
Do you work a lot of early shifts? They’re pretty brutal aren’t they? Especially when the alarm clock goes off at “stupid o’clock” as one of my clients so beautifully described.
It’s why this week I want to talk about ‘What To Eat (And Drink) On Early Shift.’
Whether you’re starting at 5am, 6am … or even 3am like I used to when I was working at the international airport (they really did hurt I can assure you – lol!!) – those feelings of fatigue really kick in thanks to the disruption to the quantity and quality of your sleep.
In geeky science terms, we refer to this as the homeostatic sleep drive or sleep pressure, and sleep rhythm.
From a quality perspective, early shifts can wake us up right in the middle of a sleep cycle which is a bit like stopping your washing machine in the middle of it’s cycle, and pulling out the washing when it’s still soggy!
From a quantitative perspective, if we haven’t tucked ourselves into bed at a reasonable hour then the fatigue effects of that early shift can be magnified even further.
So when it comes to establishing what to eat and drink on early shifts, I like to approach it from 2 key areas:
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