#61 - Night Shift Work, Sleep Deprivation, & Caffeine w/ Mike Kesthely

[Johan Vesters]: 0:33

Oh, good.

[Mike]: 0:33

Thank you.

[Johan Vesters]: 0:36

What's up, guys? Welcome back to Talk Nutrition episode 60 today. It's actually our anniversary episode. We started

[Mike]: 0:42

Oh wow.

[Johan Vesters]: 0:43

that exactly one year ago.

[Mike]: 0:45

Really?

[Johan Vesters]: 0:46

Too

[Mike]: 0:46

And

[Johan Vesters]: 0:46

bad.

[Mike]: 0:46

you've got

[Johan Vesters]: 0:46

Yeah.

[Mike]: 0:46

60 episodes, yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 0:48

Yeah, too bad, Christine's not here today, but we'll celebrate next time with her again. But

[Mike]: 0:53

That's

[Johan Vesters]: 0:53

it's

[Mike]: 0:53

right.

[Johan Vesters]: 0:54

cool. We we stuck to it and, you know, we're still we're still at it. So Mike is back, first of all.

[Mike]: 1:01

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Thank you.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:05

We had a good chat a couple of weeks ago about testosterone. We did a deep dive, kind of like, you know, like the worst kind of factors that lower your testosterone and then also kind of things that you can do to kind of like, let's say fix that, right? Or maybe mitigate the damage at least.

[Mike]: 1:21

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:22

And then we also, we're going to get into shift work, which is super important because I think that's one of those things where, you know, it's going to have a big impact on. I mean, so many things, but definitely on testosterone as well.

[Mike]: 1:35

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:35

So let me first say this. If you did not check out episode 57 yet, just pause this one, go back and then afterwards catch up for this one. Cause I think they're going to tie into each other really well. And yeah, that being said in the meantime, Mike, last

[Mike]: 1:52

Mm-hmm.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:52

couple of weeks, any, any updates or just working.

[Mike]: 1:55

Uh, nothing, nothing change it. No, no, nothing's, nothing's changed in my life. It's pretty static these days. Uh, yeah, it seems like just the other day we recorded that podcast. Uh, I did get a lot of good feedback on social media about that podcast. And that's what I really like, cause it always seems to like, um, cause a lot of questions and then people will reach out and be like, Hey, I heard this, you talk about boron, you know, would that be good for me or something like that? Right? So I got a lot of questions like that, which is, which is always good. Right. It likes to, yeah, it's good. So.

[Johan Vesters]: 2:24

I feel like that was one of those episodes where that's a good one to go back to from time to time. You have the episodes where it's sometimes Q&A, kind of like your weekly thing. That was definitely one with the most downloads in the first week, I think, already, which

[Mike]: 2:40

Oh,

[Johan Vesters]: 2:40

is super

[Mike]: 2:41

is that

[Johan Vesters]: 2:41

cool.

[Mike]: 2:41

right? Good. Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 2:42

But I got, go ahead, sorry.

[Mike]: 2:45

Go ahead. No, I was gonna say that's, that's such a, that's such a big topic. And I think, you know, we get on a podcast here and we talk about it and, and our knowledge base is fairly well rounded about it. But there's people out there who are like, like I had somebody reach out to me and they were just like, yeah, I've got all these symptoms, but I just don't know what I should be doing. Right. And it's like, it's very overwhelming. So I think it's important to talk about it, bring it to light. And that's a topic I could go into for multiple episodes, right? It's really complex. But it does tie into the shift work quite well, because we just touched on it last time, the effects of shift work on testosterone. But this time, we're just going to talk about shift work in general and how it affects the body, maybe how to mitigate the effects of shift work, right?

[Johan Vesters]: 3:38

Yeah.

[Mike]: 3:39

So, yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 3:40

Because I have a couple clients who work at like a hospital or like a psychiatric.

[Mike]: 3:44

No.

[Johan Vesters]: 3:45

We're gonna redo that one. Psychiatrists. All right. I'm

[Mike]: 3:48

Hahaha!

[Johan Vesters]: 3:48

still European, you know. I'll cut that.

[Mike]: 3:53

Hahaha

[Johan Vesters]: 3:53

But yeah, she's, it's nice when we get added to it, you know? No, but

[Mike]: 3:59

Mm-hmm.

[Johan Vesters]: 3:59

I have, um, I have a lot of clients or certain I'm completely just, yeah, but I have

[Mike]: 4:04

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 4:04

a few clients who work at a hospital. or psychiatric ward. And, you know, we talk about this stuff every now and then, and I try to really educate them on the importance of circadian rhythm. And we're trying to do our best, but it's one of those

[Mike]: 4:17

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 4:17

things where it's tough, you know?

[Mike]: 4:19

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 4:21

There's a big hospital here. There's a lot of people who work at the hospital. I know a lot of nurses. So that's actually also why I wanted to bring you back home to talk about this stuff, because I want to share this with them, you know what I mean? And I just have actual conversation. instead of like the 30 second, 60 second reel on Instagram or the TikTok or the

[Mike]: 4:40

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 4:40

post, like let's dive a little deeper, you know what I mean? Because I think people really need to understand this stuff. And of course, hey, maybe, you know, some people they're not going to do it forever. Okay, cool. But for those who are going to keep doing shift work, like let's at least know what it does,

[Mike]: 4:59

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 4:59

try to mitigate like the damage, you know what I mean? Because it is

[Mike]: 5:02

Totally.

[Johan Vesters]: 5:02

going to have an impact.

[Mike]: 5:04

It is gonna have an impact. And there's a lot more careers out there now involving shift work. And that just has to do with industry working 24 hours, right? You know, the common ones would be like in the medical field or law enforcement. That's where we definitely see the nighttime shifts happening. I mean, man, I don't even know where to start on this. You know, I've been doing shift work now. I turned 50 in October. and I started my career in emergency medicine in, I was 21, so almost 30 years. So 30 years of shift work. I'm definitely not an expert in any field at all. I'd like to think I have a little bit of experience talking about shift work though. So I feel like I can speak from somewhat of a position of authority, I know there's times when I'm just like, oh, you know, I don't know about the supplement field. about the nutrition field, you know, there's guys with PhDs out there. But when it comes to shift work, I, I feel like I kind of know a thing or two, um, at least from a personal level of, of what works for me, what I've seen work with my clients and really what hasn't worked. And, you know, when you come right down to the, to the basics of it, it's like for millions of years of evolution, we've woken up with the sun and we've gone to sleep when the sun went down and our neurotransmitters, our hormones, they've all been sort of based around this like this circadian rhythm and trainment of when this happens, right? It's like without getting all woo woo, and I'm very much a science guy, when I talk about woo woo, I'm talking about like hippie stuff, it's like we're very connected with the earth. We're very connected. So when

[Johan Vesters]: 6:48

Oh yeah.

[Mike]: 6:48

we go again, when we go against that, when it's like when I'm awake at 2am, and I'm doing something that requires a high level of physical ability and cognition, that's going completely against millions of years of evolution. And that can cause a major disruption. And we call that circadian rhythm disruption, right? And it's, I think, I think one of the most damaging mindsets would be to have is to think, Oh, I'm, I'm immune to this. You know, I'm, I'm so healthy that sleep deprivation doesn't affect me or, oh, it's like that. Oh, I can run on four hours of sleep. I'm going to be fine, right? Everybody has a capacity to do that for a while. That's called your resiliency. Some people are more resilient than others. That has to do with genetics. That has to do with your mindset. But without a doubt, we were talking about this before we started recording. There is a point when stuff will fall apart. I've seen people last a very long time doing shift work, being high performance based athletes. And it's actually quite amazing. I've also seen people who have gotten into a shift work career and literally within less than a year, they've exited that career because they can't handle that sleep deprivation at all. Right. And that's, that's not a sign of weakness. That's just, it just is, it's going to affect them more than others. Right. So without a doubt, you need to recognize the fact that. shift work or sleep deprivation is a massive stressor. And I think right out of the gate, once you recognize that, it's like, you're like, okay, this is not a good thing for me, but I've chosen a career in shift work. What can I do to mitigate these effects? How can I get through this, right? I mean, and this is gonna be real basic. And I talked in the last podcast, I talked about the really unsexy stuff, right? That's like, you know, having your nutrition dialed. drinking your water, going to bed on time. The same thing comes with shift work. It's like you're taking sleep away. What's the number one thing you should do? You should try to replace it. Now, on an hour for hour basis, you can't just make that up, right? So if I work all night and I come home and I sleep during the day, it's not the same as going to bed at 10 p.m. and getting up at 6 a.m., right? Assuming like a normal pattern of like eight hours of sleep. during nighttime hours. It doesn't equate to the same, right? And it's not like if I get four hours here, I'm up for six, I get another two hours, then later on I get another two hours. That four plus two plus two, that actually doesn't equal eight. It's not the same. When you break it up like that, it's not a bad thing if you can try to do that, but it just, does that make sense on an hour for hour basis? It doesn't make, it doesn't add up.

[Johan Vesters]: 9:44

Yeah.

[Mike]: 9:45

Am I making sense right now? Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 9:46

Yeah, totally.

[Mike]: 9:46

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 9:47

Yeah.

[Mike]: 9:47

I know.

[Johan Vesters]: 9:47

I think

[Mike]: 9:48

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 9:48

it's, it's important that we, that we realize that because I mean, it helps, you know, and napping is

[Mike]: 9:53

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 9:53

one of those things that that's like one of those tools that we should be heavily

[Mike]: 9:57

It's a tool.

[Johan Vesters]: 9:57

relying

[Mike]: 9:58

Yep.

[Johan Vesters]: 9:58

on, but it's,

[Mike]: 9:59

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 9:59

it's not going to be the same.

[Mike]: 10:01

No, it's not gonna be the same. Not everybody can do it. And why that is, I don't know. Like I have a very limited capacity to nap. And that might be because I've done 30 years of shift work. It's like, you know, if the planets align and I'm able to nap during the day, which doesn't usually happen when you have kids, you know, 20 minutes and it's good. And there's lots of, there's lots of really good research on sleep. And that's, that's one good thing. If somebody was a total nerd and they wanted to go down the deep rabbit hole about sleep, the effects of sleep deprivation, there's lots of research. You know, when it comes to certain supplements, um, sometimes certain pharmaceuticals, there's not a lot of research, right? There's a lot of anecdote, but there's not research with sleep and the effects of sleep deprivation, something like napping, how do we mitigate these effects? Um. There's a lot of research. So yeah, naps are an option, right? And everyone's probably heard it's like, oh, try to keep them within like 20, 30 minutes. If you go beyond that, you're getting into some like deep Delta wave sleep and you don't wanna do that in the middle of the day, you'll wake up, you'll feel groggier. Like if you end up having like an hour and a half nap, right? And you'll wake up, one, it might be harder for you to go to sleep later, but you're also waking up in a certain sleep cycle. And we naturally will do that through the night, right? Like if I had a graph, I could sort of draw it out of our sleep cycles. And they look like an S wave, like a sine wave, right? We come in and out of these certain sleep cycles. And then as the night progresses, they get lighter and lighter and then boom, we naturally wake up. If let's say I'm at the fire hall and I go to sleep at 10 on a night shift, cause it's quiet, I get a call at like 1.30 in the morning, 2 a.m. Sometimes waking up is extremely difficult. It's like you're super groggy, it's hard to think. Other times, let's say if it was at like 4 a.m. Tones go off, boom, I'm wide awake instantly, right? I'm like, wow, what's the difference? And it's like when you wake up in that deep delta wave sleep or REM sleep sometimes, that can cause some like, some cognition issues, right? So getting back to the nap. Yeah, it's a tool in the toolbox, right? But what somebody should be doing is, let's talk about like, if you're coming off a night shift, what do you do? Do you work out? Do you come home and eat? Do you go right to sleep? Do you have a cup of coffee and stay up? Like what's the best practice? Generally speaking, and it's very individual, generally speaking though, sleep's your priority, right? I had a client for years and years who was an NICU nurse. and she'd work nights and she was a high performance athlete. And when she would work her 12s, she would come home and go right to sleep, right? For her, this worked really well. And she would sleep really heavy. She did a good job of sleeping during the day. Then she'd get up and then she would train in the afternoon, right? Not the most optimal schedule at all, but for her being a full-time nurse and also pretty close to a full-time. international ranked athlete that worked really well for her. Some people will come off a night shift and they'll be awake right there be like the cortisol is hit they're awake the sun lights hit their eyes in the morning and they're like well I'm already awake I might as well train. It's also not a bad option um and I'm saying I sound wishy-washy on this because there's really no black and white book on what to do in and around shift work right. But if you come off a shift and you train, keep in mind your cortisol is probably gonna be really elevated, right? It might be difficult to sleep after that, right? That's why my number one suggestion would be prioritize your sleep first, then train, right? And I'm always chucking in the training because I'm just assuming, this is me being naive, I'm assuming everybody works out every day, right? So you have to sort of work your training in and around that.

[Johan Vesters]: 14:41

Yeah.

[Mike]: 14:41

So.

[Johan Vesters]: 14:43

I think if anything too, because that might even just be a nice way to kind of get started with the day too. You know, like after you sleep, you just kind of get moving, you know, I feel like that's likely better than the other way around. But then again, it's tough because I've, I've had

[Mike]: 14:59

It is

[Johan Vesters]: 14:59

clients

[Mike]: 14:59

tough.

[Johan Vesters]: 14:59

and I still do. Who have different shifts and then they're also

[Mike]: 15:04

Mm-hmm.

[Johan Vesters]: 15:04

doing CrossFit. And then you're also kind of like tied to when the classes are. And then. When they tried an app, I mean, right now we have 24 seven, you know, daylights, people have a hard time sleeping, you know,

[Mike]: 15:16

Yeah, I can

[Johan Vesters]: 15:17

so

[Mike]: 15:17

imagine,

[Johan Vesters]: 15:17

it's, it's

[Mike]: 15:18

I

[Johan Vesters]: 15:18

tough.

[Mike]: 15:18

can imagine. Yeah,

[Johan Vesters]: 15:19

Yeah.

[Mike]: 15:20

yeah, there's no easy answer. And it's really, if someone's working, like let's say if someone's working with a coach, that coach has to work with the client and try to figure out what would be the best schedule for that client. And so far we've only talked about sleep and training, right? We also need to talk about how does nutrition fit in there too, right? Where do supplementations fit in there? It's really... You got this big monster of sleep deprivation and we're kind of working all the other pieces around it. It is trial and error. There is no perfect fit for that, right? The sleep is the priority though, for sure, because you can only burn the candle at both ends so long. And trust me, I have done it all. I have done three days without sleep. I've done all sorts of stuff to try to like maximize sleep, every pharmaceutical under the under the sun, over the counter supplements, and really there's no hack. And that's one thing I've said over and over again. There's things that you can do that are biohacks, right? There's supplements, there's this, there's that. When it comes to sleep deprivation, there is no hack. There's nothing that will replace sleep. Nothing. Not even really interesting pharmaceuticals like Modafinil. There's nothing that will replace it. It's interesting, a lot of the research has been done in the military field about this, trying to maximize the output of soldiers. And they've done some nasty stuff over the years.

[Johan Vesters]: 16:52

Yeah

[Mike]: 16:53

But, but I mean, it's very interesting research subjects, but you cannot get away with sleep deprivation. And that this all circles back to that circadian rhythm disruption and how this is going to negatively affect your hypothalamic pituitary access, right? Hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access, your HPA access, and over time, how that's gonna affect your cortisol production, how that's going to affect your testosterone production, your DHEA production, right? Which I'm sure we'll get into a little bit more, right?

[Johan Vesters]: 17:29

I'm thinking, right? Because other than sleep, obviously being the biggest one,

[Mike]: 17:34

Mm-hmm.

[Johan Vesters]: 17:35

when people come to me and they are shift workers, I get this a lot. They're like nine to 10 times already on melatonin,

[Mike]: 17:42

Yep.

[Johan Vesters]: 17:44

which is kind of like the one that everyone kind of knows about.

[Mike]: 17:48

Hmm

[Johan Vesters]: 17:48

I feel like at least when I've tried it and I've heard from most people, and maybe it depends

[Mike]: 17:54

Thanks for watching!

[Johan Vesters]: 17:54

on the kind or the dose, but a lot of people feel like worse when they wake up on melatonin. Like what's your experience with that?

[Mike]: 18:03

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I got a lot of experience with melatonin. Melatonin is a very interesting, very interesting supplement, very interesting hormone. So we secrete melatonin from our pituitary gland. No, sorry, our pineal gland. So light goes, so when we normally have the most secretion, it's like things get quiet, sun goes down, lights go down, we start to chill out, cortisol drops. Cortisol is antagonistic to melatonin. So in the morning, sun rises, I'm sitting here in my window, it faces east, sun's hitting my eyes. Boom, my cortisol rises, melatonin gets shut down. At night, the opposite happens. Cortisol drops, melatonin is allowed to be secreted. That starts to put us to sleep and keeps us to sleep. So it's an endogenously secreted hormone. Now, supplementation of melatonin. It's interesting because in Canada for a while, melatonin was considered a substance. We weren't allowed to buy that. Is that from your end or my end?

[Johan Vesters]: 19:08

I don't hear anything.

[Mike]: 19:09

Oh, hold on. Something happened with my AirPods. I got my kids playing. I'm going to do this. Can you hear me?

[Johan Vesters]: 19:21

Yeah, you're good.

[Mike]: 19:23

OK, I'm good. I had my AirPods in, but for whatever reason, they connected with my kid's iPad. Where was I? Talk about melatonin. the endogenous secretion. Yeah, so it's supplementation. It was banned in Canada for a while because it's a hormone. You'll hear stuff about negative feedback. When I talk about negative feedback, it's like, so if my testosterone is low, I start taking testosterone, my body's like, oh cool, I got this testosterone, I'm going to quit making it. Right? That's negative feedback. It's not as clear cut with melatonin. There's interesting studies out of the 50s or 60s, I believe, with blind subjects. where they gave them 50 milligrams of melatonin over a long period of time, and then stopped supplementing them, and they still had their own endogenous secretion. And what's interesting is that they're blind, so the receptors in their eyes weren't being utilized for the secretion, right? So it didn't affect secretion. So it was a very cool study, but it showed that there was no negative feedback, so no down regulation of endogenous production of melatonin. Now, doesn't necessarily mean that it's a great supplement. And as you've experienced as a coach and as I've experienced as a coach and using it myself, it doesn't always work in everybody. Some people take melatonin, they're like, oh my God, I had the best sleep ever, right? Other people take it and they're like, oh, I feel kind of groggy in the morning. And then other people take it and they're like, wow, I felt like I was wired all night. Like I had drinking a cup of coffee, like what's up with that? So it has, it can have a... varied effect in individuals and this really depends on the dose and then how you metabolize it. Most of the time people are taking way too much. That's the thing and it's crazy. When I'll go, this is more so in the US than Canada, but when I travel to the US, you look at their shelves, let's say you go to Walmart or something like that or Target, everything has melatonin in it. They got products for kids. that has melatonin in it, up to like 10 milligrams, 20 milligrams. And I'm like, holy cow, like they're really cranking on the melatonin in the US. No wonder they got sleep issues. You can have a rebound insomnia from using melatonin, where you get kind of like this paradoxical effect. And I noticed this early on when I started to dose melatonin, I was like, oh, I read all this great stuff about melatonin, it's just awesome. You know, hormones, antioxidant effect, it helps your gut. There's a lot of play between melatonin and the gut also. So I'm like, wow, this is a great supplement. I'm gonna start taking it. Help my sleep, get my sleep dialed. Didn't work at all, right? So the rebound insomnia with me was quite profound. And I go back and I'll revisit the melatonin every now and then, sometimes in a really low dose. Like we're talking like 300 micrograms, maybe 500 micrograms. Doesn't seem to have a great effect with me, but also 30 years of shit. But for most people, they're taking too much. And a lot of the times it's more of what's your lifestyle like, right? So if all the lights are on in your house, you've got an iPhone in your face, you're on the computer, you're watching something on Netflix, you're doing that literally 10 minutes before you go to bed, you're not really allowing your own endogenous melatonin secretion to happen because you're still cranking your cortisol and especially from back lit electronic devices. They're gonna give out the specific spectrum. It's, I believe it's blue wavelength light that's gonna shut down. I'm either gonna mix that up with red or blue. And I think it's blue wavelength light that's gonna shut down your melatonin secretion. It's basically causing more cortisol to happen. So most of the time it's lifestyle factors. People don't need more melatonin. We don't have a melatonin deficiency. What we have is lifestyle factors that are impeding our ability to go to sleep. Now, you can put shift workers, and I'm talking about general public there. Shift workers are almost like an entirely different animal. If you have to be awake at night, like if it's, let's say, my shift is like, I'll make up a shift. Like, well, I work 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. So when I do nights, I do 14-hour nights, right? And that's a long time to be awake, right? Is there a time and place for melatonin there? I would argue no. When I come off a shift in the morning, I don't want to be dosing melatonin because I'm naturally not going to be dosing melatonin at that time, as far as my endogenous secretion. Melatonin works really well. If you look at the studies on melatonin, where it has the greatest degree of efficacy is with jet lag. and resetting circadian rhythm. So if I was to fly to Norway and it's like, it's 3 p.m. there and it's like, well, it's what? 3.30 there, it's 7.30 here. There's a huge time difference, right? So to entrain my circadian rhythm, I'd have to get onto Norway time as quick as possible. Melatonin could help with that, right? That's where I've seen a great deal of efficacy is like just getting into that certain time zone. But on a day-to-day basis, It doesn't seem to help with shift work. Now, that said, anecdotally, some people love it, right? And that's something also, once again, I could answer everything with like, well, it depends, it's individual, right? It really depends. Some people handle it well. I've had clients take 10 milligrams and they love it. And they're just like, yeah, I'm not groggy in the morning. I don't have a melatonin hangover. I slept solid eight hours. I feel great, right? In that regard, it can be really benign. It's a relatively benign supplement in that you can take ridiculous doses and I don't recommend anybody does. I did listen to a podcast a few years back and there's a physician out of the US and he was recommending like 50 up to 100 milligrams and I was like, wow, that's a really big dose. I don't know what his basis for that was and I don't recommend doing that. You generally will get into rebound insomnia if you get into like the three, the five, the seven, the 10 milligram doses. So it's individual for sure.

[Johan Vesters]: 26:00

So as for the jet lag stuff,

[Mike]: 26:02

Mm-hmm.

[Johan Vesters]: 26:02

I would kind of like almost compare that to when someone is on a certain shift for a week and then the next week is like a different or, you know, would

[Mike]: 26:10

Mm-hmm.

[Johan Vesters]: 26:10

that, would that be a scenario where you could utilize that?

[Mike]: 26:16

Maybe, yeah. And I know what those shifts you're talking about, they're sort of like escalating, where it's like someone might work days, might be working like a 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Then they switch to like a 12 p.m. to a 12 a.m. And then maybe they're on like a, I don't even know, 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. Like something crazy like that sort of gets later and later and later. If you're trying to sort of like set your sleep up for that, that might be an option, right? Because in a scenario like that, You really want what I call pre-sleep, right? Like pre-sleep before your shift. Because if you think about, let's say a normal working person is like, go to bed at 10, get up at 6 a.m., get ready, go to work for 8 a.m. Right? So I basically have eight hours of pre-work sleep, right? If you're working like 3 p.m. to 3 a.m., you probably want to pre-sleep, right? As late as possible. You always sort of set it up, and I tell my clients this, you set it up where it's like, your shift is, regardless of the time of day, that's your morning. So it's like, and this segues into nutrition a bit. It's like my first meal of the day, my breakfast, would be after I've woken up, because I'm breaking the fast of sleeping, and it's before I go to work on day shift. So if I'm working, as an example, if I'm working 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. That's my day shift. I'm gonna get up at like 5.30, six o'clock in the morning and my first meal is gonna happen about 6.30, right? And then that's my first meal. Now, if I was to sleep before my nights at 6 p.m. and let's say I sleep all the way until, if I'm really lucky and the planets are aligned, I sleep all the way till 4 p.m. and I wake up and my first meal of the day, my breakfast, is gonna be at 5 p.m., right? So... I'm talking about two different things here at once. I'm talking about pre-sleep, which is important. And I'm also talking about where the nutrition sort of comes in, setting up your meals, right? So.

[Johan Vesters]: 28:21

Yeah. Yeah, that's another one. Even because kind of going back to what I just said, because I'm basing this kind of off one of one of my clients currently, because they have three and it kind of like rotates, you know what I mean?

[Mike]: 28:34

Yep.

[Johan Vesters]: 28:34

But then what they'll sometimes do is he's like, well, I need to kind of like reset. And then instead of getting, you know, reset, like instead of actually getting more sleep, then it's almost like, no, they just kept a night sleeping almost, you know, they get like two to four hours and And then it's

[Mike]: 28:51

Yeah

[Johan Vesters]: 28:51

like, oh, and then I'll take it from there. You know what

[Mike]: 28:54

Well,

[Johan Vesters]: 28:54

I mean? I

[Mike]: 28:55

yeah,

[Johan Vesters]: 28:55

was like, fuck,

[Mike]: 28:55

I'm shaking

[Johan Vesters]: 28:55

that's rough.

[Mike]: 28:55

my head about doing that. And geez, you know, it makes me cringe. Part of it makes me cringe, but I also understand it. And that's that whole getting back, you know, I'm using fancy words

[Johan Vesters]: 29:09

Hmm.

[Mike]: 29:09

here, circadian rhythm and trainment, right? Getting back into a normal circadian rhythm pattern. And that's really important. Like if you have a great schedule and let's say, let's say you're a firefighter and you do 24 hour shifts. I don't do 24s, but if you do 24s or you do 48s, you don't work that much over the course of a month. So it does give you time to get back into a normal rhythm. And that's really important. That's something, you know, I talk about sleep as a priority, but talking about getting back into a normal sleeping pattern, that's probably your number one priority, right? Like as soon as you're finished your nights and you have some days off, it's really important. And if that involves staying awake, and being a little sleep deprived, let's say that first day, but then after your night. So this is what I'll do. Like if I have a really crappy night on my last night shift, I come home, I'm not sleeping. I'm just gonna like suck it up, get through the day. And then that night it's like, yeah, I'll probably be tired. I'm gonna try to set everything up good. Like no electronics, shut the caffeine down early, go to bed, like make sure my sleep hygiene is like on point. And hopefully that night I'll get a solid sleep. and that gets me back into the normal sleep-wake cycle. Really, really important. From a career longevity point of view, that's the number one thing you can do, right? Is you're constantly battling sleep deprivation and circadian rhythm disruption. So your number one goal is circadian rhythm entrainment, getting back into that normal sleep-wake cycle.

[Johan Vesters]: 30:44

Yeah. Yeah, it's tough as well because I have people who are in their 40s, 50s, some 2030s, you know.

[Mike]: 30:53

Mm-hmm.

[Johan Vesters]: 30:55

It also just kind of depends if it's something they just kind of do. Because I do know a few who kind of do that for summer, you know, like they're off from their studies and they'll just do that to earn a little extra money. But also people who kind of like continue to do that for, you know, like you, you know, 30 years fucking adds up, you know,

[Mike]: 31:13

It does add

[Johan Vesters]: 31:14

like

[Mike]: 31:14

up. Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 31:14

it's a long term, like.

[Mike]: 31:17

Like I'm, uh, I, I know how I'm going to feel when I'm really sleep deprived. And it's interesting. I have this conversation with other people and they talk about being tired. I'm so tired. And I'm just like, no, you don't understand. You don't understand. You can be so tired that it's like every nerve in your body hurts. Like that's true sleep deprivation. Um, but, but over the course, yeah. Like, I mean, four hours of sleep, five hours of sleep, six, seven, zero hours of sleep. And then I'm very self-aware in what I'm able to do, right? So if I'm like, oh, I feel this tired, okay, well I know I can do some maybe zone one, easily do zone one cardio, might be able to do zone two cardio. I know that's not gonna negatively affect me. Will probably make me feel better. I'm definitely, you know, if I'm sleep deprived, I'm definitely not gonna do some any high intense intervals, any CrossFit-y CrossFit stuff. no chance that's happening, right? One rep maxes, back squat, probably not. Doing sets of 20, probably not. But it's like, I understand my limits on that. I understand what I can handle as far as external stressors. But that's come over the course of 30 years, right? And you do figure that out. And I think it's important to figure that out early. And you definitely have to have not pushing through. There's a time and a place that's like, yeah, okay, I have fatigue, should I train? There's a time and a place to say yes. I think people can easily make the excuse not to train and then you fall. I believe we talked about this last time, you fall into that pattern of like, oh, I'm just tired, so I'm going to take a day off. Well, you know what? Sometimes you do have to say, suck it up, buttercup, and get the fuck to the gym. But if we're talking about sleep deprivation, it's like, you need to sort of figure out what's going to do the least amount of harm because training is a stressor. People don't and often people fail to realize that like any type of training is a stress. Human beings are awesome pieces of machinery where we can adapt to that stress and get bigger, faster, stronger, right? But stress has to be in the right dose, right? Devil's always in the dose. So we need to consider training as a stress and sleep deprivation is a stress. this is where the synergistic effect happens, one plus one equals 10, right? As far as the compounding effects of the stressor. So if I've got zero hours of sleep, but I'm Johnny Rocket and I wanna do CrossFit, and I'm gonna blow myself up that day at the gym, your recovery from that is gonna be impeded so much, you have no idea, right? It's like, Dr. Matthew Walker has a great book on, it's called Why We Sleep. And he's definitely one of the best sleep experts out there. And he talks about how insulin resistant we can become on a night of sleep deprivation and where our body will preferentially partition calories into fat versus replacing glycogen or down regulating muscle protein synthesis. The effects of sleep deprivation can be really profound acutely and chronically. And if you couple that with trying to train, especially in a performance-based sport, you It's going to result in the machine breaking down over time, for sure. I know I got

[Johan Vesters]: 34:45

Yeah.

[Mike]: 34:45

on total in there. Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 34:47

No, but it's, it's good that you brought that up. Cause I know if you, uh, who do, who do CrossFit and including a client of mine, preferably six times a week, you know, five, six times, um, usually on very little sleep. Like it's, so it's, it's actually a good thing that we, that we're talking about this because it's also one of those things because you did mention, right? Stress. We, we think, oh, that's, that's work. or financial stress or relationships. But the body, as much as, because I have this conversation all the time, because people think like, hey, it's my stress relief. Working out is my way of de-stressing. Actually, no.

[Mike]: 35:29

Well, yeah,

[Johan Vesters]: 35:30

It's...

[Mike]: 35:31

you do have to be sympathetic when people say that because I totally

[Johan Vesters]: 35:33

Yeah,

[Mike]: 35:34

get that, right?

[Johan Vesters]: 35:35

me

[Mike]: 35:35

And

[Johan Vesters]: 35:35

too.

[Mike]: 35:35

yet,

[Johan Vesters]: 35:35

It's

[Mike]: 35:35

I

[Johan Vesters]: 35:35

a nice

[Mike]: 35:36

mean,

[Johan Vesters]: 35:36

outlet.

[Mike]: 35:37

oh yeah, I mean, the antidepressant effects of exercise are profound. They're huge, right? It's real, right? And people

[Johan Vesters]: 35:44

Yeah.

[Mike]: 35:45

will, and you could be doing way worse things, right? Like when I have a client who wants to push through stuff and they're like, no, I can't give up the gym. It's like, that resonates with me. I get that. And as a coach, sometimes you just got to like... pull back a little bit on and be like, okay, I understand you want to do this. And CrossFit is a great example because I trained at a high level, high level for me, relative for me. I tried to train at a very high competitive level for a very long period of time. And what I found as I started to get a little bit older, now this was in my late 30s, early 40s, I was getting really sick. So when I say really sick, it's like four to five to six times a year, I was coming down with... really bad respiratory infections, right? And I was like, man, like it was, my immune system was taking a pounding, but it's because I was pushing in a very anaerobic based sport and also trying to do shift work. And in addition, you know, lots of other stressors in my life, everybody has, right? It's like kids and work and relationship stress and all that. But it's like the basically the sleep deprivation, the performance based training. And then also travel in that too, right? I had a lot of travel at that time. And that's also something else that'll absolutely crush your immune system is travel. But that just caused me to realize, it's like, this is not sustainable for me, right? And so it's like, okay, my shift work, that's something that's not gonna change, or I chose not to change that, right? Some people do, they're like, okay, I can't do the shift work anymore. I'm gonna leave this shift work, get into a totally different career. And lo and behold, their life drastically changes when they're like, whoa. I got lots of energy. I'm making progress in my sport of choice, whether that's aesthetic based or performance based. It's like my relationships are better, my mood's more stable. It's like, it can be a life changer to get out of that. But if you choose not to, and it's like, what did I have to change? Eventually I transitioned out of CrossFit and man, it completely changed. I was like, wow, I'm not getting sick. Wow, I feel really good. I'm not beat up. My joints don't hurt. Oh, I'm making progress from a body composition point of view now. Like lots of stuff happened when I got out of CrossFit. I'm not saying CrossFit's bad, but it's a very stressful sport, right?

[Johan Vesters]: 38:04

Yeah.

[Mike]: 38:05

And you have to realize that if you're doing CrossFit and you're doing shift work, it's like those are two of the hardest things to do ever. And you put them together and it's like, rarely ever have I seen it be sustainable. And there's anomalies out there, right? There, without a doubt, there's some amazing athletes out there that can do both. But eventually, Eventually stuff happens.

[Johan Vesters]: 38:29

I was going to say like, it's, it's probably still a matter of time. This is where, you know, some people are like very resilient. Others just notice right away. But I would say like at some point, you know, if it's a long term, I'm going to hit a wall and like, I mean, I hit a wall just from like work and.

[Mike]: 38:47

Mm-hmm.

[Johan Vesters]: 38:48

You know, also doing CrossFit without the sleep deprivation, even though I was

[Mike]: 38:54

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 38:54

basically just going all the time, but you know, like That was without the shift work and stuff, you know what I mean?

[Mike]: 39:00

Oh yeah,

[Johan Vesters]: 39:00

And...

[Mike]: 39:01

everybody does have a breaking point. Yeah. I mean, the question I get thrown at me a lot is they're like, okay, so if I, if you don't want me, so if I'm coming off a night shift, but I really want to train, but I know I'm sleep deprived, but you don't want me doing this CrossFit stuff. It's like, what can I do? Cause it's like this client is like, Hey, I really want to train. This is really important to me. It makes me feel good. Um, it's my, it's my mental de-stressing. Um, This is my experience and this has been echoed in a lot of clients. Um, stick to something, the monostructure. Okay. This is going to sound really boring, but monostructural zone two cardio. And people are going to be like, okay, what the hell is that? Like, so it's something like getting on the assault bike or getting on the treadmill or getting on the rower. Um, we can talk about each of those pieces of machinery specifically too, if you want to, some are better than others, but doing something cyclical in a controlled steady state manner. in zone 2 and I'm talking zone 2 that's where we're talking heart rate there. So you know for me zone 2 is like 100 in and around like 120 130 beats per minute on my heart. So it's really easy to maintain. That's going to have the least amount of stress on your body. You're still going to have some caloric expenditure, some caloric output. It's going to... cause like some dopamine to be released, it's going to cause some norepi, some epinephrine to be released, but it's not going to cause a big cortisol spike. And that's what's happening when we're going very anaerobic. It's causing this like fight or flight response. And we don't want that when we're sleep deprived. We don't want to be dumping all these catecholamines, you know, having this sympathetic response when we're already sleep deprived. It's like, it's like, dude, I'm running from the bear and I'm already sleep deprived. It's just like. It's extremely hard on the body. So I tell clients to do that. I'm like, if you're going to lift, go easy. Reduce your volume. Reduce your weights. This is not the time to do max effort stuff. And it's interesting. I've actually hit some very solid PRs in both lifting and with pushing, let's say, anaerobically when I've been sleep deprived. Now. It's not a good thing to do, right? This sometimes will happen, and I call it harnessing cortisol. You already have cortisol being secreted because you're sleep deprived. Your body's under stress. It's like, wow, I don't have enough rest. This is not a good situation. I need to secrete some cortisol to get shit done. You start training, it's sort of a simple, you're enabling a sympathetic response. I've hit some PRs, but... then recovery the next day is terrible. It's terrible, right? So I don't recommend it. And sometimes you'll start training and you'll feel really good. You're like, oh, check it out. I only got four hours of sleep, but I feel amazing today. I'm gonna push hard.

[Johan Vesters]: 42:01

No.

[Mike]: 42:02

Total normal thing for an athlete mind to do. But you should be thinking, maybe I should dial this back today. I only got four hours of sleep. Maybe I'm gonna cut my training short. I'm not gonna push hard. I'm only gonna go 70%. Or you know what, today, you know what, I'm just going to jump on the assault bike, you know, do an easy 30 minutes, you know, where I'm like, I'm breathing. I can still talk. You know, I'm going to be hitting zone two, something like that, much more productive from a longevity point of view versus, you know, going balls of the wall.

[Johan Vesters]: 42:37

Yeah. What about like bodybuilding type of trading?

[Mike]: 42:41

Yeah, I mean, and that's predominantly what I do now. If I'm sleep deprived and I'm going to train, these are my rules. I'm not saying this has to be anybody else's rules. I probably won't do legs. Legs is something that will cause a lot of like central nervous system stimulation and it can be really hard to recover from that, right? But you know, without getting too detailed, if you're going to do some traditional bodybuilding lifting, just go a little lighter, right? and just realize today you might not be able to hit like I'll just I'm going to pick up some numbers. Let's say you do you're doing benchpress you do 225 for 10. That's your normal you work up to that. That's your top set 225 for 10. On the day you're sleep deprived. Number one, you probably won't be able to do that. Right. Everything's going to feel heavier when we train under sleep deprivation. Our time to exhaustion is much quicker. And our rate of, this is key, our rate of perceived exertion is incredibly high. So even if your strength output potential is there, that weight's going to feel like 10 tons. And it's going to be, it's going to feel way harder. And you just have to accept that and maybe back off of that. Right. So just go lighter and cut your volume if you're going to do that. Right. On that day, you're not making gains. at the best, you're just maintaining. That's what you have to think of. If you're sleep deprived and you're training, this is just an active recovery day. Right? And if you have multiple days per week in which you're sleep deprived and you're trying to train, then you need to take a look at your lifestyle. You're like, okay, if this job I have is really crushing me this much, I'm trying to live a healthy lifestyle. What's the factor that I need to fix? It actually might be your job. That can be a hard one for people to accept. It's very easy to change your training. It's very hard to change your job, right? But you just need to work around that, right?

[Johan Vesters]: 44:42

Yeah. What about kind of like, because this is probably a question I can imagine comes up for people. What would be a good like amount of days training per week? I know there's like not one answer, but you know,

[Mike]: 44:56

No.

[Johan Vesters]: 44:57

because you know, people usually want to go like six or seven times if they can, you

[Mike]: 45:00

Holy.

[Johan Vesters]: 45:00

know,

[Mike]: 45:01

Yeah,

[Johan Vesters]: 45:01

or at least

[Mike]: 45:01

totally.

[Johan Vesters]: 45:01

when they're into fitness, I should say, you know, not everyone.

[Mike]: 45:05

Yeah, I get asked this a lot. If we take the shift work or sleep deprivation out of this, what's a good volume of days to train per week? I'm very much a fan of high-frequency training. Now, that's very different than high-volume or high-intense training. We've got frequency, we've got volume, and we've got intensity. I think doing something every day is really important. where I've seen clients make the most gains, be it performance or be it aesthetics, doesn't matter. It's in that range of like four to six. Four to six times a week, if you're doing something towards your goal, whatever that goal might be, there's a very good chance you're going to make progress. Now. This is nuanced because we could talk about, okay, is this performance based? Is this body composition based? Is it just general health? Right. Um, I think having that frequency there, um, enables like the consistent repetition of training, which is one that regardless of the factor, that's the one that seems to elude most people. Right. It's like they can't get on a consistent schedule. Right. So the consistency pieces there, I think moving on a daily basis. Just being the human beings that we are is super important because a lot of what we do, just like we're doing right now, is sitting. We don't move enough, right? We do need to move more without a doubt, right? Most people, there's a select group that maybe needs to move less, but that's not very many people. If we're talking about lifting specifically, and let's say we're talking about body composition, this is where I think maybe more is better. You can push the envelope on training. with bodybuilding styled training, the recovery from that is much different than it is from performance based sport. It's much easier. I'm not saying the sport or the hobby or the pursuit of bodybuilding is easy, but it's easier to recover from that. The effect of like let's say the central nervous system fatigue that'll happen if I do a push day, I'm going to talk push. I'm like, you know, talking like chest, triceps, shoulders, pushing movements is very, very little. compared to if I did like an hour of CrossFit or an hour of like heavy deadlifts or something like that, right? Or, you know, assault bike sprints, the effect on my central nervous system is much less. So I can recover from that, right? If we talk about aerobic training, we can get really high frequency on aerobic training. And it just depends on how hard you're pushing. If you're truly doing aerobic training and you know, it's heart rate controlled. You could technically do that every day if you have the athletic capacity built up to do that. If you're sedentary, you can't just jump in and do like seven days a week. So I'm getting really long-winded on this. I think more is better. Now, if we chuck in that nasty sleep deprivation in there, it really depends. Priority would be rest. Second, if you're going to train, you gotta keep it light. I will, so on a personal note, I'll usually train if I'm sleep deprived in some form and I'll gravitate to cardio. I've never liked doing cardio. It's funny because the stuff I post on my social media, people think I'm like some assault bike freak cardio machine. I'm not. I don't, I don't really like it, but I do it because I feel good after, right? Like especially after a night of sleep deprivation, if I get on the assault bike for 30 minutes, I feel really good after, right? So that's why I do it.

[Johan Vesters]: 48:51

Let's start

[Mike]: 48:52

And then

[Johan Vesters]: 48:52

you.

[Mike]: 48:53

what's that? Yeah, zone two. Yep, for sure. Yeah. And like everyone's own two is gonna be a little different. It's heart rate space, but it's like, but it's like, it's a pace that you can maintain for like 30 minutes. And if I said, no, hey, right at the 30 minute mark, I'm like, you gotta do another 20 minutes. You'd be like, oh, okay, I could do that. That's probably

[Johan Vesters]: 49:12

Yeah.

[Mike]: 49:13

zone two. If you're not doing heart rate control, right? You get into stuff where it's like, God, I really want this to end because this hurts. you're no longer aerobic, you're going anaerobic, right?

[Johan Vesters]: 49:23

Yeah.

[Mike]: 49:23

So.

[Johan Vesters]: 49:24

And that's the difference because it's, it's not like you're okay. Yes, it's high frequency in terms of like how often you're going, I mean, per week, but

[Mike]: 49:34

Mm-hmm.

[Johan Vesters]: 49:34

it's also not, Hey, I'm going to do a CrossFit all out for a full hour. You know what I mean? Like

[Mike]: 49:41

Yeah, totally.

[Johan Vesters]: 49:41

you're doing some chill stuff kind of, you know,

[Mike]: 49:43

Yep. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, the training, you know, just to circle back, it's like, I'm a big fan of high-frequency training. Like, if I can, if I could, I would probably do something seven days a week. I mean, just because of like other obligations, shift work, stuff like that, I mean, I don't, right? And there's a time and a place to take a complete day off, right? But I think it's important to move every day for sure.

[Johan Vesters]: 50:11

Let's, let's side this into caffeine use, cause

[Mike]: 50:13

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 50:15

I feel like that's, that's a big one. And full transparency, I've, I've been drinking too much coffee. And this morning I decided that in August, I'm going to try to do at least two weeks without I've done 30 days before. Um, but

[Mike]: 50:29

feel your.

[Johan Vesters]: 50:29

it's, I'm at a point where I have to, I really have to, it's, it's been too much. I will say that I will admit that on air.

[Mike]: 50:36

Yep.

[Johan Vesters]: 50:36

I'm drinking too much caffeine right now.

[Mike]: 50:38

You know

[Johan Vesters]: 50:39

Um,

[Mike]: 50:39

the accountability is there, now you have to do it.

[Johan Vesters]: 50:43

I mean, honestly, that's one of the reasons I'm bringing it up too, but I remember doing it. It was hard the first week, two weeks kind of sucks. And then it just becomes it's whatever, you know, listen to a really cool audio book back then, which Aaron Straker recommended to me. I think it's literally just called caffeine, I think.

[Mike]: 51:01

Mm-hmm.

[Johan Vesters]: 51:02

But he kind of talks about like the effects and what it does and how to do it. Like who wrote it also kind of went off during that process. And at the end, he also starts drinking coffee again. But I like that. I think it's been like two years. So I got to do that again.

[Mike]: 51:17

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 51:17

But anyway, in that similar kind of space with, especially now I'm thinking my CrossFit friends, energy drinks, they're all over the place. You know what I mean?

[Mike]: 51:28

Oh yeah,

[Johan Vesters]: 51:29

And

[Mike]: 51:29

I feel it everywhere

[Johan Vesters]: 51:30

you

[Mike]: 51:30

now.

[Johan Vesters]: 51:30

see people slam cans like 9 p.m. You know what I mean?

[Mike]: 51:34

Yeah,

[Johan Vesters]: 51:35

And

[Mike]: 51:35

it's

[Johan Vesters]: 51:35

it's

[Mike]: 51:35

a big

[Johan Vesters]: 51:35

like,

[Mike]: 51:35

thing.

[Johan Vesters]: 51:35

oh.

[Mike]: 51:36

It's a big thing with the younger crowd for sure. I see a lot more younger guys and gals doing the monsters and the bang energies and the energy drinks versus the coffee, right? And when it comes down to it, everyone's just looking for that caffeine. Yeah, caffeine is a fucking crazy interesting drug. Probably the most consumed. stimulant in the world, been around forever. Generally the main transporter for caffeine is people know it is from coffee and coffee beans. Yeah, I mean, and you know, I think I'm very pro, well I'm very pro coffee. Coffee has a lot of health benefits and I always sort of use coffee and caffeine interchangeably. I think if we're talking specifically about caffeine... I think caffeine is demonized a bit. Now this is going to make me sound very pro caffeine and I'm not, but I think it's demonized and I think people will blame a lot of their issues on maybe like having too much coffee. And yeah, you can drink too much coffee or you can have too much caffeine for sure. Right. So one of the key points, takeaways, I mean, after I'm going to get ahead of myself, I'm going to start babbling about a whole bunch of stuff. But one of the key points that I want people to remember is the half life of caffeine is anywhere from five to ten hours. And what that means is in that amount of time, your body will eliminate half of that dose that you take in. So if I take in 100 milligrams of caffeine, that's about the average cup of coffee. You'll have about 100 milligrams. in five hours, it'll be down to 50 milligrams. So it hasn't been completely eliminated from my body. Right. And that's key. Um, if there's one thing that's going to cause major sleep issues, it's going to be caffeine and people will become caffeine dependent. And if you're a shift worker, you absolutely know how awesome caffeine is. Right. You know, it can become a crutch. And I mean, I'd been drinking coffee for quite a long time, but I think when I got into, into paramedicine school and doing studies, I became very heavily addicted to caffeine, right? Where it was a necessity. It was like the fourth macronutrient, right? It's like it had to happen every day or bad shit would happen. You can have too much, but, and you know, people are always like, oh, how much is too much? And they want a number. And I'm like, well, I'm not going to tell you 2000 milligrams or something ridiculous. And I'm also not gonna say, oh, you know what, maybe you should only have 300 milligrams, maybe you should only have three cups of coffee. Once again, it's very individual, right? The key is, how do I take it in without it screwing my sleep up? Because we need to remember, it's a drug and you need to dose it at the appropriate time. And there's also something to consider about cycling it too, right? There might be a time when you don't want to take it in, right? Like you're about to do like 30 days or. two weeks maybe, of caffeine free, which is awesome. Like I've done that too. I used to do that yearly and I've just gotten lazy and I haven't done it. I don't think that's a bad thing to do because it makes you realize one, how much you depend on it, two, what it feels like to be off of it. And then one of the biggest things that I noticed was like how my energy levels were really normalized through the day. And it was like coming off of that caffeine, it was like the first couple days, yeah, you get a headache. Yeah, you kind of feel like garbage. And then I found by the third day, I'm like, oh, I'm fine. This is good. Right. And for other people, it might be weak. Other people might not notice anything depending on how much you take in. But you can get caffeine withdrawals for sure. But when it comes to shift work, you know, people are like, hey, you know what, like I need to drink it during my night. You know, in the middle of the night, 2am, you know, I'm driving around in a cop car I've gotten zero chance of sleep. I have to be alert. I need to have caffeine." Or they're like, can I have caffeine? I'm like, it definitely isn't the most optimal thing. But one, you're already awake at two. You should be asleep, but you're not because of the career choice you've picked. So yes, maybe you might need that caffeine. But to echo what I said before, it's like, think about when you're going to go to sleep, right? If it's like, okay, when I get off shift at 7 a.m. I'm gonna come home, probably gonna have a light breakfast. Gonna go to sleep about nine. So give yourself at least, at least six hours, if not more, not to have that caffeine. Because if you're cranking on a rock star at like five in the morning and you plan on sleeping at like eight a.m., it's probably not gonna happen, right? So you need to time it. Timing is everything when it comes to caffeine. It's like the best time to take it, first thing in the morning, or pre-workout. That's the best time to take caffeine in, right? Like my cutoff for myself is 3 p.m. And that's probably a little late for me, right? Because if I go to bed at 10, it usually doesn't affect my sleep, right? But maybe a better cutoff would be like noon. Give yourself like more time than you think to eliminate it from your body. And people think, oh, you know, I can drink coffee and then go to sleep. If you're that person, you actually need to consider. what you're doing in your life, where caffeine doesn't affect you, because it will. You won't have the perceptible effects of the stimulation, but it's still negatively affecting, or not negatively, it's still affecting your adenosine receptors, and that's really what it does. It just antagonizes your adenosine receptors and causes you not to feel fatigued, right? But if you can take it in and go right to sleep, that's a bit of an issue.

[Johan Vesters]: 57:37

That was me.

[Mike]: 57:39

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 57:40

I used to be, when I came to Norway, I used to work as a Northern Lights tour guide.

[Mike]: 57:45

Oh yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 57:45

So I would take people around. I would also do the driving myself. And it was really a matter of like looking for a clear sky, you know, because the weather here can suck and you just need clear sky. So sometimes we would drive all the way to Finland, which is like two, two and a half hours from here. So I'd be on my way back from Finland, like, I don't know, one, two a.m. 2 a.m. and you know drink coffee on the way back home you know and to then fall asleep like I would come like I would maybe drink coffee still maybe like let's say like 1 30 get home maybe 2 30 and I was just like caught like right away you know pretty happy I'm not doing that anymore by the way

[Mike]: 58:28

Yeah, no kidding.

[Johan Vesters]: 58:29

but

[Mike]: 58:29

Yeah. I mean, if someone's falling asleep immediately, like I said, they have a cup of coffee and half an hour later, they're going to sleep. Um, their fatigue level is so high that caffeine is not stimulating enough to keep them awake.

[Johan Vesters]: 58:44

But

[Mike]: 58:44

Right? So it's

[Johan Vesters]: 58:45

that's

[Mike]: 58:45

like,

[Johan Vesters]: 58:45

what was happening.

[Mike]: 58:46

it's not that you're immune to the caffeine. You're just so fatigued.

[Johan Vesters]: 58:50

You're fucking exhausted, that's the thing.

[Mike]: 58:52

Exactly. So there's other factors involved in that. Yeah. But it's, yeah, you know, it's like, and you know, to bust a myth, and this has nothing to do with sleep or shift work, it's like, it's not dehydrating. People are like, oh, how much is too much? Am I gonna cause myself to get dehydrated? You know, caffeine and coffee, it's not dehydrating. But it's just that timing thing. Like I've seen people literally take in 2000 milligrams. They're like, hey, am I taking in too much? I'm like, yeah, that's a pretty crazy dose.

[Johan Vesters]: 59:25

I'm out.

[Mike]: 59:26

Over the long term. I don't know, I mean, I'm not a cardiologist. I don't know if that would have cardiac effects. It's hard to say. I mean, there is an LD50 for caffeine, like the lethal dose off the top of my head. I don't know what it is. You probably don't want to test it out. I know from a personal point of view, I definitely don't feel great if I take in, like, let's say a singular dose of like 300 milligrams, right? And I feel really gross if I do that. And it's, Some of the performance effects when they've studied caffeine have gone up to like 600, 700 milligrams and they've seen like some really awesome performance based improvements taking caffeine. Like it's an ergogenic for sure. That dose, I can't even imagine taking a dose like that. When I formulated Max Perform, which is a pre-workout that I did for Nova 3 Labs and that's now Complex Nutrition, I only put 90 milligrams in there. A little goes a long way. But in some of these pre-workouts and in some of the energy drinks, like you'll see like 180 milligrams, right? And in some of the pre-workouts, you're talking like 200, 300 milligrams per scoop. And it's like, that's a big amount. So if you're like, if you're taking in multiple energy drinks per day as your sort of vehicle of choice for caffeine and you're doing a pre-workout, you might get up to close to like a thousand milligrams a day. Like it's possible. And I'd say that might be too much, right? Like you're just, you need to harness that, the timing of that, especially for a workout, right? But if you need that much per day, it's becoming a crutch, right? Yeah, for sure. And it's

[Johan Vesters]: 1:01:12

Yeah,

[Mike]: 1:01:12

like

[Johan Vesters]: 1:01:12

that's.

[Mike]: 1:01:13

people don't get adrenal fatigue or they don't develop HPA access dysfunction from drinking too much coffee or taking too much caffeine in. It just exacerbates what's going on.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:01:25

Mm-mm.

[Mike]: 1:01:26

So.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:01:27

Yeah. But I'm also curious about then, with the studies and stuff too, because it is very individual,

[Mike]: 1:01:34

Mm-hmm.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:01:34

like how much there will be a difference from person to person in like how much it we're already drinking, you know what I mean? I'm sure that there's gonna be a different response to.

[Mike]: 1:01:45

Well, yeah, everybody tolerates, like some people don't tolerate caffeine at all or any kind of stimulants. Like I do know a few people are just like, yeah, I can't even have a cup of coffee or I feel like all shaky and stuff. It's just too

[Johan Vesters]: 1:01:55

Yeah.

[Mike]: 1:01:55

much, too sensitive to it, right? Um, I don't know what it, the gene is. So I've done my testing through 23andMe multiple times and I've taken that raw data and I've run it through a bunch of other, um, sites and whatnot. And, and you can be a slower or fast caffeine metabolizer. And I think that depends on your liver health, that depends on your genetics. Supposedly, I'm a fast caffeine metabolizer, so that means that I will eliminate it quickly from my body. I find that interesting because, like I said earlier, if I drink it past 3pm, I have issues sleeping. Now, if you're like a small person, say you weigh 110 pounds, it's going to take you longer to metabolize the same amount of caffeine as somebody like... I'm 200 pounds, it's gonna take me half the time to metabolize that, right? Linear thinking there. But yeah, to go back to the genetics, you can be fast or slow metabolizer. And that has to do with how sensitive you are, right? So yeah, I mean, caffeine is the most abused and used stimulant in the world. It's got its benefits, but it's just, the timing is the key there, the timing.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:03:13

Yeah.

[Mike]: 1:03:13

when you take it in.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:03:15

Dude, when I, when I went off and I had my first cup again, I fucked

[Mike]: 1:03:19

Mm-hmm.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:03:20

off because it was 30 full days, like no caffeine, you know?

[Mike]: 1:03:24

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:03:24

And I like, I like we planned it, you know, I went to a good cafe and I think it must've been 2pm or something. And I swear like 2am I was like this and that still, you know, I could not fall asleep. I was completely

[Mike]: 1:03:39

Yeah,

[Johan Vesters]: 1:03:39

just wide awake.

[Mike]: 1:03:41

you'll become sensitive to it if you do like a 30-day cleanse of caffeine for

[Johan Vesters]: 1:03:45

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike]: 1:03:47

sure.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:03:47

Awesome.

[Mike]: 1:03:49

One of the things that, I don't know, did you want to talk about supplements for shift workers?

[Johan Vesters]: 1:03:56

I think it would be good to kind of do almost like a bit of a recap and say, okay, cool. Yes, we talked about a lot of things now,

[Mike]: 1:04:04

Yeah.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:04:05

but what would be kind of like a practical takeaway for people? You know, like what would be something, hey, whether it's nutrition, supplements, you know, you know, habits, lifestyle stuff, training, what would be like, let's say, maybe like top three to five things people could do.

[Mike]: 1:04:22

Yo, yeah, the top three or five things people could do to offset shift work.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:04:27

Yep. Kind

[Mike]: 1:04:29

Oh boy.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:04:29

of like, you know, if you got to do something, like start with this, you know what I mean?

[Mike]: 1:04:34

Yeah, I mean, so number one, you know, prioritize your sleep, right? And without going off on another tangent, I'll just leave it at that. So prioritize your sleep in and around your shift work, right? That's number one. Number two would be, and we didn't really touch on this, but continue or if you not, you should be, like continue eating very nutrient-enhanced food, right? It's like There's a time and a place for processed food, and there's a time when we can handle it quite easily. But if we're looking at what sleep deprivation does to us, one of the big factors with sleep deprivation, and there's lots of things, but it's like this systemic inflammation, and specifically your neural inflammation. So there's a lot of brain inflammation that happens from sleep deprivation, right? Because it's like, that's the organ that's really taking the brunt of it, is your head, it's your brain, right? when we're sleep deprived. So we want to minimize the effects of that. So I was on number two there, I'm thinking about number three already. Some of the things that we could do as far as your supplementation, going back to the nutrient dense food, I mean, that's just going to offset that inflammation. You're going to continue to eat like in a calorically controlled nutrient dense pattern. Spend a whole podcast talking about that. I'll just leave that at that. People are gonna be like, what the hell is he even talking about? What am I supposed to eat? I'm like, just eat real food, man. Just eat real food. As far as supplementation goes, you can't out supplement sleep deprivation. So the basics go back to the inflammation. It's like take your vitamin D, in the morning when you get up, right? Vitamin D should be dosed in accordance to the timing of it. The same as when the sun rises and falls. Take your vitamin D in the morning, that's when you're gonna get the most. I'm getting mine right now. Fish oil for inflammation, curcumin inflammation. Multi-B complex just to make everything work better, right? These are real basic things. For sleep to help you sleep and normalizing that sleep cycle, really benign but important supplements would be like your magnesium, your zinc. potentially taking GABA. GABA is inhibitory neurotransmitter. Valerian root, it actually stimulates the GABA receptors, I believe, so it's similar to taking GABA. We had talked about melatonin, there's caveats with that. It might work, it might not, right? But that would help normalize your sleep cycle. Offsetting sleep deprivation, I don't know if I want to go down this one. There are some supplements that will help. deal with sleep deprivation. Tyrosine is one of them. And this really has to do with breaking down like it's basically a precursor to norepinephrine and dopamine. And you're going to be depleted of both of those when you're sleep deprived, right? One of my favorite supplements and it's kind of one that flies underneath the radar would be alpha GPC, which is a very bioavailable form of choline. Colleen, we will break down into acetylcholine, which is an essential neurotransmitter, which is going to be used more when you're sleep deprived and it's going to be depleted or if you're chronically sleep deprived. So I really like Alpha GPC. I'm way off of just the top five, I think. As far as training goes, continue to train, but attenuate your training, meaning like maybe bring it down a notch, right? Get a move on, get sweaty. but don't blow yourself up, but continue to move, right? We're gonna be battling that inflammation that we built up from being sleep deprived, but we don't wanna create more. We've got a lot of insulin resistance going on because we're sleep deprived. So we want to like stimulate that non-insulin sensitivity happening, right? And maybe last but not least, if you can, switch careers. don't do shift work if you can as much as I someone told me that a long time ago they said do everything you can to get out of doing shift work and I actually took it really personally because I'm like no I love my job why would I want to do that but um I understand what they're saying because it's just it's one of those things that's going to eventually get you in the end right so but if you choose a life of shift work you got to do everything to battle the sleep deprivation

[Johan Vesters]: 1:09:20

Oh, awesome, man.

[Mike]: 1:09:22

Mm hmm.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:09:23

Dude, thanks.

[Mike]: 1:09:24

All right.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:09:24

Uh, thanks for coming back.

[Mike]: 1:09:25

Well, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure for sure. And,

[Johan Vesters]: 1:09:30

Awesome.

[Mike]: 1:09:30

yeah, so I mean, if anybody ever had any questions for me, you know where to reach me. Just get a hold of me on social media, on Instagram. It's the best place. And I'm more than happy to answer any questions anyone has.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:09:44

So make sure to drop your info down below in the show notes as usual

[Mike]: 1:09:49

Okay.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:09:50

Dude, I'll talk to you soon

[Mike]: 1:09:51

Yeah, man, for sure. Okay.

[Johan Vesters]: 1:09:53

to the listener. Thanks for listening and we'll speak next week.