlighting to you the debilitating effects of shift work. But how are they actually saying that it's optimal way for us to go about doing it? So, what I can do is I can read the research and then I can distill it into an operational environment to actually help you the best possible way to go about doing shift work. So, today, this is the reason why I've released this episode and it's shift work health risks and how long-term shift work impacts your body and what you can do about it. I want to be quite clear about this. Where you're at today in your shift working life, if you don't do more, you are going to find that shift work is going to really take hold of you. And if there's one thing that I do know for an absolute fact, is majority of people only ever come to me and approach me at the end when they are absolutely at the bottom of the pit. And then it seems so overwhelming that for a way to find a way out of it that it causes them all sorts of problems. Mentally, they're already completely beaten. And I don't want to see shift workers in that space. My goal is to actually get into the education side of shift work so that I can help corporates and help shift working environments as to the best way to go about navigating shift work before it actually gets hold of you. So you can actually do something about it and put things in place. I want to see healthy and thriving shift work environments where people are strong, they have great lives outside of their shift working life so that when they do eventually end up at work, then they actually feel fantastic about what they're doing. And then you get a thriving and a really high morale workplace. It makes me really sad that I look at today and that there's not any money or not enough money that's actually being spent in the health and well-being area in shift working environments. They're just not seeing the value of it. You heard me talk about this on the radio a few weeks uh last week, and I spoke about this that one of the biggest problems is they're hemorrhaging staff left, right, and center, and they think the way out of this is to actually re-recruit. What about if you actually started looking after the people that were working in the workplace and looking after them so that you're you're keeping and retaining that staff? I'm gonna be quite clear, and I said this in a big statement on the radio the other night, and that is that fatigue and burnout, burnout do not wait for a budget allocation, and they're not going to. So, shift work environments, you need to be looking at these things. You need to be looking at the education. Reach out to me and I will help you the best possible way that I can. Got a new platform coming soon, which is really exciting for the corporates. Um, I can't talk about it yet, but it's getting finalized. I'm presenting it for the first time this week, and I'm really excited to be presenting what we're actually doing. And you are it's going to blow your mind. So let's get on with this episode of the show. That was a bit of a rant at the start there, but I want to say this quite clearly. 20% of the world population, right? That's that's one in five. But it also puts such a stress on the body that most people just never see. You working it, sometimes you feel a bit tired, sometimes you feel a bit blah, you get the cold, you get the sniffles, and you think, oh yeah, anyway, and you just put it down to shift work. But today, I want to talk about the long-term health risks of shift work. Not to scare you, and I've spoken about that, but to help you to understand what's happening and what there is that you can actually do about it. Because once you understand the risks, then, as I've said before, a bit earlier, it gives you the opportunity to make an informed decision and you can actually reduce them, which is my goal moving forward. So, why does shift work actually affect our long-term health? It's that simple. It is this simple. This simple. Shift work disrupts a circadian rhythm. There you are, there's the end of the episode. Joking. Shift work disrupts our biological clock, and that biological clock is actually controlling our sleep, our hormones, our digestion, our metabolism, immune function, mental health, and the list just goes on and on and on. That biological clock that is seated in the supracosmatic nucleus in our brain is controlling so much. And when your schedule keeps changing, your body can't keep up and it never fully adapts. And this creates an ongoing internal stress in our body. Now, over time, that stress starts to show up as health problems in shift workers. And I'm just going to walk you through some of the main ones so that you are actually aware. Metabolic health and weight gain is number one. Shift workers are at a much higher risk of weight gain and metabolic problems. And here's why. When we eat at night, it actually goes against our biology. Insulin sensitivity drops during the biological night. And this is how your body handles sugar and carbohydrates, and it runs really poorly at that time. And yet, what do we eat? Highly palatable carbohydrates and fats, and that's what causes us all sorts of problems. Then, on top of that, what we do is we add in poor sleep, fatigue, and our hunger hormones get disrupted. You, you feel hungrier, you get your cravings, those cravings increase, energy drops. We then start craving highly palatable carbohydrates and fats. Just so you know, this isn't about willpower. It's actually about the timing. And over time, this increases the risk of insulin resistance and wait for it. Type 2 diabetes is incredibly prevalent in our shift working community. And this is something that we really need to be aware of. Because type 2 diabetes is not something you go, oh, I've got type 2 diabetes, I'll just take some shots. The problem that you have there is you're gonna have to prick your finger every couple of times a day, you're gonna have to monitor your blood sugar. It means that you run the risk of all the complications that go with type 2 diabetes as well, and there are many scary in itself. Number two is our cardiovascular health, nothing important, just that long-term shift work increases the risk of heart disease. Heart? Do we need that? Yeah, we kind of do. It sort of keeps us going, our heart. Sleep loss raises our blood pressure and it causes us massive problems there. Circadian disruption also increases inflammation and our stress hormones start stay elevated. Now, when these systems are constantly switched on, our heart takes a hit. It's beating faster. Some of the data that I see coming through from clients in relation to their resting heart rate is terrifying. When you consider that my resting heart rate since I've given up shift work, even as a 61-year-old, hovers around the 50 beats per minute. I think that's pretty good. And it's not bad for someone my age. It could be better, but it's not bad. I've got clients coming to me with heart rates around 70 as a resting. That's 20 beats per minute more. 20 beats per minute. Have a think about that. And that's the impact that shift work has. And they think they're healthy or they think they're doing well. The strain that that is putting on their bodies is incredible. So we need to be working hard on this area. This is something that we need to really get on top of it. So irregular eating, poor recovery, and limited movement all add to our cardiovascular load. And this is one of the most well-documented long-term risks of shift work. Okay. The next one is digestive health and gut issues. So many of our shift workers live with gut problems. And when you understand the biology of it all, particularly for you females, you can understand why. Bloating, reflux, constipation, diarrhea, irritable bowel syndromes, it all is a massive issue. Gas, it's all massive issues around shift working health, gut health. Your gut also is running on a circadian rhythm. It is also your second brain. So when meals come at random times and you're awake when you should be asleep, and you're asleep when you should be awake, is it any wonder that your gut function suffers? Now, late heavy meals slow down digestion. Poor sleep, it affects our gut bacteria. And stress reduces our digestive efficiency because the last thing our body wants to be doing is digesting when it is stressed, when it's in fight or flight. It makes sense when you think about it. And over time, this actually impacts on our nutrient absorption and our overall health suffers. Think about that. Stress. If it's not absorbing the correct nutrients from our food, we're going to have long-term health problems. Number four is the immune system suppression. Shift workers, without any doubt, it's well documented, get sick more often. The reason? Sleep is when your immune system resets. When sleep is short or broken, we have massive issues with our immune cells not working as well. And circadian disruption also affects how your body responds to viruses and inflammation. Inflammation. Now, this means that slower recovery equals higher illness risk. It's it just goes without saying. And we don't put sleep as a priority. We slam down caffeine drinks, we don't sleep properly, we get the car serviced on days, we're on night shift, we're running kids around. You've got to think about it. Sleep is so important. It's also when our brain detoxifies. While we are sleeping as well, melatonin is elevated, it is attacking the free radicals in our system, which are the cancer cells running around. We need to be focusing a lot more on sleep. And I did an episode last week in relation to mental health. And the mental health and cognitive decline is very prevalent in shift workers. We often see separate physical and mental health. Sorry, we often separate physical and mental health, but our body does not. The long-term circadian disruption increases a much higher risk of anxiety and depression in shift workers. Our focus drops, our memory weakens, decision making becomes a lot harder. And chronic fatigue changes literally how our brain functions and performs. Our mood becomes less stable, our stress tolerance drops. How short are we when we're tired and fatigued? Again, this is biology. It's not weakness. This is the thing that we have to remember. And then to top it off, our number six is we have an increased reliance on unhealthy coping tools. Struggling to sleep. Fatigue pushes people towards quick fixes, right? Reaching for supplement bottles, opening another stubby, opening another can, smoking another dart. Fatigue pushes people towards these quick fixes. Ultra-processed food. I can't be bothered. I'll just get Uber Eats. Sugary snacks. Those goddamn energy drinks, alcohol, nicotine, drugs. These help short term, but they actually harm you long term. They worsen your sleep, they increase inflammation, they disrupt your blood sugar, and they amplify your mental health issues. It numbs it for a while, but it just exacerbates it down the track. So the key point is shift work is literally increasing your health risks, but it doesn't guarantee poor health. The difference actually comes down to a strategy, and this is what I want to talk about now. So let's talk about how we can actually reduce the damage. Now, strategies to reduce our long-term health risks, and I need you to keep this in mind. You don't have to be perfect. All you need is consistency and intention. Have a plan and maintain consistency with it. Number one is to protect sleep as number one. Protect it first. Sleep is not optional for your health. Aim for enough sleep. Get the timing of your sleep right. That is more important. Don't go to bed thinking I've got to get eight hours. I must get eight hours. So therefore, I'll take medications to get eight hours because you're not asleep on medication. Focus on timing. Your body is a diurnal creature. It wants to be awake during the day. So make sure that you're awake during the day and getting up as early as you can and creating as much light as you can. And at night, we want to create a pitch black, cool sleep space. I've said it again. Hold your arm out in front of your face, turn your hand to face you. If you can see your hand in your sleep environment on an outstretched arm, then it is too light. You need a sleep mask. Block light after your night shifts and limit caffeine after 12 o'clock. In fact, no caffeine after 12 o'clock. What about we use the 12 o'clock rule, which I've spoken about? No caffeine after 12 on day shift or afternoon shift. No caffeine after 12 on night shift. It's a simple rule, it's easy to stick to. And the one thing you need to remember is the less caffeine you have, the less you need it. Sleep is the foundation of every other system in our body. All right. Number two is to control our light exposure. Light is literally what tells your brain what time it is, it tells it where it is at in time and space. Really important. As soon as you wake up, you need to get daylight. Not light in your house, not lying in bed looking at your phone. It's not enough. You need to get daylight. Avoid bright light when you need to wind down. We need to avoid artificial light at night. No artificial light after the sun's gone down. I know it's easy to say, but it's even better when you do it. And on your way home from your night shift, block that light with blue light blocking glasses. Not something from a pharmacy that says it's got blue light in it, because it's not blocking the blue that needs to be blocked. They need to be those orange colored lens, those orangey ones. Because that's what's blocking the blue. Now this helps to reset your body clock. It supports your hormones, your mood, and your metabolism. It will absolutely help you with sleep. Number three is to be intentional with your meal timing. Let me simplify this. Eat at breakfast, lunch, and dinner time of a normal day walker. Front load your calories to breakfast and to lunch and lighten it up at dinner time, and you watch the difference that it makes to not only weight but also to how you're actually feeling. We must avoid heavy meals during the biological night, which is from 9 pm until 6 a.m. Eat your main meals when your body is better prepared to handle food, which is in the earlier part of the day. And when we focus on protein, fibre, and whole foods, we actually feel fuller for longer and we don't get those blood sugar spikes and crashes. Plan your meals to avoid being drawn to the vending machine. And consistency matters more than perfection. So just try and get. The right things. Pick a meal. Pick the most difficult meal in a day and get that one right. It will make a huge difference. The next one, move your body regularly. Exercise improves insulin sensitivity. That's what we want. This is what shuttles the glucose into the muscle and helps us to burn it. It reduces stress hormones. It supports heart health and it supports your mood. Now you don't have to have long sessions. You don't have to go into the gym and do massive, great long sessions. Just short and regular movement is enough. My biggest bang for buck movement is to get out and do a walk. And you every day should be able to do a minimum of 8 to 10,000 steps. I get 10,000 steps by accident without even trying. I average around 15,000. So I think you should be able to get a minimum of 8 to 10,000 steps a day, and the benefits of that are enormous. Number five is to reduce alcohol and nicotine. Both disrupt sleep and worsen circadian disruption, like you would not believe. Less is better, none is best. There is no safe level of alcohol, there is no safe level of nicotine. And that includes those nicotine gums as well. No, just no. And this alone will improve your energy, your mood, and your recovery as well. Number six is to build simple routines. Routines calm our nervous system, our body doesn't have to make decisions. It's a simple routine. This is what I do. Have a wake-up ritual, have a pre-sleep ritual, have regular meal patterns on workdays and weekends. Stick to it for the whole seven days. Because these anchors help your body to feel safer and much more stable. Now, let's just wrap this one up. All right. I've told you the debilitating effects. I've given you some strategies. Pick one, go back through this podcast, have a listen back, and pick those simple routines, moving your body, getting intentional with your meal timing, and it makes a big difference to you. Shift work is demanding. I make no secret of it. I've done it for 40 years. But understanding the health risks, understanding the health risks and what causes them actually puts you back in the driver's seat. You can't change your roster. That's out of your hands. But what you can do is change how your body responds to it. Sleep, daylight, food, movement, routines, and habits. These are not extras. What these are is actually protective tools for your body. Thanks for listening to today. If this episode helped you, can you do me a favor? Could you please share it with another shift worker? Share it to your wall. Share it to your Instagram story. Share it everywhere so they know. And if you want to go deeper, you can follow ahealthyshift.com. 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.