Sleep and nutrition for police communicators

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Anna: Hello, my name is Anna Earl, and I'm a Nutritional Therapist, former Police Officer, and now working with Oscar Kilo on a Nutrition for Wellbeing programme. And today we're talking about nutrition to support you if you are on-call. So the unpredictable nature of on-call work is a challenging period for your health and can take its toll on your work performance and family life. You have to navigate your way through interrupted sleep and sleep deprivation, the impact of that on your energy, your tolerance levels, possibly a much reduced opportunity to taking some form of exercise into your routine during the on-call period, and that can impact your stress management.

The thought then of finding time to produce healthy home-cooked food to fuel you through your on-call duties may feel impossible, grabbing whatever chocolate bar or fast food options you can lay your hands on, along with coffee or energy drinks to keep you alert may be a regular habit. But if you are often on-call, these may not be your best choices, either short or long term. You may not be aware that our natural 24 hour body clock, our circadian rhythm, means that shift work puts our bodies out of sync. Various different bodily functions follow this rhythm, not only sleep. When it comes to digesting food, our digestive system functions best during the day during daylight hours.

A host of hormones that control production of our digestive juices, enzymes, stomach acid, they switch off in response to darkness. So therefore, asking our digestive system to process food contrary to this rhythm is problematic. Food can sit around undigested, making you feel sluggish, and could cause some uncomfortable stomach symptoms like indigestion, bloating, and heartburn. We produce less insulin at night, which helps to control our blood glucose response to foods and our energy, and this impacts our weight and heart health, and increases our risk of chronic disease such as Type 2 diabetes.

So what could you do instead to reduce those health risks, avoid those energy spikes that are followed by crashes, and to choose foods that won't keep you buzzing if you need to try and get back to sleep? The main tip here is to plan your on-call food supplies. Once you know your on-call duties plan ahead. Set aside just 15 minutes or so, and do some simple food planning for the week. Food shop in advance so you've got healthy nutritious foods on hand. You could do this just with a notebook, jotting down some meal planning and flick through some recipe books for inspiration. You could use the notes in your phone, you could use some online healthy recipe and snack resources, or there's the free meal planning app called Whisk, which I really like, and I use a lot and that can help with also planning your shopping list.

When making those meal and snack choices aim to reduce reliance on sugary, high fat, and processed foods. These are food groups to reduce in your diet generally, but particularly during the night when digestion is not your body's priority. A heavy meat-based or high fat meal is going to sit around and not sit well during the night. If you're not the [unintelligible 00:03:35] at home, you may need to tread carefully and may need a delicate conversation if you're proposing changes to current routines and meals. Perhaps suggesting a way that you can help with some food prep is a good place to start. If your local food outlets are your usual go-to, consider their healthier items. Plant-based options will digest better before the sun comes up. There's a recipe section on the Oscar Kilo Nutrition for Wellbeing pages, so take a look.

If you are called out at night, prepare some supplies to take with you. If you could be out for a while, try not to leave the house hungry and empty handed. That is the easiest way for the 3AM drive-through Big Mac. Invest in some handy food storage containers and prepare some of the foods that I'll suggest in a moment in advance, making it easy to grab and go if needed. Try not to go to bed dehydrated, your brain is almost three-quarters water, so make sure you've had sufficient fluid intake during the day before your on-call night shift to help it function well as needed. Keep a bottle of water by your bed, and have a drink as you wait to take that call to help wake you up, and avoid the fruit juices, fizzy drinks, and sweetened hot drinks which will immediately send your blood sugar high.

This puts demand on that insulin production which impacts your level of risk of pre-diabetes and Type 2 diabetes as well as weight management. Maybe just sip on some hot water with some lemon or some ginger to help with being alert during the night, or perhaps a weak tea, black or green, rather than going straight for that caffeine hit from the coffee. Or try the vast range of caffeine-free energy boosting herbal teas if you're going to be up for a while. If you've been woken up suddenly, adding high doses of caffeine can overload your stress response as well as disrupting your sleep pattern further. So here are some food ideas that might keep you going. Just a tub of trail mix can be handy with some unsalted nuts, some seeds, some dark chocolate chips, and maybe a little dried fruit such as cranberries, or sour cherries, which can be known to help with getting back to sleep. It's handy to keep these at hand. You can keep them in the car, and they're a nice, easy and nutritious grab box for you.

Depending on the time of year some homemade soups are a great nutritious option, but try to avoid a huge hunks of white bread to mop up. Overnight oats, you can soak a cup of oats in a glass jar with some milk, add in some berries – frozen – can be a really economical option, topped with some flaked almonds, or some cinnamon, or some natural full fat yogurt. This is a great breakfast option if you need a quick early meal. You could prepare enough of these to last your on-call period to keep in the fridge. You can vary the flavours easily with some cocoa powder for a chocolatey flavour, some seeds, some chopped hazelnuts or chopped walnuts, and other fruits that don't go brown quickly. Maybe some tinned peaches just in juice rather than syrup, some kiwi fruit chopped, or frozen mango. Just have a think about the different varieties and the benefits of all those different fruits.

Keep the fruit and the nut topping separate if you do want to gently heat those overnight oats to make it a warmer porridge type dish if it's particularly a cold time of year. Boiling some eggs to keep in the fridge can be really helpful; they can eaten alone just as a little pick you up snack, or easily added to a salad or chopped into a wrap. Smoothies can be handy to prepare to take with you in a kind of thermos that keeps fluids cold, but avoid smoothies that are fruit only because of that blood sugar spiking. So have some protein powder in there, some natural yogurt, or some nuts, or nut butter, or some seeds as well.

There's so many different types of different flavoured hummus that you can get these days, and they can be scooped out with some chopped vegetables, some carrot sticks, pepper sticks, cucumber, some sugar snap peas, or some roasted cauliflower. And you could go for the wholemeal wraps; you could prepare some of these in advance too, perhaps just with some tuna salad and some sweetcorn and some salad leaves. You could do some with some different flavoured hummus, with some roasted peppers, and the different dark green leafy rockets, watercress, spinach leaves, or some grated cheese, cream cheese, cucumber, and some slices of avocado. These are all nutritious and easy to prepare suggestions that might help you just think about some alternatives to the processed or takeaway foods that you might be relying on.

By planning and preparing some of these in advance, if you don't end up getting a call you've got some food prepared for the following day, so your efforts are unlikely to be in vain. So there are some ideas that can be considered protective of your health, can prevent or reduce those health risks of the disruption to your circadian rhythm, and may help to sustain you in your demanding role. I really hope that's been helpful and I hope there's some good takeaway tips there for you to try. Thanks very much for listening.