When getting vitamin D levels tested, many shift workers show up as being ‘deficient’.
In other words, they fall short of fitting within what’s deemed to be the healthy range.
However serum vitamin D, is simply a proxy marker for sun exposure.
Clinical trials have found vitamin D supplementation provides little to any meaningful health benefits.
It’s the sunlight, along with it’s related factors, which are responsible for the beneficial effect on human health.
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I’m not going to be very popular for sharing this post, but I’m going to share it with you anyway, because I do what I do because I CARE.
This means telling you things that you don’t necessarily WANT to hear, but NEED to.
So, if you’ve got into the habit of relying on caffeine to ward off your tiredness, in lieu of prioritising your sleep, over time, this can lead you down a very slippery slope.
A slippery slope towards developing a chronic disease like Type 2 Diabetes (T2DM).
One of many health conditions, sadly, that shift workers are prone to developing.
This can be due to myriad of reaons, but I’m going to touch on TWO KEY AREAS.
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What’s great about this smoothie?
To anyone who has ever worked shift work before, you will know how incredibly tough and at times downright exhausting it can be. In fact, I remember coming home from work one day after an extremely stressful day (on top of it being my fourth early shift in a row), taking my shoes off and proceeding to curl up into the foetal position on the floor in the spare bedroom and saying to my husband – “I can’t do this anymore”.
I’d reached a point of burn out. I was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted.
Every muscle in my body ached from top to toe, my sleep-deprived brain felt completely drained, and I became overwhelmed with emotion when my husband wrapped his supportive arms around me triggering an outpouring of tears down my face.
I felt completely and utterly lost. I loved my job, but due to circumstances beyond my control – the dynamics of the workplace had changed.
A change in management had brought about changes to our work practices, including our rosters – but without any consultation with the staff. This resulted in over 100 resignations over an 18 month period, from a workforce of 300.
Quite simply, despite many years of service, my workmates had reached a point where they’d become burnt out and had enough.
It was an incredibly emotional time – and one that I will never forget.
A stressful workplace is hard enough to navigate through at the best of times, but when it’s coupled with ongoing sleep deprivation thanks to our 24/7 lifestyle, it can wear us down to our very core.
Nonetheless throwing in the towel and quitting my job at the time for me, was not an option. Like most young couples we had a mortgage and bills to pay, and despite the ongoing sleep-deprivation and changes which were occurring in my workplace at the time, I still really loved my job and wasn’t ready to hang up my alarm clock for good – just yet.
In fact, all I really needed was someone to tell me “I know it’s hard Audra, but you’re going to be OK.”
But there was no-one. No-one to put my mind at rest and tell me that despite the rigours of working 24/7 – I was going to be OK.
Perhaps you can relate to these feelings too? (more…)
I think we can all agree that feelings of constant fatigue, tiredness, sleepiness and drowsiness certainly comes with the territory when working 24/7. However whilst a good part of this may ring true, it’s important to understand that shift work may not be the only reason that’s causing you to feel like a deflated balloon.
What do I mean by this? Well as I approach my 12 month anniversary since accepting a voluntary redundancy from my shift working job – a position which encompassed over half my life, I was kind of expecting to feel like an Energizer bunny on steroids soon after hanging up my alarm clock for good.
But a funny thing happened.
I didn’t reach that Energizer Bunny status. In fact I didn’t even come close.
In fact these last 12 months have been an interesting journey as I learn more and more about my own health whilst at the same time, embarking on a degree in Nutritional Medicine.
As I’ve since discovered – fatigue can be a funny thing.
When we work shift work we learn to accept that it is what it is, we never query that our tiredness could be attributed to anything other than ongoing sleep deprivation.
And why should we? It’s fairly obvious that sleep is a major contributor, but what if it wasn’t and how would we know?