Tag Archives: vitamin d

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Is Low Cholesterol A Good Thing?

We hear it time and time again. We need to keep our cholesterol levels down.

But is low cholesterol a good thing?

Despite the hype that it’s a bad thing, it’s actually needed for:

-optimal brain function
-the synthesis of vitamin D
-the formation or structural component of every cell membrane in our body
-the production of steroid (sex and stress) hormones

Sex hormones include estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. Low progesterone can elevate feelings of anxiety (😳🤯) whilst another hormone, DHEA, acts as a precursor to these hormones, and also relies on cholesterol to function.

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Does Your Job Involve Sitting Inside All Day?

Does your job involve sitting inside all day (and maybe night?) Have you spent years on a weight gain-weight-loss-weight-gain roller coaster?

Could lack of sunlight be a contributing factor? My simple answer to that is “yes, most definitely”.

Without sufficient vitamin D, AKA vitamin “daylight”, your body thinks you are hibernating.

It thinks winter is coming.

So what does it instinctively do as a response?

It slows down the metabolism, encouraging you to eat more, and store lots of fat to help you to “see through the winter”.

Even when it’s not winter!

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HSW 34: Shift Work and Autoimmune Disease with Nutritionist Brad Leech.

Healthy Shift Worker Podcast Episode:

Today’s podcast is pretty cool because I got to catch up and chat with a fellow student from University, Clinical Nutritionist and Ayurvedic Herbalist Brad Leech, who has an absolute passion when it comes to all things to do with autoimmune disease, a condition which is becoming more and more prevalent in society today.

With currently 80 recognized autoimmune diseases, and over 100 conditions suspected to have an autoimmune link or mechanism, Brad’s clinical focus is on finding and treating the underlying cause of autoimmune disease in each of his patients. His philosophy includes correcting four modifiable risk factors in the development and progression of autoimmune disease which include inflammation, intestinal permeability, dysbiosis and immune dysregulation.

Unfortunately, these risk factors often present in those who work 24/7, however Brad goes into detail in some of the mechanisms behind them, and what we can do as shift workers, to help minimise our risks in order to reduce our likelihood of developing an autoimmune disease. Some of these include increasing our levels of vitamin D to assist in the regulation of our immune system; implementing anti-inflammatory dietary changes such as eliminating gluten consumption; along with ways to stimulate the vagus nerve which is part of the parasympathetic or ‘rest and digest’ arm of the nervous system, and helps to reduce inflammatory markers.

So if you have an autoimmune disease or you know someone who does, or you just want to learn how to avoid getting one, then you’re going to find this episode incredibly beneficial.

Links mentioned on the podcast:

Brad’s website

Brad’s shift working diagram

Vitamin D App

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HSW 28: Sleep Deprivation and Chronic Pain with Naturopath and Nutritionist Ananda Mahony.


Healthy Shift Worker Episode 28:

OK, so I had lots of fun this week as I had the pleasure of interviewing one of my former lecturer’s, Ananda Mahony, who is the Senior Lecture of Nutritional Medicine at Endeavour College of Health here in Brisbane. In addition to her role as senior lecturer, Ananda works in clinical practice as a Naturopath and Nutritionist who is passionate about helping people who experience chronic pain. This ultimately led her to undertake a Masters Degree in Pain Management, to add to her repertoire of knowledge and skills in this area.

In this episode, Ananda describes how chronic pain is essentially an oversensitive or maladaptive nervous system response, and illustrates the mechanisms behind it’s development using her Christmas tree analogy. She also goes into detail explaining how sleep and pain is bio-directional, meaning pain can disturb our sleep and vice versa, along with the correlation between lower back and lower extremity pain, with low vitamin D, a symptom experienced by many who work 24/7.

So if you experience chronic pain and you’ve been unable to find a solution, then you’re not going to want to miss this episode!

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Vitamin D, Sleep and Shift Work:

Why We Need To Be Spending More Time Outside in the Fresh Air!

Closeup doctor hands holding white card sign with vitamin D text message isolated on hospital cliic office background. Retro instagram style filter image

Thanks to our erratic shift schedules and overwhelming levels of fatigue, shift workers inadvertently spend less time in the outdoors.

However it’s not just those of us working 24/7 who are locking ourselves inside or soaking ourselves in sunscreens each time we venture outside in the sun, because there’s actually a world wide epidemic of vitamin D deficiency.

And whilst we may call it a vitamin per se, it’s actually not a vitamin.  It’s a steroid hormone, meaning it’s a steroid that acts as a hormone.

This one little hormone has loads of responsibilities including helping to coordinate our metabolism, our digestive and cardio-vascular systems, along with our immune, endocrine, and reproductive systems.

But what about our sleep?

Well considering there are lots of vitamin D receptor sites found in the brain and brainstem (proteins found on the surface of a cell which “listen’ to incoming messages) which are linked to light cues on the retina in the eye helping to trigger the production of melatonin influencingour sleep, one can make the assumption that vitamin D has a very important role in our circadian clock or sleep/wake cycle. (more…)