1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,440
This episode is sponsored by a company I've literally been using for over 15 years now and that is 511.

2
00:00:06,800 --> 00:00:13,040
Now my introduction to their products began when I started wearing 511 uniforms years ago for Anaheim Fire Department.

3
00:00:13,160 --> 00:00:18,600
And since then I have acquired a host of their backpacks and luggage which have literally been around the world with me.

4
00:00:19,080 --> 00:00:22,760
The backpack where I keep all my recording equipment is a 511 backpack.

5
00:00:23,160 --> 00:00:27,000
And then most of my civilian gear, the clothes that I wear are also 511.

6
00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:31,520
Now more recently they've actually branched out into the brick and mortar stores.

7
00:00:31,640 --> 00:00:36,360
So for example Gainesville where I do jiu-jitsu has a beautiful 511 store.

8
00:00:36,360 --> 00:00:39,240
So if you are a fire department, a law enforcement agency,

9
00:00:39,760 --> 00:00:45,200
you now have access to an entire inventory of clothing and equipment in these 511 stores.

10
00:00:45,400 --> 00:00:48,540
Now I've talked about the range of shoes they have and how important

11
00:00:48,840 --> 00:00:53,200
minimizing weight in our footwear is when it comes to our back health, knee health, etc.

12
00:00:53,200 --> 00:00:59,080
I've talked about their unique uniforms that are fitted for either male or female first responders.

13
00:00:59,080 --> 00:01:02,960
And then I want to highlight one new area, their CloudStrike packs.

14
00:01:03,160 --> 00:01:08,360
For those of you who enjoy hiking, this would even be an application I believe for the wildland community.

15
00:01:08,400 --> 00:01:16,760
They've created an ultra light pack now with a hydration system built in for rucking, running or other long-distance events.

16
00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:21,200
Now as always 511 is offering you, the audience of the Behind the Shield podcast,

17
00:01:21,200 --> 00:01:24,600
15% off every purchase that you make.

18
00:01:24,800 --> 00:01:33,000
So if you use the code SHIELD15, that's S-H-I-E-L-D-1-5 at 511tactical.com,

19
00:01:33,160 --> 00:01:36,280
you will get that 15% off every single time.

20
00:01:36,680 --> 00:01:41,440
So if you want to hear more about 511 and their origin story, go to episode

21
00:01:42,360 --> 00:01:47,520
338 of Behind the Shield podcast with their CEO Francisco Morales.

22
00:01:47,520 --> 00:01:50,520
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing.

23
00:01:50,520 --> 00:01:53,760
And this week I have a very important conversation,

24
00:01:53,760 --> 00:02:01,520
especially when it comes to trying to move the firefighter work week to a 24-72 shift pattern,

25
00:02:01,520 --> 00:02:04,560
which would result in a 42 hour work week,

26
00:02:04,720 --> 00:02:10,320
a far cry from the 56 to 80 hour work weeks that a lot of our firefighters are working,

27
00:02:10,320 --> 00:02:12,320
especially when they're understaffed.

28
00:02:12,800 --> 00:02:16,120
Now in this conversation, so many people have asked me,

29
00:02:16,120 --> 00:02:18,120
James, can you show me the research?

30
00:02:18,120 --> 00:02:22,920
And so I reached out to my friend who's arguably one of the most respected researchers

31
00:02:22,920 --> 00:02:27,120
when it comes to health in the fire service, and that is Sarah Jenke.

32
00:02:27,600 --> 00:02:32,520
Now we've done two podcasts before, episode 245 and 401,

33
00:02:32,520 --> 00:02:35,120
where she really kind of breaks down some other areas.

34
00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:39,920
But this time we honed solely on sleep deprivation and shift work

35
00:02:40,120 --> 00:02:45,920
so I could kind of build the understanding of how detrimental both chronically and on a daily basis

36
00:02:45,920 --> 00:02:51,520
and acutely this is not only in our performance and obviously the lives lost through mistakes,

37
00:02:51,520 --> 00:02:53,920
whether it's driving, whether it's pushing the wrong meds

38
00:02:53,920 --> 00:02:57,320
and the financial element of the lawsuits that are attached to that,

39
00:02:57,720 --> 00:03:00,720
but also the horrendous chronic impact.

40
00:03:01,120 --> 00:03:03,920
And as you will hear everywhere from mental health to cancer,

41
00:03:03,920 --> 00:03:06,320
it is a huge common denominator.

42
00:03:06,520 --> 00:03:10,120
But one of the most startling things that she brought to this conversation

43
00:03:10,120 --> 00:03:12,120
was the impact on our fertility,

44
00:03:12,120 --> 00:03:17,920
but also the massive increase we have seen in our profession when it comes to childhood diseases,

45
00:03:17,920 --> 00:03:21,920
so pediatric cancers and autism and some of these other areas.

46
00:03:22,120 --> 00:03:24,720
Now to round off this conversation, as you will hear,

47
00:03:24,720 --> 00:03:31,120
there is just simply not much money given to the fire service when it comes to researching this ill health.

48
00:03:31,320 --> 00:03:33,920
So Sarah talks about the studies are out there.

49
00:03:33,920 --> 00:03:38,320
Obviously she talks kind of an apples to oranges comparison with some of the other professions,

50
00:03:38,320 --> 00:03:42,120
but she also highlights how little research has been done in those areas.

51
00:03:42,120 --> 00:03:48,320
So therefore waiting for quote-unquote research is only going to prolong the suffering within the fire service.

52
00:03:48,320 --> 00:03:55,120
So really understanding the common sense element that a shorter workweek would improve physical and mental health

53
00:03:55,120 --> 00:04:00,120
and have a huge cost savings is a beautiful takeaway from this conversation.

54
00:04:00,520 --> 00:04:04,520
Now before we get to this interview, as I say every week, please just take a moment,

55
00:04:04,720 --> 00:04:06,720
go to whichever app you listen to this on,

56
00:04:06,720 --> 00:04:10,720
subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.

57
00:04:10,920 --> 00:04:15,320
Every single five-star rating truly does elevate this podcast,

58
00:04:15,320 --> 00:04:17,720
therefore making it easier for others to find.

59
00:04:17,920 --> 00:04:22,720
And this is a free library of well over 900 episodes now.

60
00:04:22,920 --> 00:04:28,520
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories

61
00:04:28,720 --> 00:04:32,720
so I can get them to everyone else on planet Earth who needs to hear them.

62
00:04:32,720 --> 00:04:40,520
So with that being said, I welcome back onto the show, Dr. Sara Jenke. Enjoy.

63
00:04:40,520 --> 00:04:59,520
Music

64
00:04:59,720 --> 00:05:02,520
Well, Sara, I want to say firstly, welcome back.

65
00:05:02,720 --> 00:05:06,920
I think this is number three, if I'm not mistaken, of our conversations recorded,

66
00:05:07,120 --> 00:05:09,320
you know, and then obviously we've had numerous outside of that.

67
00:05:09,320 --> 00:05:12,920
So welcome back to the Behind the Shield podcast today.

68
00:05:13,120 --> 00:05:15,320
Excited to be back. Always enjoy it.

69
00:05:15,520 --> 00:05:16,920
Always a good time.

70
00:05:17,120 --> 00:05:19,920
So where on planet Earth are we finding you today?

71
00:05:20,120 --> 00:05:23,320
I am actually at home today and I'm very excited to be home.

72
00:05:23,520 --> 00:05:29,720
I have been on the road the last few weeks and I love doing that and having like

73
00:05:29,920 --> 00:05:32,320
outreach, but there's nowhere better than home.

74
00:05:32,520 --> 00:05:34,520
Nowhere better than my own bed.

75
00:05:34,720 --> 00:05:38,520
There's a lot of guilt as a parent not being around with your children either.

76
00:05:38,520 --> 00:05:39,720
So much.

77
00:05:39,920 --> 00:05:44,920
And I try to teach them like, you know, this the work that I'm doing is important.

78
00:05:44,920 --> 00:05:47,520
And here's how it's affecting the world and all those types of things.

79
00:05:47,520 --> 00:05:50,120
And I'm like really trying to be positive about that.

80
00:05:50,120 --> 00:05:52,720
And I try and take them when we can, when I can take them places.

81
00:05:52,720 --> 00:05:55,520
But the end of the day, when my daughter's like, but I want you home, I'm like,

82
00:05:55,720 --> 00:05:58,120
I want to be home too.

83
00:05:58,320 --> 00:06:01,520
Well, that's actually a beautiful segue to what we're going to talk about today,

84
00:06:01,720 --> 00:06:06,400
because I just had a couple of Firewives on recently behind the Women Behind the

85
00:06:06,400 --> 00:06:14,120
Dear Chiefs podcast and one of them had talked about when their son was very small.

86
00:06:14,320 --> 00:06:16,120
He was all in on the fire service.

87
00:06:16,120 --> 00:06:17,520
He had the costume.

88
00:06:17,520 --> 00:06:19,160
He had the trucks. He had everything.

89
00:06:19,360 --> 00:06:23,680
And they happen to have a conversation with him when he was now, I think, 14, 15.

90
00:06:23,880 --> 00:06:25,680
And they said, you know, you think you're

91
00:06:25,680 --> 00:06:27,160
going to become a firefighter like your dad.

92
00:06:27,360 --> 00:06:30,840
And he was basically the version of fuck no.

93
00:06:31,040 --> 00:06:33,280
He said, and they asked, well, why?

94
00:06:33,480 --> 00:06:35,800
And he said, because dad's never home.

95
00:06:35,800 --> 00:06:37,040
And this is the thing.

96
00:06:37,040 --> 00:06:40,160
There's a difference between the mission, the purpose, the job.

97
00:06:40,360 --> 00:06:43,520
That is why I would argue the best profession on the planet.

98
00:06:43,520 --> 00:06:47,720
I mean, I'm a little biased and the environment that we work people in.

99
00:06:47,720 --> 00:06:49,480
Those are two separate conversations.

100
00:06:49,480 --> 00:06:51,880
So I'm really excited to kind of unpack that with you today.

101
00:06:52,080 --> 00:06:57,080
Yeah, it's a complex question.

102
00:06:57,280 --> 00:06:58,400
And I do.

103
00:06:58,400 --> 00:07:01,280
I think there's it's well, I think I have the best job in the world

104
00:07:01,280 --> 00:07:03,720
because I get to work with fire service and sleep in my own bed.

105
00:07:03,720 --> 00:07:10,200
But, yeah, it's not there's not an easier, straightforward answer to any of the

106
00:07:10,200 --> 00:07:12,400
questions, but that's what makes it interesting.

107
00:07:12,600 --> 00:07:13,920
And more research is always needed.

108
00:07:13,920 --> 00:07:15,320
So it's job security for me.

109
00:07:15,520 --> 00:07:16,400
Absolutely.

110
00:07:16,600 --> 00:07:19,840
Well, you are what we refer to as culturally competent as well.

111
00:07:20,040 --> 00:07:24,040
So just give an overview of your kind of family connection to the fire service.

112
00:07:24,240 --> 00:07:27,160
Yes. Well, and I also never considered being

113
00:07:27,160 --> 00:07:31,320
a firefighter, which it hadn't occurred to me until one of the women from Women

114
00:07:31,320 --> 00:07:34,320
Fire said, did you ever think about doing it? I'm like, oh, no, God, no.

115
00:07:34,520 --> 00:07:36,520
Sounds awful.

116
00:07:37,280 --> 00:07:42,840
And part of it was that, you know, dad had to be gone, especially when as a chief and

117
00:07:43,560 --> 00:07:45,080
being.

118
00:07:46,040 --> 00:07:49,800
You know, just never know when he had to go for something and never and kind of

119
00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:53,880
like even just the psychology of not being present in the moment a lot of times.

120
00:07:54,080 --> 00:07:56,600
So I also would not want to be a fire chief.

121
00:07:56,600 --> 00:07:59,840
That also sounds like a horrible job, but they're fun to study.

122
00:07:59,840 --> 00:08:03,400
But, yeah, I grew up in the fire service and

123
00:08:03,600 --> 00:08:04,720
my dad was the only child.

124
00:08:04,920 --> 00:08:09,360
So all my family, extended family on his side was all fire service folks and got

125
00:08:09,560 --> 00:08:14,120
into research because I was going to be a clinician with kids working with kids

126
00:08:14,120 --> 00:08:15,800
and then hated working with their parents.

127
00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:19,000
So needed a plan B and had done military

128
00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:22,640
research in grad school and fire service that just started funding research.

129
00:08:22,640 --> 00:08:26,520
So that started like I think my first funded grant was 17 years ago now,

130
00:08:26,720 --> 00:08:28,600
which makes me feel old.

131
00:08:28,600 --> 00:08:32,120
I entered the fire service 20 years ago, 2004.

132
00:08:32,320 --> 00:08:33,960
I don't like numbers like that.

133
00:08:34,160 --> 00:08:37,000
Doesn't that seem like the 80s?

134
00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:41,120
Someone said the 80s was almost like early 80s.

135
00:08:41,320 --> 00:08:43,400
That's almost like 50, 50 years.

136
00:08:43,600 --> 00:08:45,000
I'm like, I don't know.

137
00:08:45,200 --> 00:08:46,520
I saw that same post.

138
00:08:46,520 --> 00:08:49,480
I think it was a film, something that was released in 85.

139
00:08:49,480 --> 00:08:52,680
And they're like, just so you know, this would have been 50 years ago.

140
00:08:52,880 --> 00:08:54,000
Oh, my God.

141
00:08:54,200 --> 00:08:55,640
No, thank you.

142
00:08:55,840 --> 00:08:56,200
Yeah.

143
00:08:56,200 --> 00:08:57,360
I guess it was the 70s.

144
00:08:57,360 --> 00:08:58,640
Had to be 70s to get the math right.

145
00:08:58,640 --> 00:09:00,840
But even so, it was terrible because I was born in 74.

146
00:09:01,040 --> 00:09:02,440
So,

147
00:09:02,640 --> 00:09:04,400
well, with that, let's start at the beginning.

148
00:09:04,600 --> 00:09:07,320
Then you enter this field.

149
00:09:07,520 --> 00:09:10,760
I'm always asked and we're going to get into this exact conversation.

150
00:09:10,960 --> 00:09:14,480
Well, James, what about the research on shift work on this on that?

151
00:09:14,680 --> 00:09:18,480
What was the landscape of health research

152
00:09:18,680 --> 00:09:21,160
in firefighters when you entered 17 years ago?

153
00:09:21,360 --> 00:09:22,720
Oh, yeah, almost nothing.

154
00:09:22,920 --> 00:09:26,400
So about 80 percent of the research that's been done on firefighter health is

155
00:09:26,400 --> 00:09:29,800
the last basically since FEMA started funding research.

156
00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:33,720
And that was, I think, when I think about 16, 17 years ago.

157
00:09:33,760 --> 00:09:35,280
No, it must have been a little bit more than that.

158
00:09:35,480 --> 00:09:36,440
Eighteen years, maybe now.

159
00:09:36,640 --> 00:09:39,360
But FEMA has the fire prevention and safety underneath that.

160
00:09:39,560 --> 00:09:43,960
They have a tiny pot of money, like maybe five or five studies a year

161
00:09:44,160 --> 00:09:45,240
on firefighter health.

162
00:09:45,440 --> 00:09:50,120
And it's not if you look at research now compared to where it was then,

163
00:09:50,320 --> 00:09:53,560
like it's exploded and there are so many groups doing good work.

164
00:09:53,560 --> 00:09:55,240
And we're learning so much more about

165
00:09:55,240 --> 00:09:58,560
cancer, cardiovascular disease, mental health, reproductive health.

166
00:09:58,760 --> 00:10:02,200
And like every question that we answer leads to more

167
00:10:02,400 --> 00:10:04,240
leads to more questions, which is awesome.

168
00:10:04,440 --> 00:10:08,440
And it's not that every every research team is funded by FEMA,

169
00:10:08,640 --> 00:10:12,480
but I have yet to find an article that doesn't reference some of the work that

170
00:10:12,480 --> 00:10:15,600
was funded by FEMA. So I think it just really raised the awareness.

171
00:10:15,800 --> 00:10:17,680
And then, you know, then you have news

172
00:10:17,880 --> 00:10:22,040
stories about cancer and firefighters, which sparks more interest in research

173
00:10:22,040 --> 00:10:22,760
and those types of things.

174
00:10:22,760 --> 00:10:26,520
And so, I mean, we used to struggle because like the big funders,

175
00:10:26,520 --> 00:10:30,400
like National Institutes of Health, because firefighters such a small population.

176
00:10:30,600 --> 00:10:35,400
Initially, like the conversation was it was really nearly impossible to get

177
00:10:35,600 --> 00:10:37,880
research funded by NIH.

178
00:10:38,080 --> 00:10:41,560
But now they're, you know, they're they fund research on firefighter health

179
00:10:41,760 --> 00:10:44,200
sometimes still challenge, but it's still possible.

180
00:10:44,400 --> 00:10:46,480
It's now possible, which is awesome.

181
00:10:46,680 --> 00:10:50,560
What I've seen and again, this is through my own awakening.

182
00:10:50,560 --> 00:10:54,160
It's not like I was aware of this 20 years ago because I wasn't.

183
00:10:54,360 --> 00:10:58,920
But what I realize is there's there's a kind of myopia in research sometimes.

184
00:10:58,920 --> 00:11:01,120
And so and I've talked about this many times.

185
00:11:01,320 --> 00:11:04,680
If you look at firefighter cancer, it was for the longest time,

186
00:11:04,880 --> 00:11:09,600
the carcinogens completely legitimate, same way as COVID-19 is a virus that will

187
00:11:09,800 --> 00:11:12,880
mess you up if you are immune compromised, for example.

188
00:11:13,080 --> 00:11:15,200
So definitely a factor.

189
00:11:15,400 --> 00:11:17,400
And then when it comes to the mental health,

190
00:11:17,400 --> 00:11:20,840
oh, well, it's because, you know, you saw this thing, you were at Grenfell,

191
00:11:21,040 --> 00:11:22,760
you were, you know, the Vegas shooting.

192
00:11:22,960 --> 00:11:24,640
That's why you're struggling.

193
00:11:24,840 --> 00:11:28,480
And then you kind of reverse engineer and you look at all these other factors.

194
00:11:28,680 --> 00:11:32,520
And what I've noticed, you know, and I think even until very recently is that

195
00:11:32,720 --> 00:11:36,920
when it comes to cancer, there's no talk at all about sleep deprivation

196
00:11:37,120 --> 00:11:40,480
and the breakdown of our immunity when it comes to mental health.

197
00:11:40,680 --> 00:11:41,560
It's the same thing.

198
00:11:41,560 --> 00:11:45,680
There's no discussion that, hey, by the way, we use sleep deprivation to weed out

199
00:11:45,680 --> 00:11:49,520
people in selection for special forces and to interrogate and torture.

200
00:11:49,720 --> 00:11:52,840
You know, there's no conversation of the link with mental health and sleep

201
00:11:53,040 --> 00:11:54,560
deprivation as well.

202
00:11:54,760 --> 00:11:59,520
So I have to admit, I one of my favorite

203
00:11:59,720 --> 00:12:02,760
favorite questions to ask a scientist is what were you wrong about?

204
00:12:02,760 --> 00:12:05,800
Like, what is something you used to believe that you don't believe any longer?

205
00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:08,440
And I think one of the things that I have

206
00:12:08,640 --> 00:12:14,040
to admit to is that I did not think sleep was as important as

207
00:12:14,040 --> 00:12:18,080
I now think it is. You know, I used to think of it as like it's important.

208
00:12:18,280 --> 00:12:20,920
It's a component of overall health and wellness.

209
00:12:21,120 --> 00:12:23,120
The man, the more I started getting it,

210
00:12:23,120 --> 00:12:27,280
someone asked me to do a presentation on sleep and I had like some data like we

211
00:12:27,280 --> 00:12:29,240
published an excessive daytime sleepiness.

212
00:12:29,440 --> 00:12:33,200
And so it's like some broad things, but I hadn't really dug into it.

213
00:12:33,400 --> 00:12:36,760
All right. So I said, OK, I can I can put this presentation together.

214
00:12:36,960 --> 00:12:38,840
So I started pulling the literature on it.

215
00:12:39,040 --> 00:12:42,200
And by the end of that, by the time I gave that presentation,

216
00:12:42,200 --> 00:12:48,320
I started it with basically like this is the biggest risk that you face is the

217
00:12:48,520 --> 00:12:50,640
sleep deprivation and interrupted circadian rhythms.

218
00:12:50,840 --> 00:12:55,680
And I I don't think I will ever say I'm wrong about that statement.

219
00:12:55,880 --> 00:12:59,640
Given the research and the more research we do.

220
00:12:59,840 --> 00:13:05,520
So, yeah, I think that for a number of for a number of evidence based reasons,

221
00:13:05,720 --> 00:13:11,920
I think that I just I think it's I think it drives a lot.

222
00:13:11,920 --> 00:13:15,240
And it's completely under recognized.

223
00:13:15,440 --> 00:13:16,400
Yeah.

224
00:13:16,600 --> 00:13:21,120
When how long ago was that study that you had to put on sleep with that presentation?

225
00:13:21,320 --> 00:13:23,680
Probably about five years ago.

226
00:13:23,880 --> 00:13:28,160
I mean, we asked questions before, like we asked questions about sleep.

227
00:13:28,360 --> 00:13:30,120
And so we included it.

228
00:13:30,120 --> 00:13:31,320
We looked at it as a covariate.

229
00:13:31,520 --> 00:13:34,360
But I just don't think it wasn't until then.

230
00:13:34,560 --> 00:13:38,320
And then Joel Billings from Oklahoma, I've done some work with him.

231
00:13:38,520 --> 00:13:40,800
And he is the other thing that really convinced me.

232
00:13:40,800 --> 00:13:42,240
I was like, yeah, all right.

233
00:13:42,440 --> 00:13:44,360
You're right. I'm wrong.

234
00:13:44,560 --> 00:13:47,520
I'll go with what you have to say.

235
00:13:47,720 --> 00:13:51,680
Because I want to say that might have been right around the time we did our first

236
00:13:51,880 --> 00:13:56,320
interview and I remember that you weren't all in on the sleep thing at that point.

237
00:13:56,320 --> 00:13:59,320
So that's really interesting that you say that now, because obviously there's been

238
00:13:59,320 --> 00:14:02,680
an evolution and don't get me wrong, it was only three short years prior to that

239
00:14:02,880 --> 00:14:06,160
that I heard Kirk pass parsley on the barbell shrug podcast.

240
00:14:06,160 --> 00:14:10,760
And I was like, holy shit, this is this is the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

241
00:14:10,960 --> 00:14:14,000
Hundred percent, hundred percent.

242
00:14:14,200 --> 00:14:16,640
And now I'm like, how did I not see that earlier?

243
00:14:16,640 --> 00:14:19,000
But there are all sorts of things that I wrong on.

244
00:14:19,200 --> 00:14:21,360
That's one of the things that I'm

245
00:14:21,560 --> 00:14:25,800
that I'm good at doing is admitting when I'm wrong, because I'm wrong quite often.

246
00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:28,080
You and me both.

247
00:14:28,280 --> 00:14:31,760
Sorry is used many, many times in my vocabulary.

248
00:14:31,960 --> 00:14:35,920
Just my my understanding has evolved from when I originally said that.

249
00:14:35,920 --> 00:14:39,400
So, yeah, I bet now I think I want to go back and listen to our first podcast.

250
00:14:39,600 --> 00:14:42,720
I'll probably be like, damn it, Sarah.

251
00:14:42,920 --> 00:14:44,400
It wasn't it wasn't against it.

252
00:14:44,400 --> 00:14:48,680
It was just I don't think that was that, you know, leaping in with both feet element.

253
00:14:48,880 --> 00:14:51,560
Yeah, no, no, definitely not.

254
00:14:51,760 --> 00:14:55,840
But now I'm like, I'm all in on this as a topic.

255
00:14:56,040 --> 00:14:58,840
So well, let's look at the broads, the view first.

256
00:14:59,040 --> 00:15:03,160
Now, you know, we have fire departments in the US that I would argue you have the

257
00:15:03,160 --> 00:15:07,080
gold standard and you could even push if you're talking about elite performance,

258
00:15:07,280 --> 00:15:09,000
even less than 42.

259
00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:12,960
But, you know, 42 puts you in line with the average citizen, the average civilian.

260
00:15:13,160 --> 00:15:16,160
So the 24 72 is big in the northeast.

261
00:15:16,360 --> 00:15:20,600
You know, we've got Boca Raton here in South Florida and now Boynton Beach has

262
00:15:20,800 --> 00:15:25,320
gone to it and then you've got a majority that are working a 56 hour.

263
00:15:25,320 --> 00:15:27,160
They may or may not have a Kelly, you know.

264
00:15:27,360 --> 00:15:31,200
And then with this hiring crisis, now you have mandatory overtime,

265
00:15:31,200 --> 00:15:35,840
which actually I had since my, you know, Genesis into the fire service.

266
00:15:36,040 --> 00:15:39,040
So now you're looking at 80 hours a week on those weeks that they get hit with that.

267
00:15:39,200 --> 00:15:42,360
You got the federal firefighters sort of working 72 hours a week.

268
00:15:42,560 --> 00:15:45,960
You've got wildland firefighters deployed for weeks at a time.

269
00:15:46,160 --> 00:15:51,280
So the overall view, what is your impression once you start understanding

270
00:15:51,480 --> 00:15:54,800
the impact of sleep deprivation on all the things

271
00:15:55,000 --> 00:15:59,760
of the culture of the way we are worked in the fire service at the moment?

272
00:15:59,760 --> 00:16:05,440
I think it's and it's actually it's partly been listening to your podcast,

273
00:16:05,640 --> 00:16:09,280
but I've really been reevaluating some of my own assumptions on

274
00:16:09,480 --> 00:16:11,960
because the challenges and some of the big.

275
00:16:12,160 --> 00:16:13,640
OK, let me step back.

276
00:16:13,760 --> 00:16:17,080
Some of the early research on sleep and the fire service, because FEMA did fund

277
00:16:17,280 --> 00:16:21,360
some research early on around like sleep education and awareness and looking at

278
00:16:21,560 --> 00:16:25,640
sleep disorders and the impact of impact of sleep disorders, which, by the way,

279
00:16:25,840 --> 00:16:28,160
I got to throw this out there.

280
00:16:28,160 --> 00:16:32,160
They are I think it's about more than a third of firefighters have a sleep

281
00:16:32,360 --> 00:16:35,040
disorder, often undiagnosed, so like low hanging fruit.

282
00:16:35,240 --> 00:16:36,400
We need to make sure that everyone's

283
00:16:36,400 --> 00:16:39,840
getting screened for sleep disorders and treating the sleep disorders they have.

284
00:16:40,040 --> 00:16:43,080
So that's a side as a side conversation.

285
00:16:43,280 --> 00:16:45,560
But we need to make sure that people are

286
00:16:45,560 --> 00:16:49,600
doing that because they think that's like the impact of that related to everything

287
00:16:49,800 --> 00:16:53,320
from cardiovascular health and depression, you know, drowsy,

288
00:16:53,520 --> 00:16:56,840
driving, all that kind of stuff. So important.

289
00:16:56,840 --> 00:17:02,160
But, you know, I've always the early research kind of a pushback was that

290
00:17:02,160 --> 00:17:06,560
everyone was afraid people were trying to do away with 24 hour shifts and and the

291
00:17:06,760 --> 00:17:11,200
challenge of moving to if you're not going to do a 24 hour shift, what would you do?

292
00:17:11,400 --> 00:17:16,360
At the end of the day, I think that someone has to be awake at 2 a.m.

293
00:17:16,560 --> 00:17:21,320
or at wake up at 2 a.m. when whatever happens happens.

294
00:17:21,520 --> 00:17:26,000
You know, grandma falls or there's a fire or, you know, someone stubs their toe

295
00:17:26,000 --> 00:17:29,800
and feels the need to wake firefighters up because they have a stub toe.

296
00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:31,320
But

297
00:17:32,240 --> 00:17:39,120
so, you know, I think the inevitability of someone having to be up at night,

298
00:17:39,320 --> 00:17:42,280
we've all just said, well, you know, if you got to be up at night,

299
00:17:42,480 --> 00:17:44,600
you know, we're not going to do away with 24 hour shifts.

300
00:17:44,800 --> 00:17:48,840
But now I see like we're doing now we're going, oh, but let's do a 48 hour shift

301
00:17:49,040 --> 00:17:55,320
or let's do, you know, can you work your 10 days all in a row and then be offered?

302
00:17:55,320 --> 00:17:58,920
So I think that it's really.

303
00:17:59,120 --> 00:18:00,920
Now,

304
00:18:01,120 --> 00:18:04,520
I think all those assumptions are up for grabs.

305
00:18:04,720 --> 00:18:08,120
And especially, you know, especially in the progressive departments,

306
00:18:08,320 --> 00:18:12,080
I just hear so many more conversations now than I did before.

307
00:18:12,280 --> 00:18:16,080
And even beyond, you know, someone has to be up in the middle of the night.

308
00:18:16,280 --> 00:18:19,760
But can you have does everyone in the department have to work the same shift

309
00:18:19,960 --> 00:18:23,200
schedule like maybe that's not the case.

310
00:18:23,200 --> 00:18:27,920
And can you get coverage, can you creatively deploy

311
00:18:28,120 --> 00:18:32,880
or deploy resources and look at where you need resources, when you need resources,

312
00:18:32,880 --> 00:18:35,640
those types of things, L.A. cities doing some changes to theirs.

313
00:18:35,840 --> 00:18:37,480
And it's it does go back to a lot of the

314
00:18:37,480 --> 00:18:41,600
recruitment and retention and the new generation that's coming in and new

315
00:18:41,600 --> 00:18:44,880
parents that don't want to miss, you know, putting their babies to bed at night.

316
00:18:45,080 --> 00:18:49,680
So I think I think people are getting at least the circles I'm in.

317
00:18:49,680 --> 00:18:54,680
People are getting super creative about the way they're looking at shifts

318
00:18:54,880 --> 00:18:56,960
and what we really have to do.

319
00:18:57,160 --> 00:18:59,160
And I think it's just always been sacred.

320
00:18:59,360 --> 00:19:01,480
And so we just never.

321
00:19:02,040 --> 00:19:04,080
Question it before.

322
00:19:04,280 --> 00:19:10,240
So, yeah, the analogy I've used for many years now is when I've seen the

323
00:19:10,440 --> 00:19:17,080
conversations, it's like a Rubik's Cube and people will spin it and go, oh, 48, 96.

324
00:19:17,280 --> 00:19:19,040
And it's now all green instead of blue.

325
00:19:19,040 --> 00:19:22,640
And it's like no one's ever saying, why is the cube so big?

326
00:19:22,840 --> 00:19:23,960
Right. That's the issue.

327
00:19:24,160 --> 00:19:28,000
And so and when people say, oh, we're we're moving to 48, 96.

328
00:19:28,200 --> 00:19:30,520
I'm just like, you know, facepalming so hard.

329
00:19:30,720 --> 00:19:35,320
I mean, you just look at massive step back on the facade that it's going to be better.

330
00:19:35,320 --> 00:19:39,480
And if you look at and we'll get into this in a second, you know, the chronic and acute

331
00:19:39,680 --> 00:19:43,840
effects, let's take the acute for a second, you know, the the improved chances of all

332
00:19:43,840 --> 00:19:47,400
the things going wrong from an intersection wreck to falling off an aerial or getting

333
00:19:47,400 --> 00:19:51,360
lost in a fire, you've just, you know, increased exponentially.

334
00:19:51,560 --> 00:19:52,880
Oh, yeah, yeah.

335
00:19:53,080 --> 00:19:57,400
And I think at first, because I still have people and I just confirmed your

336
00:19:57,600 --> 00:20:01,280
podcast, but I'm like, when I say, you know, what about a 24 72?

337
00:20:01,480 --> 00:20:06,080
Because now anyone that starts bringing up shifts, I say, you know, 24 72 is working

338
00:20:06,280 --> 00:20:10,280
in some places and it's always that's just not possible.

339
00:20:10,280 --> 00:20:12,800
So I think in the past, everyone's just said, all right,

340
00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:15,960
well, instead of even asking a question about the Rubik's Cube, we're just going to

341
00:20:15,960 --> 00:20:19,280
like put it to the side, like, well, we're not even going to look at a smaller Rubik's

342
00:20:19,480 --> 00:20:24,000
Cube. So, you know, this is and you were an early adopter on this idea that maybe

343
00:20:24,200 --> 00:20:29,640
this is maybe we're maybe we're looking at the wrong Rubik's Cube to start with.

344
00:20:29,840 --> 00:20:33,640
Well, I mean, what I've seen is all the way from firefighter through to chiefs

345
00:20:33,640 --> 00:20:37,080
and then city and county administrators, we've all believed fairy tales.

346
00:20:37,080 --> 00:20:38,720
Now, the civilians believe that we sit

347
00:20:38,720 --> 00:20:42,760
around smoking cigars, petting the Dalmatian and waiting for a fire once a week,

348
00:20:42,760 --> 00:20:46,160
even though they they really don't think about the fact that there's nonstop

349
00:20:46,160 --> 00:20:47,960
sirens outside their window all day long.

350
00:20:48,160 --> 00:20:52,040
And then we go around telling people we have the most amazing shift.

351
00:20:52,240 --> 00:20:57,120
And I only work one day on two days off or I work eight, nine days a month,

352
00:20:57,320 --> 00:21:01,080
which is absolute bullshit because a day for most people,

353
00:21:01,080 --> 00:21:04,000
if we're using standardized is a nine hour day with a one hour lunch.

354
00:21:04,200 --> 00:21:05,320
That's eight hours of work.

355
00:21:05,520 --> 00:21:09,440
We work three days crammed together and then have one day off because that second

356
00:21:09,640 --> 00:21:11,320
day we work from midnight to eight a.m.

357
00:21:11,320 --> 00:21:15,480
So it's one day. So it's three days on one day off or 30 days a month.

358
00:21:15,680 --> 00:21:16,880
So this is the thing.

359
00:21:17,080 --> 00:21:20,840
While we believe our own lives, we're going to move the cube to the side.

360
00:21:21,040 --> 00:21:25,080
What we need to people to do is say, wait a second, why does everyone else work

361
00:21:25,280 --> 00:21:29,080
40 hours, but you asked me to wake up from a dead sleep, slide down a pole,

362
00:21:29,280 --> 00:21:33,720
get in the back of a tiller truck, navigate to the fire without killing someone,

363
00:21:33,920 --> 00:21:36,600
make entry, find the child, pull them out, doff my gear.

364
00:21:36,600 --> 00:21:43,440
We can now do a pediatric cardiac algorithm on 56 hour workweek or eight hour workweek.

365
00:21:43,640 --> 00:21:47,680
That's what we've got to think about to debunk it because, oh, well, never happens.

366
00:21:47,880 --> 00:21:49,440
Like, well, you don't think your family

367
00:21:49,640 --> 00:21:53,880
deserves to have you home as much, if not more, as a person that works

368
00:21:54,080 --> 00:21:56,760
in the bank or the grocery store, I disagree.

369
00:21:56,960 --> 00:22:00,400
Yeah, yeah, I just think it's

370
00:22:00,600 --> 00:22:03,080
I and honestly, I think some of the fear

371
00:22:03,080 --> 00:22:08,240
of getting rid of a 24 hour shift has driven just a dead stop to the shift

372
00:22:08,240 --> 00:22:11,200
conversation at all. And I think that's what's starting to change.

373
00:22:11,400 --> 00:22:15,560
It's like, all right, so if we're going to, you know, let's let's evaluate shifts.

374
00:22:15,560 --> 00:22:16,760
Let's start talking about it.

375
00:22:16,960 --> 00:22:19,760
Let's and then what are the variations?

376
00:22:19,960 --> 00:22:27,440
So I think it's I think it's a good I'm optimistic, although I've been told that I'm

377
00:22:28,280 --> 00:22:30,160
what Rhonda Kelly uses the term apoc.

378
00:22:30,160 --> 00:22:33,960
I'm an apoc optimist that you like, no matter how much everything's going to shit,

379
00:22:33,960 --> 00:22:35,160
you're going to just be positive.

380
00:22:35,360 --> 00:22:38,040
It's going to end up end up well.

381
00:22:38,240 --> 00:22:43,240
So I always have to be positive that like this is a we're headed in the right direction.

382
00:22:43,440 --> 00:22:48,320
When it makes sense, it gives me the anger and energy to keep pushing forward.

383
00:22:48,520 --> 00:22:52,120
It's simple, you know, when you know that eventually there's going to be an aha

384
00:22:52,120 --> 00:22:53,720
moment, that's what spurs me on.

385
00:22:53,920 --> 00:22:55,440
I call myself an angry optimist.

386
00:22:55,640 --> 00:22:59,120
I'm not all hearts and rainbows all the time, but, you know,

387
00:22:59,120 --> 00:23:00,680
it's going to get better whether it means

388
00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:04,560
dipping my knuckles in glass and punching my way through or, you know,

389
00:23:04,760 --> 00:23:08,400
lifting everyone up with poetry as long as the end game is the same.

390
00:23:08,600 --> 00:23:10,400
Well, and I'll just feed the data out so

391
00:23:10,400 --> 00:23:12,880
then you can I mean, it'll all work out beautifully.

392
00:23:13,080 --> 00:23:14,720
It'll all work out beautifully.

393
00:23:14,920 --> 00:23:18,880
But no, I think that it is.

394
00:23:19,080 --> 00:23:23,720
I do think that this is the missing piece, and we're doing what we can to collect data

395
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:29,720
on it so we can say like, here's the you know, here is the impact.

396
00:23:29,720 --> 00:23:31,400
Here's the quantifiable impact.

397
00:23:31,440 --> 00:23:35,440
Because like you said in some of your other podcasts, like you got to make the case for it.

398
00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:38,800
So if you can make the case to city,

399
00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:40,880
county, you know, that you're going to have these improved outcomes.

400
00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:45,280
And it is, you know, it is a return of investment question.

401
00:23:45,480 --> 00:23:50,520
You know, it is an upfront cost that is significant compared.

402
00:23:50,720 --> 00:23:51,920
But in the long run, you know,

403
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:56,640
you're playing the long game with this, but any elected officials playing the

404
00:23:56,640 --> 00:23:59,240
short game, you're playing till the end of their elected term.

405
00:23:59,440 --> 00:24:01,520
So, yeah, exactly.

406
00:24:01,720 --> 00:24:03,600
Well, I think that's that's the point.

407
00:24:03,800 --> 00:24:06,200
I mean, you and I and I'm sure a lot of people listening,

408
00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:10,200
if we were burying our friends, that would be enough to force change.

409
00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:13,320
But sadly, that's not the case in many, many places.

410
00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:17,320
So the money side is the big thing now.

411
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:19,200
Again, that doesn't seem to be data and I'll

412
00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:21,920
definitely kind of get you to expand if there is.

413
00:24:22,120 --> 00:24:26,280
But what I've seen is where you can identify an obvious, you know,

414
00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:31,080
bleeding of finances on the back end is all anything related to health.

415
00:24:31,080 --> 00:24:33,920
You know, you work with comp claims, you're over time covering vacancies,

416
00:24:33,920 --> 00:24:35,280
you know, all the things, your medical

417
00:24:35,280 --> 00:24:38,600
retirements and then the lawsuits from mistakes that we make because we're so

418
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:40,920
tired. So the money is there.

419
00:24:41,120 --> 00:24:46,520
But let's let's unpack the impact of sleep deprivation shift work on the

420
00:24:46,520 --> 00:24:49,200
individual's health, mental health, physical health.

421
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:51,280
And then at the end, we can kind of revisit

422
00:24:51,480 --> 00:24:55,160
the immense savings that cities and counties would find if they if they fix

423
00:24:55,360 --> 00:24:59,120
that problem. So where to begin?

424
00:24:59,240 --> 00:25:01,200
Yeah, exactly. Let you look at my list like, OK,

425
00:25:01,400 --> 00:25:05,680
let's jump in on the acute impact of sleep deprivation on cognition first.

426
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:09,000
So now we're addressing accidents and line of duty deaths,

427
00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:13,360
I would argue, from the, you know, the getting lost in the fire type incidents.

428
00:25:13,360 --> 00:25:18,640
So so what have you kind of learned about the impact of sleep deprivation?

429
00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:21,880
And I know a lot of studies would be that, oh, well, one night, Matthew Walker,

430
00:25:21,880 --> 00:25:23,880
one night without sleep is a blood alcohol.

431
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:26,080
Yeah. Well, let's talk about 10 years

432
00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:30,200
of that, because we're not when these aren't college students volunteering for a 12 day

433
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:35,560
study. Right. Well, and I do love Matthew Walker and I do love all of his work on

434
00:25:35,760 --> 00:25:39,560
his why we sleep like game changer.

435
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:41,760
And I think game changer because I used

436
00:25:41,760 --> 00:25:44,560
to say it scared me into sleeping better, but I think it really gave me permission

437
00:25:44,760 --> 00:25:48,120
to prioritize sleep like before I felt lazy if I was getting eight hours,

438
00:25:48,120 --> 00:25:49,480
eight hours to sleep at night.

439
00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:51,880
And now I'm like, I'm optimizing my health.

440
00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:57,280
Like I'm doing this to be just a better person, to be healthier, to be happier.

441
00:25:57,480 --> 00:26:02,680
So so I do think that immediate, even if you look at well back to the work by Laura

442
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:07,880
Barger and the and Sizer's group at

443
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:11,200
the challenges with for firefighters with sleep disorders,

444
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:16,160
like the numbers there, I think I have them in a I have some of my numbers

445
00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:19,040
in the background because I usually just give you the not throw out numbers.

446
00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:22,120
But I'm like, I don't know if that's actually the number or if I just made that up.

447
00:26:22,320 --> 00:26:23,600
So I did make sure I had this.

448
00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:28,120
So she looked at this firefighters with sleep disorders versus not 37.

449
00:26:28,120 --> 00:26:29,440
I was right. More than a third.

450
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:32,480
Thirty seven percent screen positive for sleep disorder.

451
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:35,280
Twice as likely to motor vehicle crash.

452
00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:38,200
So if you think about like even

453
00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:42,400
the risk of driving to work drowsy or driving home from work drowsy,

454
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:45,040
because I also want to talk about changing shift start times,

455
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:48,680
because that's what another piece that I think is important.

456
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:51,080
But more than twice as likely

457
00:26:51,280 --> 00:26:55,800
that the odds ratio two point four one to report falling asleep while driving.

458
00:26:55,920 --> 00:26:57,360
Like that's incredibly dangerous,

459
00:26:57,360 --> 00:26:59,280
dangerous, especially if you're driving a fire truck.

460
00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:03,680
Imagine that on a second day of a 48 hour shift.

461
00:27:03,880 --> 00:27:07,320
But also it was related to cardiovascular disease, double the risk of cardiovascular

462
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:09,760
disease, similar for diabetes.

463
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:14,400
And then the piece you talk about cognition and the relationship with things like

464
00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:18,920
mental health, depression, three times the risk of depression and anxiety.

465
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:20,440
It was almost four times the risk.

466
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:22,280
So like those are huge.

467
00:27:22,280 --> 00:27:24,600
And if you think of that just being the interrupted,

468
00:27:24,800 --> 00:27:27,760
you know, the interrupted sleep due to the sleep disorders, I mean, I think that's

469
00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:32,760
a close approximation, but that's among firefighters who are already struggling

470
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:36,520
with sleep disruption and interruptive circadian rhythm,

471
00:27:36,520 --> 00:27:41,640
which, by the way, World Health Organization classified shift work as a probable

472
00:27:41,840 --> 00:27:45,840
carcinogen, like just that.

473
00:27:46,040 --> 00:27:48,120
In and of itself has the scientific

474
00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:51,320
evidence that that it could be classified as a probable carcinogen.

475
00:27:51,520 --> 00:27:54,240
Like that's huge.

476
00:27:54,440 --> 00:27:55,720
That's huge.

477
00:27:55,920 --> 00:27:59,080
Absolutely. Well, with that, then, as far as cognition,

478
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:03,120
like I forget who it was now, one of the the guests I had on was talking about

479
00:28:03,120 --> 00:28:07,760
microsleeps and how they done a study, I think it was on law enforcement,

480
00:28:07,760 --> 00:28:10,920
you know, and the number of times that they basically blasted through a red light.

481
00:28:11,120 --> 00:28:12,840
Now, hopefully they made it the other side.

482
00:28:13,040 --> 00:28:16,680
But, you know, the tabloids are full of intersection wrecks.

483
00:28:16,880 --> 00:28:19,080
So talk to me about that.

484
00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:21,360
Microsleeps.

485
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:28,840
Oh, and it's about like long blink that you feel like I like I'm just long blinking.

486
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:33,040
No, you're not. Your body is actually paralyzed for like two seconds.

487
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:36,280
And it is your body trying to capture

488
00:28:36,480 --> 00:28:39,240
what it needs in that two seconds of sleep that it's getting.

489
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:43,200
So you're like you basically your body is basically paralyzed.

490
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:47,440
Right. So there was a study and this is not me advocating for drunk driving.

491
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:52,520
But when you look at drunk driving compared to sleepy driving or drowsy

492
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:55,360
driving, like it doesn't seem like that big, but you're like, oh, you're just a

493
00:28:55,360 --> 00:29:00,240
little bit tired on the road. No, drunk drivers see what's coming.

494
00:29:00,240 --> 00:29:01,400
And they sort of to not hit it.

495
00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:06,240
But when they studied accidents, they actually found that drowsy driving was

496
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:08,680
even worse because you're hitting stuff head on.

497
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:12,720
Like you do that long blink, which we call it a long blink, but it's actually

498
00:29:12,920 --> 00:29:15,320
sleeping, paralyzing your body for two seconds.

499
00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:18,640
And then by the time you open your eyes, it's too late to swerve.

500
00:29:18,840 --> 00:29:22,360
So in a lot of ways, if you look at like how dangerous or deadly they are,

501
00:29:22,360 --> 00:29:25,840
drowsy driving is more like don't drink and drive.

502
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:30,080
Don't be a drunk driver, but also don't be like it's that serious.

503
00:29:30,280 --> 00:29:33,880
And it's you wouldn't you wouldn't be like, well, it's OK if people are going

504
00:29:34,080 --> 00:29:39,200
home drunk from the fire station, but we are basically putting them and

505
00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:43,040
sending them out of the firehouse.

506
00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:47,960
Cognitively intoxicated driving home sometimes.

507
00:29:48,160 --> 00:29:50,080
And that's one of the things is the

508
00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:55,080
particularly early shift change times and then driving home drowsy.

509
00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:57,160
And most people are driving, you know,

510
00:29:57,360 --> 00:30:01,320
most of the departments I've been talking to about their shifts and

511
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:05,600
particularly with the start times, like about half their department lives

512
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:08,760
between 30 minutes and an hour away from the station.

513
00:30:08,960 --> 00:30:11,600
Some places it's way more than that.

514
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:13,760
But that's it. That's not a small.

515
00:30:13,960 --> 00:30:16,440
That's not a small amount of time or a small issue.

516
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:20,040
No, mine was 75 minutes most of my career each way.

517
00:30:20,240 --> 00:30:24,000
Crazy. And what and what time did you change shifts?

518
00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:25,720
So well, here's the thing.

519
00:30:25,720 --> 00:30:29,360
So you have when you're supposed to change shifts, which that's when the turds will

520
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:33,840
show up, you know, but the good firefighters will usually get there 30 minutes or so

521
00:30:34,040 --> 00:30:37,960
prior to make sure that their brother or sister has just been in the meat grinder

522
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:41,760
for 24 hours or more, doesn't catch another late call.

523
00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:44,280
So you're looking at, you know, like I was

524
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:46,800
getting there around seven just after seven.

525
00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:49,680
And so, I mean, I was getting up about five in the morning.

526
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:52,480
Yeah, yep.

527
00:30:52,680 --> 00:30:55,880
We did a study, one of the studies we did with Joel.

528
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:59,360
We were looking at 24 48 versus 48 96.

529
00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:02,800
And the thought was, oh, we're looking at the differences in the.

530
00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:05,360
And these were not very busy departments,

531
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:08,880
but we thought we were looking at the differences in the two like schedule

532
00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:15,480
structures, but the big like, oh, my God, take home was how short slept.

533
00:31:15,680 --> 00:31:19,360
People are coming to work and leaving work like five point six and five point eight

534
00:31:19,560 --> 00:31:23,880
hours and under six hours, I mean, even under seven hours, but under six hours is

535
00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:31,960
where you see everything going to shit from reproductive health to inflammation,

536
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:36,280
to mental like, you know, that after

537
00:31:36,280 --> 00:31:41,480
if you're sleeping that little, you're it's 100 percent affecting your health.

538
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:44,960
Testosterone production, all of it, all of it.

539
00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:48,360
And most firefighters in that study, on average, were coming to sleep,

540
00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:52,360
coming to work short slept and leaving short slept often because of a seven AM

541
00:31:52,360 --> 00:31:54,840
shift change time. That's one of the studies that we're

542
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:58,920
proposing is to look at departments that are changing that to later and see, do

543
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:03,640
people, you know, do they just stay up later or can you actually get people to

544
00:32:03,640 --> 00:32:06,360
get more sleep and have better health outcomes?

545
00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:10,160
See, and I like that conversation as long as it's not the only conversation.

546
00:32:10,240 --> 00:32:12,560
People like, oh, we're going to revolutionize our fire department.

547
00:32:12,560 --> 00:32:14,560
We're going to come in at seven PM.

548
00:32:14,760 --> 00:32:17,920
OK, well, have you had the conversation about the whole 56 hour thing?

549
00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:19,680
No, no, no, we're just going to.

550
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:21,720
OK, well, again, prioritize.

551
00:32:21,920 --> 00:32:28,120
But if you imagine you did a 24 72 and you decided for zero cost to come in,

552
00:32:28,120 --> 00:32:31,480
I mean, I would say like midday that way, most people get to have breakfast

553
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:34,160
with their kids before they go to school and their and their spouse.

554
00:32:34,360 --> 00:32:38,200
And then, you know, the rush hour traffic has died down by that point.

555
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:40,120
And then you you know, you get in and

556
00:32:40,320 --> 00:32:45,720
the on the crew didn't have to be woken up at seven AM by dispatch, which I don't

557
00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:50,120
understand that to this day lights come on so they can if they've had a rough night

558
00:32:50,120 --> 00:32:52,960
that I'm sleep till nine or 10, they know that rigs checked out.

559
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:54,280
They were just in it, you know.

560
00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:58,120
So, yeah, I mean, that side makes a lot of sense to me as well.

561
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:01,400
Yeah, no, I think I mean, imagine if you

562
00:33:01,400 --> 00:33:06,960
could do both and that would that would I mean, I think changing a shift start time

563
00:33:07,160 --> 00:33:11,000
is I think the benefit of doing that for a department that's not willing to talk

564
00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:16,600
24 72 is it teaches them that like this is not a sacred cow that can't be touched.

565
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:19,120
Like we can we have control over this.

566
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:21,400
We can do this.

567
00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:24,920
And then I think you can move them into the

568
00:33:25,120 --> 00:33:29,480
the 24 72 because if you have that, you know, here's here's how things improved

569
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:31,360
and we can improve it even more.

570
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:34,280
I just think it's I just think it's been

571
00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:38,160
everyone, including myself, has been hesitant to.

572
00:33:38,360 --> 00:33:40,320
Say.

573
00:33:40,520 --> 00:33:43,040
To even talk about shit, you know, it was

574
00:33:43,240 --> 00:33:46,760
10 years ago, 15 years ago, the conversation just shut down.

575
00:33:46,960 --> 00:33:47,880
Mm hmm.

576
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:49,560
I know.

577
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:53,760
Yeah, I mean, we're just not going to we're not going to talk about that.

578
00:33:53,960 --> 00:33:57,160
Yeah, we're just layering on to the

579
00:33:57,160 --> 00:34:00,880
the acute side before we go to the chronic disease side.

580
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:03,720
Matthew Walker states in a blood alcohol

581
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:07,000
point one, basically, which is over the legal limit.

582
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:12,040
But that arguably is probably a bunch of college students that were asked to, you

583
00:34:12,240 --> 00:34:16,400
know, to not sleep for 24 hours once, you know, and then go back to probably sleeping

584
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:17,800
in their own bed every night.

585
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:22,360
In our profession, you've got these people doing it every third day for 10, 20, 30 years.

586
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:24,520
Have you seen any kind of studies or is

587
00:34:24,520 --> 00:34:29,640
there an understanding how far from that point one our first responders probably

588
00:34:29,840 --> 00:34:33,520
are? You know, I mean, the cognition is, like you said, terrifying at that point.

589
00:34:33,720 --> 00:34:38,760
But if you amplify it by times X, then, you know, I can imagine we're even

590
00:34:38,760 --> 00:34:41,320
further into the hole than most people think we are.

591
00:34:41,520 --> 00:34:42,960
Yeah. You know, it's a good question.

592
00:34:43,160 --> 00:34:45,960
I've never I've not seen that quantified.

593
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:47,320
I'm going to make a note, though, and I'm

594
00:34:47,320 --> 00:34:49,480
going to look it up and confirm that I'm right about that.

595
00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:50,760
But

596
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:53,200
it's a great study to be done.

597
00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:57,920
You know, I think that I think it's a great study to be done because you could

598
00:34:57,920 --> 00:34:59,360
look at it in a couple of different ways.

599
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:01,880
You know, people who are.

600
00:35:02,080 --> 00:35:04,760
Well, we don't have to design a study right now, but there are a lot of different

601
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:07,600
ways that you can look at it to quantify that.

602
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:10,280
Yeah, I think it's just important because it's cumulative.

603
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:11,560
And we know that in the sleep medicine

604
00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:13,560
world, that sleep debt is a real thing.

605
00:35:13,760 --> 00:35:18,680
So if, you know, like you said, your actual shift, even if you don't get woken up,

606
00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:22,400
you know, we're having that kind of half one eye open, half sleep.

607
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:24,160
So it's not a deep restorative sleep.

608
00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:27,680
I would argue the same as probably the night before, because I was always anxious

609
00:35:27,680 --> 00:35:29,560
to get up and not missing my alarm.

610
00:35:29,760 --> 00:35:31,960
And then that middle day, which is on us,

611
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:35,880
ownership part, if we've been drinking that night, then we've disrupted our sleep

612
00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:40,120
that night, too. So, you know, you've just got this slow decline over time.

613
00:35:40,320 --> 00:35:41,160
Which is another one.

614
00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:45,600
I think that it's under recognized how much alcohol impacts sleep.

615
00:35:45,800 --> 00:35:50,040
And we know, you know, alcohol use in the fire service relatively high.

616
00:35:50,040 --> 00:35:55,000
And you think like, oh, I'm going to have a drink to relax and go to sleep or to

617
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:57,840
drink excess drink to excess and pass out.

618
00:35:58,040 --> 00:36:00,120
We are actually interrupting all those rhythms.

619
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:03,760
And you will be waking up overnight without remembering it.

620
00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:05,360
So you think, oh, I slept all night.

621
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:07,720
And it was actually didn't you.

622
00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:11,920
You woke up all night long, but you don't remember it because of the alcohol.

623
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:13,080
Not interesting.

624
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:14,680
It is. Well, I mean, it's funny because

625
00:36:14,880 --> 00:36:18,840
the sleep medicine world's metric is how tired are you?

626
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:20,480
That's the thing that they study.

627
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:23,320
So, you know, a number of times you think about you drank.

628
00:36:23,520 --> 00:36:25,200
You always feel terrible the next day.

629
00:36:25,240 --> 00:36:29,360
And actually, Kurt Parsley said that what alcohol does is show your fatigue beneath,

630
00:36:29,560 --> 00:36:31,040
you know, beneath, basically.

631
00:36:31,240 --> 00:36:33,960
So when you're tired with alcohol, it's because you're tired.

632
00:36:34,160 --> 00:36:35,240
You're actually tired.

633
00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:41,680
So I was talking to one guy who a firefighter from.

634
00:36:41,880 --> 00:36:44,600
I think I was talking to him in Arizona, but I don't think that's where he was

635
00:36:44,800 --> 00:36:47,640
from, and he did like a self study, so he did.

636
00:36:47,640 --> 00:36:52,360
I can't remember if he used loop or an or a ring, but he like altered his alcohol.

637
00:36:52,560 --> 00:36:55,320
This is the kind of I think this is the kind

638
00:36:55,320 --> 00:36:58,160
of research we can get firefighters really involved in

639
00:36:58,360 --> 00:37:02,400
purposely drinking at different times and different amounts to see what happens.

640
00:37:02,600 --> 00:37:05,880
And he said even with one drink, he had

641
00:37:06,080 --> 00:37:11,280
poor sleep, like objectively measured poor sleep at night from from one drink.

642
00:37:11,480 --> 00:37:13,400
And if you think about on average when

643
00:37:13,400 --> 00:37:18,040
firefighters drinking or drinking three point five of whatever it is,

644
00:37:18,240 --> 00:37:20,560
servings of alcohol,

645
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:26,120
that's you know, that's a significant impact as well, I think.

646
00:37:26,320 --> 00:37:30,520
Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, it's a toxin and your body's needing energy

647
00:37:30,720 --> 00:37:34,400
and blood flow to remove that toxin because you just poisoned yourself.

648
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:36,960
And don't get me wrong, this is Cambodia, by the way, not beer that I'm drinking.

649
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:41,400
But as we're having this conversation, there is alcohol in it, though, a little bit.

650
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:45,160
But, you know, but it is it's self sabotage,

651
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:48,840
which is the T-shirt I made this recently, self care and sabotage.

652
00:37:49,040 --> 00:37:50,840
It's exactly what it is.

653
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:52,440
But yeah, so when you think about it

654
00:37:52,440 --> 00:37:55,680
with the kind of common sense lens, of course, your sleep's disrupted

655
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,360
because the body wants to not be digesting something.

656
00:37:58,560 --> 00:38:00,600
You shove down your cake hole at 10 p.m.

657
00:38:00,800 --> 00:38:03,160
and not be metabolizing the sugars and alcohol.

658
00:38:03,360 --> 00:38:05,720
It just wants to rest and repair.

659
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:07,960
So, you know, it does make perfect sense.

660
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:08,840
Let me take a step back.

661
00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:11,760
It's kind of irrefutable that if you poison yourself, yes, your body's

662
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:13,320
going to have to focus on that.

663
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:17,720
Well, when you say it that way, it seems very obvious.

664
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:20,560
But I also think, you know, what we see with the alcohol use,

665
00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:25,320
and this goes back to the big, you know, your your big picture

666
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:31,440
comment about it's also interrelated, like we know that alcohol use is often used

667
00:38:31,640 --> 00:38:37,240
as a coping mechanism, you know, it's how you manage all the other stressors.

668
00:38:37,240 --> 00:38:40,680
And I also think so I and I don't have data to back this up.

669
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:44,160
So I could be lying and I could write this as a hypothesis.

670
00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:46,160
I guess is what we should call it.

671
00:38:46,360 --> 00:38:48,640
Not that I'm lying.

672
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:50,720
I think that another

673
00:38:50,920 --> 00:38:55,920
another sleep piece and tying it to the mental health is if you look at the way

674
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:59,520
sleep is structured and how you remember and how you forget,

675
00:38:59,720 --> 00:39:03,440
I think that part of what might be driving some of these mental health issues,

676
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:07,960
particularly symptoms of post-traumatic stress with like the intrusion,

677
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:10,000
the intrusive thoughts, those types of things.

678
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:11,640
I think it could be because of that

679
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:15,200
interrupted sleep, because you're you know, instead of taking things

680
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:19,240
from short term memory to long term memory and weeding out the neural

681
00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:22,160
connections of a wait, no, you can pack this away.

682
00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:24,080
You don't you don't need this piece.

683
00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:26,440
I think that's getting.

684
00:39:26,640 --> 00:39:28,880
I think that's getting screwed up.

685
00:39:29,080 --> 00:39:29,760
It certainly is.

686
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:31,360
I know the sleep medicine world has

687
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:34,480
shown that for all different areas of mental health.

688
00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:36,560
But that's when you process memories,

689
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:39,680
that's when you discard things that were useless, everyone that you passed

690
00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:41,600
in your car that you don't need to remember.

691
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:44,600
But it's also when you process some of those traumas.

692
00:39:44,800 --> 00:39:49,160
And then if you think about you're not sleeping well any of those three days,

693
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:51,640
then you're slowly kind of, you know,

694
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:54,720
your brain is getting more and more full and more overwhelmed.

695
00:39:54,720 --> 00:39:58,080
And I think physiologically, the brain literally takes a bath at night.

696
00:39:58,120 --> 00:39:59,640
And that's kind of when a lot of this happens.

697
00:39:59,640 --> 00:40:04,560
So you're regenerating neurons, you're processing the drills that you did the day

698
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:09,080
before so that you can actually be better at that skill the next day.

699
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:10,560
Sleep is imperative for that.

700
00:40:10,560 --> 00:40:13,600
And we're taking it away and it's not able to do a lot of those things.

701
00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:14,880
So there's there's no question.

702
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:18,520
I mean, your hypothesis is right because the sleep medicine world has shown it.

703
00:40:18,720 --> 00:40:21,680
Well, if you think about so what we're seeing, like with post traumatic stress

704
00:40:21,680 --> 00:40:25,520
disorder, we're doing a study on that right now, which, by the way, if you know

705
00:40:25,520 --> 00:40:28,200
anyone who's struggling with post traumatic stress and nightmares, we're

706
00:40:28,200 --> 00:40:30,480
trying an abbreviated intervention for it.

707
00:40:30,680 --> 00:40:35,760
So it's a four day basically workshop on how to retrain your brain on these things.

708
00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:40,080
And that's when we look at we've been doing a lot of assessments of people's

709
00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:45,280
symptoms and when you look at like a standard PTSD, it's a flashback to a very

710
00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:49,440
specific incident, you know, and the definition of PTSD was basically derived

711
00:40:49,640 --> 00:40:52,480
out of military experience and often unemployment.

712
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:55,760
But they tend to be like very discreet experiences.

713
00:40:55,760 --> 00:40:59,720
And when we ask when we talk to firefighters about their experience and that

714
00:40:59,920 --> 00:41:04,160
repeated exposure to trauma, it's not necessarily one or two things.

715
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:06,400
It's like flashbacks to multiple things.

716
00:41:06,600 --> 00:41:07,880
That's thousand cuts.

717
00:41:08,080 --> 00:41:11,040
Yeah. When it's one firefighter was saying, you know,

718
00:41:11,240 --> 00:41:15,000
I was in a really interesting conversation between two guys in one of my classes,

719
00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:17,720
one I'd known for a long time who struggled with some post traumatic stress

720
00:41:17,920 --> 00:41:19,360
and another one who was new on the job.

721
00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:20,440
And he's like, I don't get it.

722
00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:22,120
Like, it just doesn't bother me.

723
00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:25,880
I know people talk about all this, you know, and he was like a year on.

724
00:41:26,080 --> 00:41:30,600
So and the other guy goes, you know, it scares me to hear you say that because

725
00:41:30,600 --> 00:41:32,120
you think it's never going to bother you.

726
00:41:32,120 --> 00:41:36,320
He goes. And then one day you're sitting at breakfast and you take a bite of cereal,

727
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:40,120
look up and see that, you know, look at your daughter and you see the face of a

728
00:41:40,320 --> 00:41:44,120
girl that died 10 years ago that you dug out of a ditch.

729
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:47,160
And it's like how much of that memory

730
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:52,320
popping back in or that visual popping back in is because that memory, that call

731
00:41:52,520 --> 00:41:56,760
was not properly processed that night during sleep.

732
00:41:56,960 --> 00:41:57,360
Yeah.

733
00:41:57,360 --> 00:42:01,400
You know, and I know we can't get that specific with the science, but if you look

734
00:42:01,600 --> 00:42:05,800
at what we what is working with treatments for things like post traumatic stress,

735
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:09,800
it's basically retraining the neural connections in your brain, you know,

736
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:13,720
reprocessing things and appropriately putting things where they need to be.

737
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:15,800
And I'm just wondering how much of that is

738
00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:19,040
because it didn't get packaged away where it was supposed to.

739
00:42:19,240 --> 00:42:20,400
After the call,

740
00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:25,480
yeah, what an equal and opposite, you've got the slow breakdown over those 10

741
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:29,920
years since that call, so if you had that call and then,

742
00:42:30,120 --> 00:42:33,800
you know, being in a healthy shift system where you slept well and you got to

743
00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:37,360
process it, you probably never would have had that flashback in the first place.

744
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:40,880
The 10 years of not sleeping and the cycle that we just described,

745
00:42:41,080 --> 00:42:45,080
your resilience, your ability to enough for your brain to try and process that

746
00:42:45,080 --> 00:42:48,960
or not, you know, let the barrel explode in your mind.

747
00:42:49,160 --> 00:42:54,560
You know, your your equal and opposite ability to do that is being destroyed slowly.

748
00:42:54,760 --> 00:42:55,920
Right.

749
00:42:56,120 --> 00:42:57,280
Yeah.

750
00:42:57,480 --> 00:42:58,960
That's why I think it's all related.

751
00:42:59,160 --> 00:43:03,760
And it's all why I why I think realize now that I was wrong.

752
00:43:03,960 --> 00:43:05,920
Well, again, I mean, like I said, it's such an awakening.

753
00:43:06,120 --> 00:43:09,720
It's interesting because I've interviewed Dr.

754
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:12,000
Russell Foster, and he is the guy who

755
00:43:12,000 --> 00:43:18,240
actually discovered the chrono receptors in the eye and was laughed at by the world

756
00:43:18,440 --> 00:43:21,880
of ophthalmology at that point, there's Rodster's Cones that's that.

757
00:43:22,080 --> 00:43:23,280
And he proved it.

758
00:43:23,480 --> 00:43:25,240
And then they were like, oh, shit.

759
00:43:25,440 --> 00:43:28,800
So he's actually even though I don't really hear him credited for this by a lot

760
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:31,720
of people that are very big on social media now talking about this,

761
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:33,880
he's the person who actually discovered it.

762
00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:36,240
And so I had him on the show and we talked about this.

763
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:39,560
And this is this sleep is everything.

764
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:40,680
It's absolutely everything.

765
00:43:40,680 --> 00:43:42,280
And he put it as basely as, look,

766
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:45,360
you're supposed to be asleep when it's dark and you're supposed to be awake when

767
00:43:45,560 --> 00:43:50,160
it's light. And so we're asking these people to do the opposite of this swing

768
00:43:50,360 --> 00:43:53,160
shifts or 24 hours at a time.

769
00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:56,560
Yeah, we're defying our biology for everything.

770
00:43:56,760 --> 00:44:01,240
And so in return, the least we could do as a society is make sure that we give them

771
00:44:01,440 --> 00:44:06,800
type of environment where they can recover from that, minimize it as much as you as

772
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:10,800
much as you can and minimize the impact. But.

773
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:13,400
Yeah, well, let's go to hormone disruption

774
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:17,120
because I feel that's a good beginning of the umbrella that we can start unpacking

775
00:44:17,320 --> 00:44:18,160
a lot of the other things.

776
00:44:18,360 --> 00:44:21,720
So now we're kind of getting more kind of long term.

777
00:44:21,720 --> 00:44:24,080
And it doesn't mean I say long term and doesn't have to be years and years.

778
00:44:24,280 --> 00:44:26,640
It's been talking days and months by this point.

779
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:31,760
But what are you seeing as far as hormonal disruption by sleep deprivation?

780
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:40,960
Oh, so reproductive health is the research on that is blowing my mind and is.

781
00:44:41,160 --> 00:44:46,000
Ah, man, again, underestimated, did not see this coming.

782
00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:50,920
Like we we knew right in the 90s, there was some research on or a couple of review

783
00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:56,560
papers that were put out on reproductive health and women in the fire service.

784
00:44:56,560 --> 00:44:59,840
And they basically like laid out, here's the research that needs to happen.

785
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:01,360
But then none of it happened.

786
00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:06,040
And so now what we're seeing on things like everything from fertility for men

787
00:45:06,240 --> 00:45:10,280
and women in the fire service, but also miscarriage for women,

788
00:45:10,480 --> 00:45:15,320
double the risk for career firefighters in the general population and even higher

789
00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:17,760
than that, 42 percent higher for volunteers.

790
00:45:17,960 --> 00:45:22,240
So we know, you know, in all those reproductive health pieces are run

791
00:45:22,440 --> 00:45:26,360
by your hormones and that the circadian rhythm of your hormones,

792
00:45:26,360 --> 00:45:27,240
all those types of things.

793
00:45:27,440 --> 00:45:29,320
So one of the things and we've all again

794
00:45:29,320 --> 00:45:32,080
looked at like, oh, what are the carcinogen exposures?

795
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:34,640
But if you think about it, if cars,

796
00:45:34,840 --> 00:45:38,920
the research on volunteer that are that because we found the same result for

797
00:45:39,120 --> 00:45:42,240
preterm labor to where that's where I was like, wait a minute,

798
00:45:42,440 --> 00:45:47,440
if if it's all carcinogen exposure and volunteers typically get less exposure

799
00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:52,080
than career firefighters on average, what else do they have?

800
00:45:52,080 --> 00:45:53,280
Like, what are the other things that are

801
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:58,520
driving the impact of what might be affecting their reproductive health?

802
00:45:58,520 --> 00:46:01,720
Maybe being on call every night.

803
00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:06,000
You know, maybe that is maybe that's the bigger the bigger impact.

804
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:10,600
The other thing that's interesting is you see similar fertility, some fertility and

805
00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:12,280
preterm.

806
00:46:13,560 --> 00:46:15,080
I think it was just miscarriage.

807
00:46:15,080 --> 00:46:17,880
I don't know that we asked preterm labor with law enforcement.

808
00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:19,800
And again, like, what's the common?

809
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:22,680
Yeah, they're on the fire ground, but.

810
00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:25,120
It can't just be fire ground exposure.

811
00:46:25,240 --> 00:46:26,640
They're only there to park their car

812
00:46:26,640 --> 00:46:28,560
in the way of the fire, and then they walk away from it.

813
00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:30,240
They're not really exposed.

814
00:46:30,440 --> 00:46:31,560
Right. Exactly.

815
00:46:31,760 --> 00:46:33,280
Exactly. And their cars don't get cancer.

816
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:37,760
But but would we see those same, you know, what are what kind of what's

817
00:46:37,960 --> 00:46:42,160
the common thread that is that the chronic inflammation and the stress

818
00:46:42,360 --> 00:46:47,440
and the interrupted circadian rhythm, like what because we, you know,

819
00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:51,560
there there there has to be some common threads and it can't just be

820
00:46:51,760 --> 00:46:52,920
fire ground exposure.

821
00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:55,640
And that's what I think we've always assumed fire ground exposure.

822
00:46:55,640 --> 00:46:59,600
But I don't I think that a lot of that

823
00:46:59,800 --> 00:47:04,920
reproductive health stuff is driven by not just exposures on the fire ground.

824
00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:06,680
We're looking at

825
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:11,560
working with Jeff Bridges, he's looking at anti-malurian hormone AMH.

826
00:47:11,600 --> 00:47:13,960
It's hard to I always screw that up when I say it,

827
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:16,800
but I think I got it right that time

828
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:23,000
and found that it basically being in the fire service ages your reproductive health

829
00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:27,520
system faster for women than if you were not.

830
00:47:27,720 --> 00:47:31,960
So looked at new recruits versus women who'd been on for a long time.

831
00:47:32,160 --> 00:47:36,440
And then new recruits before recruit school or at the beginning before they

832
00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:37,600
were fire exposed and after.

833
00:47:37,600 --> 00:47:40,600
And now we did before and after fire exposure because the assumption being

834
00:47:40,800 --> 00:47:44,760
that the fire exposure would be a big impact and it probably had a piece of it.

835
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:48,840
But I don't that there's no way that that's all it is.

836
00:47:49,040 --> 00:47:50,040
There's no way.

837
00:47:50,040 --> 00:47:53,720
And the fertility, like if you look at

838
00:47:53,920 --> 00:48:01,040
sperm, like the amount and the virility of sperm, even with like, what was it?

839
00:48:01,240 --> 00:48:06,680
A week, a week of short sleeping decreased.

840
00:48:06,880 --> 00:48:11,440
Sperm motility and virility.

841
00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:12,760
That's right.

842
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:18,040
I don't I have been talking more about sperm than I had in the past, but I you

843
00:48:18,040 --> 00:48:22,880
know, the sperm is not as good basically after like one week.

844
00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:25,680
So I don't think it's really a shock that

845
00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:30,040
firefighters are forty six male firefighters, forty six percent more likely

846
00:48:30,240 --> 00:48:33,920
to get fertility treatments than the general population.

847
00:48:34,120 --> 00:48:34,960
Well, I've seen it.

848
00:48:35,160 --> 00:48:40,080
I mean, you know, observational research now, the number of firefighter friends,

849
00:48:40,280 --> 00:48:43,880
male and female, that have experienced multiple miscarriages, that have used

850
00:48:43,880 --> 00:48:48,040
fertility treatment, that have had the children with

851
00:48:48,240 --> 00:48:51,840
spina bifida and Down syndrome or pediatric cancer.

852
00:48:52,040 --> 00:48:53,720
I mean, it's everywhere.

853
00:48:53,720 --> 00:48:54,440
And I don't know.

854
00:48:54,640 --> 00:48:58,760
Maybe if I became a carpenter or my carpenter's friends would be going through

855
00:48:58,760 --> 00:48:59,720
that, but I don't think so.

856
00:48:59,920 --> 00:49:02,680
I think this is far more rampant in our profession.

857
00:49:02,880 --> 00:49:04,720
I think I think you'd know people, I mean,

858
00:49:04,720 --> 00:49:07,680
because I think some of this stuff is environmental and people are not sleeping

859
00:49:07,880 --> 00:49:11,320
as much as they should anyway, but in the general population.

860
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:12,160
But I think it would.

861
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:14,760
I think you would know forty six percent more.

862
00:49:14,960 --> 00:49:16,080
You'd see forty six.

863
00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:21,640
You'd see forty six percent less than if you were a carpenter.

864
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:25,520
Well, you jumped up for a second when I was listing some of the things.

865
00:49:25,720 --> 00:49:27,640
Health outcomes.

866
00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:28,560
I don't know.

867
00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:32,400
Have you been reading any of the stuff on child health outcomes or some of the

868
00:49:32,600 --> 00:49:34,240
conversation going on about it?

869
00:49:34,440 --> 00:49:35,920
No, I have not. And I need to.

870
00:49:36,120 --> 00:49:39,840
So this is not going to be good news for you for anyone.

871
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:44,200
I from a scientific perspective, I'm very excited about this.

872
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:51,240
Is what can we figure out next from a firefighter and child and their and their

873
00:49:51,440 --> 00:49:53,240
family's perspective?

874
00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:55,560
This is this is really going to be bad news.

875
00:49:55,760 --> 00:49:59,840
So I apologize for seeming very excited about it because that seems like an asshole

876
00:49:59,840 --> 00:50:03,760
thing to do. But this is an opportunity to learn from it and fix things.

877
00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:05,360
That's the excitement. Oh, my gosh.

878
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:10,560
So there was there was one study out of Kitsap, Washington.

879
00:50:10,760 --> 00:50:16,280
It was an EFO report and it found a really high rate of pediatric cancers among

880
00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:21,080
offspring of firefighters in a specific department like the I should reach out to

881
00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:23,240
the guy and talk to him because I cite him all the time.

882
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:25,240
But it was an extremely high rate.

883
00:50:25,240 --> 00:50:27,320
And he did his EFO report and research

884
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:31,480
childhood cancers because so many kids in his department, so many of the kids of his

885
00:50:31,680 --> 00:50:34,720
firefighters have had had had had cancer.

886
00:50:34,720 --> 00:50:36,800
So he basically standardized the rates.

887
00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:40,480
But it wasn't like the rate was extremely high.

888
00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:43,840
So I think it wasn't generalizable to the population as a whole.

889
00:50:44,040 --> 00:50:51,280
But when we looked at one, it's definitely something that needs more research.

890
00:50:51,480 --> 00:50:54,880
We just published with Miriam Culkins at NIOSH.

891
00:50:55,080 --> 00:51:00,720
We worked on a study looking at birth defects in the offspring of male

892
00:51:00,920 --> 00:51:03,640
firefighters. So it's this huge database.

893
00:51:03,640 --> 00:51:06,080
And there were not that many male firefighters.

894
00:51:06,080 --> 00:51:10,840
I can't remember how many we ended up having all together, but they owned several,

895
00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:14,320
I think, four or five birth defects that in that population, even though there were

896
00:51:14,520 --> 00:51:18,720
not that many firefighters, were increased among the offspring of firefighters.

897
00:51:18,920 --> 00:51:23,960
So the question really is like, it can't just be that like we need to look bigger.

898
00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:24,880
We need to look broader.

899
00:51:25,080 --> 00:51:29,560
We need to figure out what's, you know, what's going on there.

900
00:51:29,680 --> 00:51:31,120
We've put a couple of studies together,

901
00:51:31,120 --> 00:51:34,880
we're a couple under review and then a couple we've had discussions about.

902
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:37,800
It's a hard question to answer, right, because you have to ask,

903
00:51:38,000 --> 00:51:41,560
you got to access the firefighters, you got to ask, get valid information

904
00:51:41,560 --> 00:51:42,680
about the kids, those types of things.

905
00:51:42,680 --> 00:51:44,520
So we're trying to figure out the best way to do it.

906
00:51:44,720 --> 00:51:48,920
But when I was on like a planning meeting with a bunch of firefighters,

907
00:51:49,120 --> 00:51:52,280
or a bunch of scientists, and we started saying, like, all right,

908
00:51:52,280 --> 00:51:56,200
here's the challenges, you know, it's the exposures, it's the because we do know

909
00:51:56,200 --> 00:51:58,800
that there's epigenetic changes in sperm, it looks like.

910
00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:00,840
But there's the exposures.

911
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:02,520
There's the circadian rhythm disruption.

912
00:52:02,520 --> 00:52:04,040
There's the we're laying out all these things.

913
00:52:04,040 --> 00:52:07,680
And they're like, oh, yeah, we would definitely expect to see

914
00:52:07,880 --> 00:52:09,480
higher

915
00:52:09,760 --> 00:52:13,120
issues with it in the offspring of firefighters.

916
00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:15,760
And I'm like, why? Like it was just like assumed.

917
00:52:15,760 --> 00:52:17,520
Oh, yeah, I mean, we can help you quantify it.

918
00:52:17,720 --> 00:52:20,040
But but it was everything from like

919
00:52:20,240 --> 00:52:23,600
autism spectrum disorders to attention deficit.

920
00:52:23,800 --> 00:52:25,800
So more research needs to be done.

921
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:28,600
But I think that's another area

922
00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:33,280
when we look at impact. And the other piece of that is

923
00:52:33,480 --> 00:52:36,040
that we have no data on but has been raised.

924
00:52:36,240 --> 00:52:38,000
What about like that generational?

925
00:52:38,200 --> 00:52:43,000
Like if you have three generations of firefighters and is there,

926
00:52:43,200 --> 00:52:47,240
you know, are you basically like collecting everybody's

927
00:52:47,440 --> 00:52:48,920
negative health impacts?

928
00:52:49,120 --> 00:52:50,840
You know, I

929
00:52:51,040 --> 00:52:52,280
I don't I don't know.

930
00:52:52,480 --> 00:52:54,040
Again, more research is needed.

931
00:52:54,240 --> 00:52:55,440
But

932
00:52:55,440 --> 00:53:00,040
yeah, that's it's that's an area that you'll see more on it.

933
00:53:00,240 --> 00:53:03,200
We're doing what we can to to design the studies now.

934
00:53:03,400 --> 00:53:06,600
But it's funny because when we put in a first proposal for that, like five years

935
00:53:06,800 --> 00:53:10,600
ago, we didn't even get past fire service relevance at FEMA.

936
00:53:10,600 --> 00:53:13,000
They're like, well, this really isn't a firefighter health issue.

937
00:53:13,200 --> 00:53:15,840
That's a firefighter off

938
00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:17,200
offspring health issue.

939
00:53:17,400 --> 00:53:21,520
But now we're like, well, I don't think anyone would argue that now.

940
00:53:21,520 --> 00:53:23,600
Like it easily gets through fire service relevance.

941
00:53:23,600 --> 00:53:26,520
It now comes down to like the science. But

942
00:53:26,720 --> 00:53:30,520
if you look at things like reproductive health, miscarriage,

943
00:53:30,720 --> 00:53:34,480
fertility issues, child health outcomes and you look at those,

944
00:53:34,680 --> 00:53:38,280
everyone's talking about cancer, but if you look at those as more proximal

945
00:53:38,480 --> 00:53:45,840
health outcomes of the total occupational exposure.

946
00:53:46,040 --> 00:53:47,680
That gives you things, you know, cancer,

947
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:50,880
we have to wait 30 years for that develop to develop.

948
00:53:50,880 --> 00:53:57,120
But we know that risk factors that we're looking at now and you can see that.

949
00:53:57,320 --> 00:54:00,600
Basically faster, because it's the same risk factors.

950
00:54:00,600 --> 00:54:02,400
It's the interrupted sleep. It's the exposures.

951
00:54:02,600 --> 00:54:06,960
It's the stress that the chronic inflammation type stuff.

952
00:54:07,160 --> 00:54:11,280
So I think it's we can't we can't go, oh, that's not it's not cancer.

953
00:54:11,280 --> 00:54:14,600
So it's not important because it is all it's all those risk factors.

954
00:54:14,800 --> 00:54:17,640
It's just looking at them, you know, earlier.

955
00:54:17,840 --> 00:54:20,240
Basically, well, I mean, you ask a firefighter,

956
00:54:20,240 --> 00:54:23,320
would you rather your child have cancer or you

957
00:54:23,520 --> 00:54:24,880
the child is going to be more important.

958
00:54:25,080 --> 00:54:27,440
So it is absolutely fire, fire relevant.

959
00:54:27,640 --> 00:54:31,680
Well, and that the other thing that I think we can use it as is like

960
00:54:31,880 --> 00:54:35,240
I hear all the time like, oh, you know, but you don't die from cancer, from cancer

961
00:54:35,440 --> 00:54:37,320
till you're old, you're going to die of something.

962
00:54:37,520 --> 00:54:41,440
Hopefully, if I have cancer, I just, you know, don't catch it till late and I die

963
00:54:41,640 --> 00:54:45,320
quickly, like, first of all, you never think that once you're dying.

964
00:54:45,520 --> 00:54:48,360
I have never met a firefighter who's like, man,

965
00:54:48,360 --> 00:54:51,680
I'm so glad I waited for my cancer to be diagnosed.

966
00:54:51,880 --> 00:54:53,040
Yeah, exactly.

967
00:54:53,240 --> 00:54:55,200
I was right. You die sometime anyway.

968
00:54:55,400 --> 00:54:57,320
I'm fine. I'm fine.

969
00:54:57,520 --> 00:55:01,600
But you say, oh, all right, then don't you know, you don't need to worry about this

970
00:55:01,800 --> 00:55:05,080
now because you are going to die someday, but you might need to worry about it

971
00:55:05,280 --> 00:55:10,120
because having a child with a disability takes a lot of time, money and energy

972
00:55:10,320 --> 00:55:12,720
and is very stressful. So like, don't do that.

973
00:55:12,920 --> 00:55:16,920
So I think for some people who we can't hook them on the like at 70, you might

974
00:55:16,920 --> 00:55:20,760
have cancer, you can it well, except that we are seeing firefighters

975
00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:23,560
get develop cancer younger than the general population, too.

976
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:24,840
But

977
00:55:26,160 --> 00:55:30,520
but I think that some of those folks, you can hook them on.

978
00:55:30,720 --> 00:55:35,520
If this is not just about cancer, this is this is about your kids health.

979
00:55:35,720 --> 00:55:41,040
It's about your, you know, their kids, like it's just it's a bigger picture than

980
00:55:41,240 --> 00:55:44,720
that, it's about can you get your wife pregnant or can you get pregnant?

981
00:55:44,720 --> 00:55:47,080
So absolutely.

982
00:55:47,280 --> 00:55:51,440
Well, one metric that we do have that will be a beautiful indicator of a lot of these

983
00:55:51,640 --> 00:55:55,040
being a potential is the hormonal blood work.

984
00:55:55,240 --> 00:55:58,200
One of the real moments I had, again, as I

985
00:55:58,400 --> 00:56:02,160
become this perpetual student from all these people that I interview now

986
00:56:02,360 --> 00:56:07,200
was the immense breakdown of testosterone from sleep deprivation.

987
00:56:07,400 --> 00:56:11,480
And the old school thinking was, you know, our men and women go in and say they

988
00:56:11,480 --> 00:56:15,800
happen to actually get those done, the male would say, oh, well, the doctor will say,

989
00:56:16,000 --> 00:56:17,640
oh, you're fine, you got three hundred.

990
00:56:17,840 --> 00:56:22,440
Well, you know, from one fifty to nine fifty, whatever it was that when that was

991
00:56:22,640 --> 00:56:27,840
done in the one of the Ivy League schools, the nine fifty was the 18 year old

992
00:56:28,040 --> 00:56:33,080
quarterback brimming with everything that teenagers brim with.

993
00:56:33,280 --> 00:56:37,960
And then the one fifty was the 80 year old dude, you know, sedentary dude that was

994
00:56:37,960 --> 00:56:42,720
about to croak any second. And so, you know, so it was woefully

995
00:56:42,920 --> 00:56:47,520
under recognized, but then there was a full pendulum swing where men's clinics

996
00:56:47,520 --> 00:56:50,400
opened up everywhere. And this is where I think it's even worse.

997
00:56:50,600 --> 00:56:54,800
So now you've got 30 year old firefighters whose testosterone is in the toilet,

998
00:56:54,800 --> 00:56:56,040
which seems to be an epidemic.

999
00:56:56,240 --> 00:56:59,960
And again, it's a complete correlation between the two.

1000
00:57:00,160 --> 00:57:03,720
But rather than being told about their nutrition, their strength,

1001
00:57:03,720 --> 00:57:07,920
their conditioning, their sleep quality when they can control it,

1002
00:57:08,120 --> 00:57:12,360
they're just being prescribed TRT, which is now breaking down their innate

1003
00:57:12,360 --> 00:57:13,720
ability to make testosterone.

1004
00:57:13,720 --> 00:57:15,240
And now they're a drug addict for life.

1005
00:57:15,440 --> 00:57:19,520
So what have you seen as far as, you know, a very quantifiable element,

1006
00:57:19,720 --> 00:57:23,960
which is testosterone levels in both male and females in the fire service?

1007
00:57:24,160 --> 00:57:29,600
So I don't think that we have at least I know IFF was working on a white paper on

1008
00:57:29,600 --> 00:57:35,000
that. I don't think that we have a great published data on that.

1009
00:57:35,000 --> 00:57:37,920
Although I've started talking to some of the health groups because some

1010
00:57:37,920 --> 00:57:39,280
departments want to measure that.

1011
00:57:39,480 --> 00:57:41,280
The other piece with testosterone, too,

1012
00:57:41,480 --> 00:57:45,360
is that Denise Smith just published on

1013
00:57:45,560 --> 00:57:50,200
the importance of testosterone and its role in cardiovascular disease and

1014
00:57:50,200 --> 00:57:51,760
increasing cardiovascular risk factors.

1015
00:57:51,960 --> 00:57:57,440
So I think that's another another piece beyond just, you know, beyond the that to

1016
00:57:57,440 --> 00:58:01,080
add to the conversation, I guess. So I don't think that we have great data.

1017
00:58:01,280 --> 00:58:07,160
Mostly health providers I know who who do have they're saying exactly what you're

1018
00:58:07,360 --> 00:58:13,280
saying. It's like either everyone in the departments on testosterone or no one is

1019
00:58:13,280 --> 00:58:15,200
and no one's and no one's talking about it.

1020
00:58:15,400 --> 00:58:17,080
So it's one one end or the other.

1021
00:58:17,280 --> 00:58:19,720
I don't know that we have great data on it,

1022
00:58:19,920 --> 00:58:24,520
partly because it's not typically added to the health exams.

1023
00:58:24,520 --> 00:58:27,600
I don't I don't think.

1024
00:58:29,880 --> 00:58:31,400
Actually, I'm going to have to think about that.

1025
00:58:31,400 --> 00:58:33,520
I don't think that it's in standard exams.

1026
00:58:33,520 --> 00:58:36,720
Some departments, I know, test it, but I don't know that I've seen anything

1027
00:58:36,920 --> 00:58:40,960
published on it, I think is my is my answer on that.

1028
00:58:41,160 --> 00:58:44,480
But I do know it. I mean, I'm not at all surprised that it's an issue.

1029
00:58:44,680 --> 00:58:48,320
And I'm also not at all surprised that the

1030
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:52,280
that the range is that I mean, it's kind of like with thyroid functioning thyroid

1031
00:58:52,280 --> 00:58:56,640
function test, right, like we used to say, OK, the range is relatively wide.

1032
00:58:56,840 --> 00:58:58,720
And as long as you are within that range.

1033
00:58:58,920 --> 00:59:05,400
But if I not small part of the general population actually does have thyroid

1034
00:59:05,600 --> 00:59:11,120
dysfunction, then you're including scores that are in that are actually causing

1035
00:59:11,320 --> 00:59:14,440
symptoms in that range as well. So

1036
00:59:14,640 --> 00:59:17,720
well, and also understanding the free testosterone and same with the thyroid,

1037
00:59:17,920 --> 00:59:21,560
the free thyroid versus the the ones that people normally measure,

1038
00:59:21,560 --> 00:59:23,280
because you could look and go, oh, you're fine.

1039
00:59:23,320 --> 00:59:26,720
But it doesn't mean that that is available for the body to actually use.

1040
00:59:26,920 --> 00:59:31,000
So as we progress and move on, I think these these companies like Transcend,

1041
00:59:31,200 --> 00:59:33,000
who I use, are amazing.

1042
00:59:33,200 --> 00:59:37,560
They do such a thorough blood work and then they have middle of the road solution.

1043
00:59:37,560 --> 00:59:42,440
Now, the ultimate solution is to get back to homeostasis naturally and then live

1044
00:59:42,440 --> 00:59:45,360
in the Garden of Eden. But if you are going to be working shift work,

1045
00:59:45,560 --> 00:59:50,000
then you've got some of these supplementations like DHEA and peptides that you

1046
00:59:50,000 --> 00:59:54,600
can do that just bolster your body rather than being hooked on CRT.

1047
00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:57,160
And there's no way back from that.

1048
00:59:57,360 --> 01:00:02,720
Yeah, I and I think that you're right on with the you can't just.

1049
01:00:02,920 --> 01:00:04,400
I don't.

1050
01:00:05,080 --> 01:00:07,320
I think.

1051
01:00:08,360 --> 01:00:13,800
I was going to say something not kind about dock in the box, and if you have a

1052
01:00:14,000 --> 01:00:17,960
if you have a billboard, that probably means.

1053
01:00:17,960 --> 01:00:20,280
If you need a billboard billboard,

1054
01:00:20,480 --> 01:00:23,160
but I'm not going to say that because I don't have evidence to support that.

1055
01:00:23,160 --> 01:00:24,760
Maybe they're all doing great jobs.

1056
01:00:24,960 --> 01:00:26,760
But

1057
01:00:27,080 --> 01:00:29,360
yeah, I think you're right. You have to be really thoughtful about that.

1058
01:00:29,360 --> 01:00:30,560
You have to make sure that you're testing.

1059
01:00:30,560 --> 01:00:34,280
I mean, there is that specific algorithm of how you test when you test those types

1060
01:00:34,280 --> 01:00:37,920
of things. And so I think it's often that's not taken into consideration.

1061
01:00:38,120 --> 01:00:40,200
But absolutely.

1062
01:00:40,400 --> 01:00:44,600
Well, I mean, low testosterone, for example, can

1063
01:00:44,800 --> 01:00:46,200
contribute to not only, like you say,

1064
01:00:46,200 --> 01:00:48,920
to cardiovascular ill health, but also weight gain.

1065
01:00:49,120 --> 01:00:51,680
And then it's imperative for mental good health as well.

1066
01:00:51,880 --> 01:00:54,080
So now you've got another layer to this

1067
01:00:54,280 --> 01:00:55,840
is your day functioning.

1068
01:00:56,040 --> 01:01:00,760
I mean, that's the that's the thing is it's yeah, it's also interrelated.

1069
01:01:00,960 --> 01:01:03,080
But the

1070
01:01:03,280 --> 01:01:06,240
apoco optimist in me says it's also interrelated.

1071
01:01:06,440 --> 01:01:09,920
So if you start improving one, you're going to be improving the others.

1072
01:01:10,120 --> 01:01:13,240
Exactly. So it's high return on investment personally.

1073
01:01:13,360 --> 01:01:15,120
And I do think you brought up the like

1074
01:01:15,120 --> 01:01:18,160
the things that you can do and that's you know,

1075
01:01:18,360 --> 01:01:20,640
yeah, someone's going to have to be up in the middle of the night.

1076
01:01:20,840 --> 01:01:23,880
But I think it does make it even more

1077
01:01:24,080 --> 01:01:28,000
important that people prioritize their sleep, understand what they can do

1078
01:01:28,200 --> 01:01:32,640
and do what they can when they can, you know, and over an all nighter every once

1079
01:01:32,840 --> 01:01:35,640
in a while is not just a no big deal.

1080
01:01:35,640 --> 01:01:38,240
Like that is actually incredibly bad for your sleep,

1081
01:01:38,440 --> 01:01:42,960
particularly if every other day of the month or 20 days a month,

1082
01:01:42,960 --> 01:01:44,880
you're going to have really crappy sleep anyway.

1083
01:01:44,880 --> 01:01:48,280
Oh, there was also sorry, I just

1084
01:01:48,480 --> 01:01:49,640
love it.

1085
01:01:49,840 --> 01:01:51,440
Other studies and I'm like, oh, yeah.

1086
01:01:51,640 --> 01:01:54,840
And there was a study that I recently read.

1087
01:01:54,840 --> 01:01:59,560
It was a review and it's actually a newer measure, a newer assessment of sleep.

1088
01:01:59,760 --> 01:02:01,800
Because, you know, before it was primarily

1089
01:02:02,000 --> 01:02:08,200
measuring like total sleep time or sleep opportunity is one of the major outcomes.

1090
01:02:08,400 --> 01:02:09,760
So I just read an article.

1091
01:02:09,960 --> 01:02:13,560
I can't remember what it was, what they what the term they called or like what

1092
01:02:13,560 --> 01:02:18,200
they called the measure, but the outcome of it was looking at

1093
01:02:18,400 --> 01:02:25,240
consistency of sleep and they found that unrelated to.

1094
01:02:25,440 --> 01:02:28,080
Unrelated to the or in addition to

1095
01:02:28,280 --> 01:02:31,880
independent of independent of is the word I'm looking for.

1096
01:02:32,080 --> 01:02:37,680
I don't think I my flight was late last night, so I did not sleep great.

1097
01:02:37,880 --> 01:02:40,600
But independent of your total sleep time,

1098
01:02:40,600 --> 01:02:44,960
the consistency of your sleep is also a key driver.

1099
01:02:45,160 --> 01:02:48,680
And how can they use they had they developed an assessment of it.

1100
01:02:48,880 --> 01:02:54,560
So basically how consistent is it is that you will be asleep at the same time

1101
01:02:54,760 --> 01:02:57,840
at night and the next day. But I think they even so this.

1102
01:02:58,040 --> 01:03:03,200
And I think if I'm remembering this correctly, they looked at added in like if

1103
01:03:03,400 --> 01:03:04,880
you're consistently napping.

1104
01:03:05,080 --> 01:03:07,880
So basically, as long as you your score is

1105
01:03:07,880 --> 01:03:11,720
based on if you are asleep at the same time, how consistent you are.

1106
01:03:11,920 --> 01:03:15,080
And it's a score from zero to 100 on how

1107
01:03:15,280 --> 01:03:18,640
likely it is you're going to be asleep at the same time every day.

1108
01:03:18,840 --> 01:03:23,480
And that independent of total sleep time was.

1109
01:03:23,680 --> 01:03:29,320
And sleep opportunity was predictive of mortality and several other outcomes.

1110
01:03:29,520 --> 01:03:32,880
Interesting, right?

1111
01:03:33,080 --> 01:03:37,040
Well, let's talk about the weight gain, because I think this is a big part.

1112
01:03:37,040 --> 01:03:38,880
You know, again, you've got the diabetes.

1113
01:03:38,880 --> 01:03:40,600
I mean, they show how there's a complete

1114
01:03:40,800 --> 01:03:43,640
insulin disruption with one night of not sleeping.

1115
01:03:43,840 --> 01:03:46,520
But then you've obviously got this hormonal disruption.

1116
01:03:46,720 --> 01:03:52,800
So talk to me about the the impact on sleep deprivation for the ability

1117
01:03:53,000 --> 01:03:56,480
for the body to maintain a good body composition.

1118
01:03:56,680 --> 01:03:58,600
Horrible one.

1119
01:03:58,800 --> 01:04:02,280
I mean, I think that sums it up quite nicely in a scientific term.

1120
01:04:02,480 --> 01:04:05,600
But for several different reasons, like one,

1121
01:04:05,600 --> 01:04:10,440
because it controls when you feel hungry and when you don't feel hungry.

1122
01:04:10,640 --> 01:04:14,240
So you actually are hungrier if you have this interrupted circadian rhythm.

1123
01:04:14,440 --> 01:04:17,720
There was a guy out of Dr. Panda from the Salk Institute.

1124
01:04:17,920 --> 01:04:22,120
He did a study in San Diego where they did circadian feeding.

1125
01:04:22,320 --> 01:04:27,480
And his hypothesis was that the interrupted circadian rhythms from shift work are not

1126
01:04:27,680 --> 01:04:32,920
only because of the sleep wake cycle, but that part of what controls the circadian

1127
01:04:32,920 --> 01:04:36,960
rhythm is when you when you eat.

1128
01:04:37,160 --> 01:04:41,640
So you basically are telling your body if you're if you get back to the station

1129
01:04:41,640 --> 01:04:44,800
and eat a brownie, you're telling your body like, oh, it's time to wake up.

1130
01:04:44,840 --> 01:04:46,720
You know, we're doing wake up things and we're.

1131
01:04:46,920 --> 01:04:54,040
And so if you can also limit your feeding windows to the times that you are,

1132
01:04:54,240 --> 01:04:55,560
you're.

1133
01:04:55,760 --> 01:04:59,280
You should be awake that that can also be helpful.

1134
01:04:59,280 --> 01:05:06,160
He did some really interesting studies in mice early on, but it looks like that is

1135
01:05:06,360 --> 01:05:09,720
also a part of it. So it's everything from like how hungry you are.

1136
01:05:09,720 --> 01:05:13,120
And obviously you're going to eat more if you're hungry

1137
01:05:13,320 --> 01:05:16,720
to just the way your body uses the calories that it had.

1138
01:05:16,920 --> 01:05:21,000
Like, it's just all it all goes back to sleep.

1139
01:05:21,200 --> 01:05:22,680
It all goes back to sleep.

1140
01:05:22,880 --> 01:05:25,640
This is why I feel so stupid for not seeing it earlier.

1141
01:05:25,640 --> 01:05:29,120
What made you because you were really early adopter on this topic.

1142
01:05:29,320 --> 01:05:31,120
It was Kirk Parsley hands down.

1143
01:05:31,120 --> 01:05:34,120
I was listening to my 75 minute commute.

1144
01:05:34,120 --> 01:05:37,720
I listen to podcasts all the time to Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss and then barbell

1145
01:05:37,920 --> 01:05:40,520
shrug the old crew and they had him on.

1146
01:05:40,520 --> 01:05:44,000
They were talking obviously about the impact of sleep on performance in the gym.

1147
01:05:44,200 --> 01:05:46,000
They weren't shift workers.

1148
01:05:46,200 --> 01:05:52,040
But when he started kind of telling about how he had these uber athlete seals

1149
01:05:52,040 --> 01:05:56,280
because he was a seal pre 9 11 went to med school, came back as their physician,

1150
01:05:56,480 --> 01:06:01,720
the West Coast Seal team, and for a year he just kept seeing the blood work come

1151
01:06:01,720 --> 01:06:03,720
back and he's like, they're like eight year old women.

1152
01:06:03,720 --> 01:06:04,600
What's going on?

1153
01:06:04,800 --> 01:06:08,160
There's no complete disconnect between who they are, what they can do and then what

1154
01:06:08,360 --> 01:06:11,840
the shows. And so after about a year, he realized

1155
01:06:11,840 --> 01:06:15,240
that nearly all of them were on Ambien, which again, you don't get sleep with a

1156
01:06:15,440 --> 01:06:16,760
sleep pill, you're just unconscious.

1157
01:06:16,960 --> 01:06:19,680
So and so he was able to persuade his

1158
01:06:19,680 --> 01:06:25,080
command in his profession, people actually listen to active health advice

1159
01:06:25,280 --> 01:06:28,200
and they were able to shift because they were doing a lot of night training and

1160
01:06:28,200 --> 01:06:31,040
kind of reframe it in a way where they got a lot more sleep.

1161
01:06:31,240 --> 01:06:35,720
And then he actually developed a formula I used to this day on occasion

1162
01:06:35,920 --> 01:06:39,640
where it was just vitamin D and tryptophan and magnesium and

1163
01:06:39,840 --> 01:06:44,000
tiny bit of melatonin to initiate the sleep cascade and got all these guys off

1164
01:06:44,200 --> 01:06:47,360
Ambien. So while I'm listening to this and he's

1165
01:06:47,360 --> 01:06:50,760
talking about the acute effects of sleep deprivation, the chronic effects of sleep

1166
01:06:50,760 --> 01:06:54,280
deprivation, and I've always said firefighters don't die of one thing, they

1167
01:06:54,480 --> 01:06:57,080
die of everything, whatever the weakest link is.

1168
01:06:57,280 --> 01:06:59,360
And so it just made so much sense to me.

1169
01:06:59,560 --> 01:07:04,000
It's not just carcinogens in a fire that are causing cancer,

1170
01:07:04,200 --> 01:07:07,520
and it's not just the trauma that we're seeing that are causing suicides.

1171
01:07:07,520 --> 01:07:11,120
There's everything from childhood trauma through to the massive impact of sleep

1172
01:07:11,320 --> 01:07:14,600
deprivation. So it was a real penny drop for me,

1173
01:07:14,600 --> 01:07:18,400
a penny drop, not a panty drop for anyone that misheard that.

1174
01:07:19,680 --> 01:07:24,200
But I guess, I mean, educationally, maybe.

1175
01:07:24,400 --> 01:07:26,560
But yeah, and then it just everything aligned.

1176
01:07:26,760 --> 01:07:28,160
You drop.

1177
01:07:30,080 --> 01:07:33,160
But yeah, and everything is I had a background ex-fizz,

1178
01:07:33,360 --> 01:07:35,040
you know, and athlete and a coach.

1179
01:07:35,040 --> 01:07:38,320
So I had some of the pieces as well, but that was that was just it.

1180
01:07:38,320 --> 01:07:39,400
That was the missing piece.

1181
01:07:39,600 --> 01:07:42,000
And so I had this massive aha moment.

1182
01:07:42,000 --> 01:07:46,800
Your training and background, like, did you talk about sleep back when you went

1183
01:07:47,000 --> 01:07:49,320
through school and back when you.

1184
01:07:49,520 --> 01:07:53,080
No, no. And this is the I mean, I remember, for example, in London,

1185
01:07:53,280 --> 01:07:56,600
because I did kind of like the A.S. in London and then my E.A.

1186
01:07:56,600 --> 01:08:00,160
and U.F. like literally just a few years ago, I haven't picked up my diploma yet,

1187
01:08:00,360 --> 01:08:02,920
but I've got it, my bachelor's.

1188
01:08:03,120 --> 01:08:07,200
But I remember I'm talking about them processing

1189
01:08:07,400 --> 01:08:10,960
learn skills when you sleep, and I thought that was interesting.

1190
01:08:10,960 --> 01:08:14,080
And then fast forward, you know, it explains why the next morning,

1191
01:08:14,080 --> 01:08:16,720
I can't remember the not that I was trying to tie the day before.

1192
01:08:16,920 --> 01:08:19,520
There's actually an issue behind that.

1193
01:08:19,720 --> 01:08:23,200
So, yeah, so it wasn't that we had really learned about it before.

1194
01:08:23,200 --> 01:08:26,280
It's just that, you know, because in sports science, it's very, very myopic.

1195
01:08:26,280 --> 01:08:27,360
And that was disappointing.

1196
01:08:27,560 --> 01:08:32,280
You study a very few slithers of things, but it doesn't make you a good coach,

1197
01:08:32,480 --> 01:08:34,000
in my opinion.

1198
01:08:34,200 --> 01:08:39,480
So, yeah, it was more just the kind of lived experience and then combining what I

1199
01:08:39,480 --> 01:08:43,720
did know about physiology and some of these other areas and then sleep just like you.

1200
01:08:43,920 --> 01:08:46,600
One day someone slides it onto the table

1201
01:08:46,800 --> 01:08:51,240
in front of you and like, how the hell did I not factor this in?

1202
01:08:51,440 --> 01:08:52,560
It makes perfect sense.

1203
01:08:52,760 --> 01:08:57,360
Every animal goes to sleep and we are animals, no matter what anyone says.

1204
01:08:57,560 --> 01:08:58,600
Yep.

1205
01:08:58,800 --> 01:09:00,360
Yeah.

1206
01:09:00,640 --> 01:09:03,480
A good thing we're seeing it now, right?

1207
01:09:03,680 --> 01:09:04,480
Absolutely.

1208
01:09:04,680 --> 01:09:06,320
So then back to the obesity then.

1209
01:09:06,320 --> 01:09:11,320
So just kind of talk to me about some of the impacts on the human body that from

1210
01:09:11,520 --> 01:09:16,080
sleep deprivation that, you know, over time will, you know, will lead to obesity

1211
01:09:16,280 --> 01:09:19,680
unless someone's very diligent with their diet and exercise.

1212
01:09:19,880 --> 01:09:26,120
So I do I think appetite is one of the major drivers that

1213
01:09:26,320 --> 01:09:28,360
you just.

1214
01:09:29,320 --> 01:09:33,000
You're more hungry the more you eat, the less you're able to manage your calories.

1215
01:09:33,000 --> 01:09:36,720
So I think that's a big a big piece of it.

1216
01:09:36,920 --> 01:09:40,880
And then I think that what were some of the other things?

1217
01:09:41,600 --> 01:09:44,600
I so oh, so one, the being hungry,

1218
01:09:44,800 --> 01:09:50,000
wanting to eat more and also not having enough sleep makes you more likely or less

1219
01:09:50,200 --> 01:09:53,240
likely to.

1220
01:09:53,920 --> 01:09:58,040
Engage in physical activity, so I think it's both of like all in addition to all

1221
01:09:58,240 --> 01:10:02,280
the hormone dysregulation, I also think that it's the even just the health

1222
01:10:02,280 --> 01:10:07,480
behaviors. And I also think probably more likely to drink alcohol as a coping

1223
01:10:07,680 --> 01:10:10,480
mechanism if you're not doing like it's all tied together.

1224
01:10:10,480 --> 01:10:12,760
Right. So if you're not using that,

1225
01:10:12,960 --> 01:10:17,600
we use physical activity to maintain, manage my stress levels when you use

1226
01:10:17,600 --> 01:10:19,000
alcohol. So I think it's that too.

1227
01:10:19,200 --> 01:10:22,360
I mean, I think it's I think it's all interrelated.

1228
01:10:22,560 --> 01:10:24,880
Yeah. Well, I mean, those low hormones,

1229
01:10:25,080 --> 01:10:30,960
testosterone is what gives you that kind of motivation to go get under a barbell.

1230
01:10:30,960 --> 01:10:36,200
You know, so I mean, there's an actual measured hormonal response to sleep

1231
01:10:36,400 --> 01:10:38,280
deprivation that takes that away from you.

1232
01:10:38,480 --> 01:10:40,920
And a lot of people feel exhausted from it.

1233
01:10:41,120 --> 01:10:42,640
Yeah, yeah.

1234
01:10:42,840 --> 01:10:48,640
And if like if you're if you're tired all the time, you are all the health behaviors

1235
01:10:48,840 --> 01:10:50,840
become more challenging to do.

1236
01:10:51,040 --> 01:10:53,920
So I think it all plays in together.

1237
01:10:54,120 --> 01:10:54,960
Absolutely.

1238
01:10:55,160 --> 01:10:58,480
Well, you can touch on this before the World Health Organization has sleep

1239
01:10:58,480 --> 01:11:01,600
deprivation as or shift work as a probable carcinogen.

1240
01:11:01,800 --> 01:11:06,680
And again, they're probably studying people that don't work 56, 80 hour weeks

1241
01:11:06,880 --> 01:11:08,400
with 24 hour shifts.

1242
01:11:08,600 --> 01:11:13,080
So with that being said, though, talk to me about what you've learned as far

1243
01:11:13,280 --> 01:11:16,560
as the correlation between sleep deprivation and cancer.

1244
01:11:16,760 --> 01:11:20,520
So so the shift works, the comment about the shift,

1245
01:11:20,720 --> 01:11:24,960
most of the shift work is based on like nurses and physicians, right?

1246
01:11:25,160 --> 01:11:27,680
Which, yes, they have to be up at night,

1247
01:11:27,680 --> 01:11:32,280
but they don't tend to be up at the same with the same regularity, you know, as as

1248
01:11:32,480 --> 01:11:35,080
firefighters do. So I think that's why it's important to have

1249
01:11:35,280 --> 01:11:43,080
specific research to research very specific to firefighters because it's it's.

1250
01:11:43,280 --> 01:11:46,880
It's just not the same and even law enforcement, you know, where we see

1251
01:11:47,080 --> 01:11:51,680
actually on several cancers, there was a study that was just done out of

1252
01:11:51,880 --> 01:11:56,520
Ontario and cancer rates for.

1253
01:11:56,520 --> 01:12:01,320
Law enforcement offers officers for several cancers were similar to cancer

1254
01:12:01,520 --> 01:12:05,560
rates for firefighters. And again, what could that be?

1255
01:12:05,760 --> 01:12:07,800
You know, it's not that they're fighting

1256
01:12:08,000 --> 01:12:11,640
fires or going interior and managing those exposures.

1257
01:12:11,640 --> 01:12:14,680
So I think it could be some of that shift work piece of it, too.

1258
01:12:14,880 --> 01:12:17,400
But their shifts are very.

1259
01:12:17,600 --> 01:12:20,320
They're very different. And that's the thing, you know, when people say, oh,

1260
01:12:20,320 --> 01:12:22,840
because I have had people say like, oh, everyone should just go to eight hour

1261
01:12:22,840 --> 01:12:27,200
shifts, but someone has to be up at night, so someone's going to have the impact.

1262
01:12:27,400 --> 01:12:31,080
And you do want as much consistency as possible.

1263
01:12:31,280 --> 01:12:34,320
So it'd be even worse to go between like day shifts and night shifts.

1264
01:12:34,520 --> 01:12:39,440
So so I think that with the relationship to cancer, so they classified it.

1265
01:12:39,640 --> 01:12:41,160
I want to I want to say it's a probable

1266
01:12:41,360 --> 01:12:49,400
person, and I think it to be and I think it's probably due to the impact on

1267
01:12:49,400 --> 01:12:52,840
just the impact on the immune system. Right.

1268
01:12:53,040 --> 01:12:57,280
There was one study or I think a summary or maybe this is from your I'm not sure

1269
01:12:57,480 --> 01:13:01,760
where I pulled this, but I have a note on it that specifically linked to breast

1270
01:13:01,760 --> 01:13:04,680
cancer, prostate cancer, cancers of the uterus and colon cancer.

1271
01:13:04,880 --> 01:13:09,720
But if you look at like those what breast cancer, prostate cancer,

1272
01:13:09,720 --> 01:13:12,680
I mean, those are the endocrine disrupting chemical cancers.

1273
01:13:12,680 --> 01:13:14,320
That's the reproductive health cancers.

1274
01:13:14,320 --> 01:13:16,600
It's all, you know, also has to do with the hormones.

1275
01:13:16,600 --> 01:13:21,680
So I think it has it's likely and Jeff Burgess says that he thinks a lot of

1276
01:13:21,880 --> 01:13:25,440
what's driving that really that relationship is inflammation.

1277
01:13:25,640 --> 01:13:29,560
So likely the inflammation is really pushing that.

1278
01:13:29,760 --> 01:13:32,240
And it's really just taking

1279
01:13:33,440 --> 01:13:39,680
it, impacting the inflammation in your body, which then encourages cancer cells to grow.

1280
01:13:39,880 --> 01:13:44,680
I did have a note to routinely sleeping, sleeping less than seven hours a night

1281
01:13:44,680 --> 01:13:46,560
doubles the risk of cancer.

1282
01:13:46,760 --> 01:13:51,160
Yeah, the mechanism there is assumed to be the immune system.

1283
01:13:51,160 --> 01:13:55,040
Like your immune system just can't fight off what it would if you were sleeping.

1284
01:13:55,240 --> 01:13:56,560
Well, this is it.

1285
01:13:56,760 --> 01:14:00,520
This is the conversation even though I was having right at the beginning of COVID is,

1286
01:14:00,720 --> 01:14:04,200
you know, we were asking our first responders to be and our doctors and

1287
01:14:04,400 --> 01:14:08,840
nurses to hold the front line, and yet they were arguably some of the most

1288
01:14:09,040 --> 01:14:11,840
immunocompromised, you know, people of any profession.

1289
01:14:11,840 --> 01:14:15,640
Now, outside of obviously, you know, morbid obesity and all that kind of stuff.

1290
01:14:15,840 --> 01:14:18,240
So talk to me about that, the impact,

1291
01:14:18,440 --> 01:14:21,600
see deprivation on the immune system specifically.

1292
01:14:21,800 --> 01:14:25,520
It just I mean, it you just cannot operate.

1293
01:14:25,720 --> 01:14:29,320
Your body is not designed to operate without sleep.

1294
01:14:29,520 --> 01:14:32,360
I think my favorite, like level setting

1295
01:14:32,560 --> 01:14:36,880
on this actually did come from Walker's book where he talks about that

1296
01:14:37,080 --> 01:14:40,960
of all the stupid things that are done with the Guinness Book of World Records.

1297
01:14:40,960 --> 01:14:44,920
They don't allow people to go the longest without sleep.

1298
01:14:45,120 --> 01:14:49,040
Because it's so dangerous, like there's that guy who created a sonic boom with his

1299
01:14:49,240 --> 01:14:54,360
body, and that's in the Guinness Book of World Records, some 39,000 feet in the air

1300
01:14:54,560 --> 01:14:57,120
or whatever, but going without sleep is that dangerous.

1301
01:14:57,320 --> 01:15:04,080
But, you know, that's it's not I I saw a firefighter in L.A.

1302
01:15:04,280 --> 01:15:08,360
L.A. County who happened to be on he was

1303
01:15:08,360 --> 01:15:13,280
at the second busiest house in the country and I saw him 72 hours after he'd got

1304
01:15:13,280 --> 01:15:16,320
I was there when he got on shift and I saw him 72 hours later when I was doing a data

1305
01:15:16,320 --> 01:15:18,520
collection like it didn't even look like the same person.

1306
01:15:18,720 --> 01:15:20,680
And you just and I guarantee you that was

1307
01:15:20,880 --> 01:15:23,320
not the only time he'd worked a 72 hour shift.

1308
01:15:23,520 --> 01:15:28,160
Your body just is not made for that.

1309
01:15:28,360 --> 01:15:33,400
Speaking of research, though, I've got a friend, Miguel, who was a recon Marine,

1310
01:15:33,600 --> 01:15:38,280
but also got into their human performance side and he was asking me about research.

1311
01:15:38,280 --> 01:15:40,840
And I'm sure I'd said that, you know, about you being one of the people I know

1312
01:15:41,040 --> 01:15:45,200
that really is doing this kind of overall health research.

1313
01:15:45,400 --> 01:15:47,960
And he said, you know, what would the study have to look like?

1314
01:15:47,960 --> 01:15:53,600
And I was like, well, you'd have to basically get a group of people to be awake

1315
01:15:53,800 --> 01:15:59,640
for some or all of 24 hours for, you know, a month and obviously have another group

1316
01:15:59,840 --> 01:16:03,280
that's not. And he goes, you know, what's crazy?

1317
01:16:03,480 --> 01:16:06,880
He said that would never get past an ethics committee in a study.

1318
01:16:06,880 --> 01:16:09,680
So when people say to me, James, can you show me the research?

1319
01:16:09,680 --> 01:16:13,280
I'm like, no, because no one in their fucking right mind would actually put

1320
01:16:13,480 --> 01:16:16,440
normal people through what they were put through.

1321
01:16:16,640 --> 01:16:20,680
Right now, there's yeah, no.

1322
01:16:20,880 --> 01:16:27,320
We and I think what we are trying to start doing it, we're just trying to start to.

1323
01:16:27,520 --> 01:16:31,320
Why can I not talk to well, because they didn't get enough sleep last night.

1324
01:16:31,520 --> 01:16:34,360
You're a subject for this conversation.

1325
01:16:34,360 --> 01:16:39,560
Right. Sarah seems like an idiot because she got in late on her flight.

1326
01:16:39,760 --> 01:16:46,240
But what I do think we can start doing is really specifically studying

1327
01:16:46,440 --> 01:16:51,320
busy departments and the busiest stations at the busiest departments,

1328
01:16:51,520 --> 01:16:55,240
because one of the challenges with what we've done and did in the past.

1329
01:16:55,440 --> 01:16:59,360
I should not have scheduled this podcast when I would be sleep deprived.

1330
01:16:59,360 --> 01:17:01,400
I didn't realize I would be this sleep deprived.

1331
01:17:01,400 --> 01:17:05,960
But when we did like our we did a study called Field of Fight,

1332
01:17:06,160 --> 01:17:10,040
it's 20 departments, Maine to Guam, and we did study and survey on

1333
01:17:10,240 --> 01:17:14,920
excessive daytime sleepiness, like it was obviously linked to working 48 hours

1334
01:17:15,120 --> 01:17:19,920
or more linking shifts, independent or private sleeping quarters

1335
01:17:19,920 --> 01:17:23,040
was sleep promoting and decreased excessive daytime sleepiness.

1336
01:17:23,240 --> 01:17:28,480
But what we did where we screwed up is we just classified the departments

1337
01:17:28,480 --> 01:17:31,440
by the shift schedule that they worked. Right.

1338
01:17:31,640 --> 01:17:36,000
And some of these departments had we had, like I said, LA County was in it.

1339
01:17:36,200 --> 01:17:41,160
One of them was the second busiest truck or second busiest house in the country,

1340
01:17:41,360 --> 01:17:45,360
I think, and then another one like we went in, we sat down, we had coffee,

1341
01:17:45,560 --> 01:17:48,840
we kicked, but they didn't have one call the entire time we were there.

1342
01:17:49,040 --> 01:17:53,040
And so we've done that where we've classified based on the department is

1343
01:17:53,040 --> 01:17:58,080
a 24, 48 or the department's, you know, and not classified on.

1344
01:17:58,280 --> 01:18:00,720
But how many calls did this person run?

1345
01:18:00,920 --> 01:18:04,480
So when we average out or averaging, well, it doesn't look that bad.

1346
01:18:04,480 --> 01:18:09,240
That's because you have people who sleep all night at an airport station and people

1347
01:18:09,440 --> 01:18:12,360
who are so so these people are great.

1348
01:18:12,360 --> 01:18:15,080
These people are horrible, but it looks on average like they're OK.

1349
01:18:15,280 --> 01:18:18,160
So that's what that's and that's where research is going is.

1350
01:18:18,360 --> 01:18:19,720
All right. If we're going to study this,

1351
01:18:19,720 --> 01:18:24,760
we have to study the busiest fire departments and the busiest stations in

1352
01:18:24,960 --> 01:18:27,920
the fire departments to really get there. But yeah, you're right.

1353
01:18:28,120 --> 01:18:33,440
You could not randomize people to the condition that you could not randomize

1354
01:18:33,640 --> 01:18:36,000
people to that condition of just don't sleep.

1355
01:18:36,200 --> 01:18:37,480
Yeah. No.

1356
01:18:37,680 --> 01:18:41,520
Well, with that, one of the pushbacks I get is like, oh, well, there's, you know,

1357
01:18:41,720 --> 01:18:46,000
we've got the station out in the woods and they only run once a week.

1358
01:18:46,000 --> 01:18:48,120
You tell me that they need to do a 24 72.

1359
01:18:48,120 --> 01:18:49,480
And I'm like, yeah.

1360
01:18:49,680 --> 01:18:52,200
How many times have you been into an apartment building,

1361
01:18:52,400 --> 01:18:55,400
seen a security guard sitting there reading a book or whatever?

1362
01:18:55,600 --> 01:18:59,400
Do you shout at him and say, why are you not in a fist fight with a bad guy right

1363
01:18:59,600 --> 01:19:02,840
now? No, he's he or she are there for when you need them.

1364
01:19:03,040 --> 01:19:06,440
And arguably, usually out in the past, just stations, you know, these are all

1365
01:19:06,440 --> 01:19:10,400
firefighters that kind of paid their dues in the meat grinder and transitioned out

1366
01:19:10,600 --> 01:19:13,800
to somewhere a little slower, but they're already screwed.

1367
01:19:14,000 --> 01:19:14,960
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

1368
01:19:14,960 --> 01:19:15,920
They're just waiting for cancer.

1369
01:19:15,920 --> 01:19:21,360
Just like they said. But, you know, so so to not advocate for all the people who are

1370
01:19:21,560 --> 01:19:26,560
just getting murdered every day in stations because of the off chance that you might

1371
01:19:26,760 --> 01:19:30,920
make it a little easier for someone who's got it easy is complete insanity.

1372
01:19:30,920 --> 01:19:34,600
And it would be like, you know, the full time transatlantic pilot is held to

1373
01:19:34,800 --> 01:19:39,840
aviation sleep standards and then the UPS guy that works part time flying.

1374
01:19:40,040 --> 01:19:42,840
They go, oh, yeah, we can't fix full time

1375
01:19:42,840 --> 01:19:46,760
because Steve, the part timer, it will be easy. It doesn't make it makes no sense.

1376
01:19:46,760 --> 01:19:49,840
Another industry. But this is what I get over and over again.

1377
01:19:49,840 --> 01:19:53,240
And it's like, well, if you've got more time off, then you just have an opportunity

1378
01:19:53,440 --> 01:19:57,400
to rest, but also to train because those quiet stations need to be ready as well.

1379
01:19:57,600 --> 01:20:03,680
Right. Well, and you still have both of those people in the same department, right?

1380
01:20:03,880 --> 01:20:05,040
Working the same shifts.

1381
01:20:05,240 --> 01:20:07,040
And so.

1382
01:20:07,240 --> 01:20:12,600
You have to plan for the person who is getting their ass handed to them.

1383
01:20:12,600 --> 01:20:18,040
The most like and then you figure out, you know, the rest goes where the rest goes.

1384
01:20:18,240 --> 01:20:20,920
But you can't plan on

1385
01:20:21,120 --> 01:20:25,680
the quietest, least busy like you would never do that.

1386
01:20:25,880 --> 01:20:28,040
It's like you said, the transatlantic guy,

1387
01:20:28,040 --> 01:20:31,840
you don't ever go like, we're going to only require him to do what Steve does.

1388
01:20:32,040 --> 01:20:37,200
No, you're going to require Steve to like same same story.

1389
01:20:37,400 --> 01:20:40,040
You've got to you have to plan for a worst case scenario.

1390
01:20:40,040 --> 01:20:42,640
Like that's what the entire fire service is about.

1391
01:20:42,840 --> 01:20:44,280
Right.

1392
01:20:44,480 --> 01:20:48,000
Or when it comes to our people, but we know whatever.

1393
01:20:48,200 --> 01:20:49,360
Exactly. Exactly.

1394
01:20:49,360 --> 01:20:51,240
As I said, we're we're amazing at burying

1395
01:20:51,240 --> 01:20:54,840
our women, which is really shit at stopping them dying in the first place.

1396
01:20:55,040 --> 01:20:56,960
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1397
01:20:57,160 --> 01:20:58,200
Well, we're going to fix that.

1398
01:20:58,400 --> 01:21:00,600
All right. Well, speaking of that, though, good segue.

1399
01:21:00,800 --> 01:21:03,120
There has been.

1400
01:21:03,320 --> 01:21:05,640
I mean, we're talking nationally.

1401
01:21:05,840 --> 01:21:08,520
I've done this for almost eight years now.

1402
01:21:08,520 --> 01:21:12,720
And it's the same kind of perceived figures observationally.

1403
01:21:12,920 --> 01:21:17,080
But the figures that I've seen is that we die on average within five years

1404
01:21:17,280 --> 01:21:21,400
after retirement and about 12 years younger than the population.

1405
01:21:21,600 --> 01:21:25,640
Now, again, you know, there's there's going to be a spectrum of places where it's

1406
01:21:25,840 --> 01:21:30,440
better or worse, but over and over and over again, that that number five after

1407
01:21:30,640 --> 01:21:34,560
retirement law enforcement as well seems to be a very observational thing.

1408
01:21:34,560 --> 01:21:35,880
Like there are men and women, they are

1409
01:21:35,880 --> 01:21:40,320
watching them die, you know, a few short years after they retire a lot of time.

1410
01:21:40,520 --> 01:21:43,000
So what have you seen from a scientific

1411
01:21:43,200 --> 01:21:47,720
point of view as far as the longevity of these men and women that give 25,

1412
01:21:47,920 --> 01:21:54,200
30 years of their lives and then finally get to close to or retirement age?

1413
01:21:54,400 --> 01:21:55,720
So here's what I want.

1414
01:21:55,920 --> 01:21:59,440
And I would love if you have any access to that data, because I've heard that

1415
01:21:59,640 --> 01:22:03,760
before and I've had a hard time validating that that five number.

1416
01:22:03,760 --> 01:22:07,960
So that's why I would if you have any data or if anyone who's listening has that

1417
01:22:08,160 --> 01:22:12,320
data, I would love to see it. There was early on.

1418
01:22:12,520 --> 01:22:15,680
Someone told me that there was like a dissertation that quoted it.

1419
01:22:15,880 --> 01:22:19,960
But I'm trying to track data down on that.

1420
01:22:20,160 --> 01:22:21,520
So that's what I would like to know.

1421
01:22:21,720 --> 01:22:22,760
Yeah. Well, that's the issue.

1422
01:22:22,760 --> 01:22:24,160
Like I said, we don't have research.

1423
01:22:24,360 --> 01:22:26,920
A lot of times, observation is all we do have.

1424
01:22:27,120 --> 01:22:30,720
But then again, we're also looking at

1425
01:22:30,920 --> 01:22:32,280
should I had a comment on that?

1426
01:22:32,280 --> 01:22:34,960
Oh, I also we're looking on average at that.

1427
01:22:35,160 --> 01:22:39,960
So if you think overall, you would expect firefighters to live longer.

1428
01:22:39,960 --> 01:22:41,800
If all other things were created equally,

1429
01:22:41,800 --> 01:22:47,240
you would expect them to live longer because you're looking at averages and.

1430
01:22:47,440 --> 01:22:49,920
You would expect that

1431
01:22:50,120 --> 01:22:54,200
because they're actively working like the healthy worker effects that they should be

1432
01:22:54,400 --> 01:22:58,160
living longer, so it but if you have data on that, I would love to see it because

1433
01:22:58,160 --> 01:23:03,200
that's that's one that I've always tried to track down and have not had much luck.

1434
01:23:03,400 --> 01:23:05,040
Yeah. And I bet you it's probably because

1435
01:23:05,040 --> 01:23:08,600
they there's a resistance to that information because then we'll realize

1436
01:23:08,600 --> 01:23:12,200
that we are killing our firefighters because I've always said it shouldn't even

1437
01:23:12,200 --> 01:23:14,400
be equal to the average person in our community.

1438
01:23:14,600 --> 01:23:18,640
I would argue that your firefighters are some of the fittest, most resilient men

1439
01:23:18,840 --> 01:23:20,720
and women when they enter that career.

1440
01:23:20,920 --> 01:23:23,760
And so really, we should be living longer than a lot of the community.

1441
01:23:23,960 --> 01:23:25,280
Not not sure.

1442
01:23:25,480 --> 01:23:27,920
Yeah, I have not done a search on that in a while.

1443
01:23:27,920 --> 01:23:29,800
So now I'm going to go do that and I'll let you know.

1444
01:23:30,000 --> 01:23:31,320
Brilliant. All right.

1445
01:23:31,520 --> 01:23:37,120
Well, then let's transition now to, as I mentioned, you know, if if really

1446
01:23:37,320 --> 01:23:41,280
investing in your people and their well-being isn't something that motivates

1447
01:23:41,480 --> 01:23:44,840
you to advocate for change, then sadly, we're back to money.

1448
01:23:45,040 --> 01:23:51,680
So what are your observations on the false economy of the way our firefighters are

1449
01:23:51,880 --> 01:23:54,800
being worked and then the potential comes?

1450
01:23:55,000 --> 01:23:57,680
Obviously isn't an area that you've studied specifically, but

1451
01:23:57,680 --> 01:24:01,760
you know, if you take that money from downstream and invest it upstream and

1452
01:24:01,960 --> 01:24:06,840
create an extra shift, so now you have a four platoon system and a 72 hour period

1453
01:24:07,040 --> 01:24:11,720
to recover, what what would you hypothesize as far as

1454
01:24:11,920 --> 01:24:15,200
the financial benefit to a city or a county?

1455
01:24:15,400 --> 01:24:18,240
So I I think that we will see.

1456
01:24:18,440 --> 01:24:21,040
I mean, you you have like the obvious,

1457
01:24:21,240 --> 01:24:24,280
you know, not having to pay as much overtime, those types of things.

1458
01:24:24,280 --> 01:24:30,080
And I think that's low hanging fruit. But I also I think that you would see

1459
01:24:30,280 --> 01:24:34,600
there was one department out of that just went to a longer shift and they were

1460
01:24:34,800 --> 01:24:39,840
reporting increased rates of mistakes on EMS calls.

1461
01:24:39,840 --> 01:24:41,040
So I think you're right on that.

1462
01:24:41,040 --> 01:24:45,120
I think that, you know, if we shorten that, if we I think, you know,

1463
01:24:45,320 --> 01:24:50,520
honestly, I think with improved sleep, you should see pretty much everything

1464
01:24:50,520 --> 01:24:56,600
improve, you know, everything from like your lost work days, from people

1465
01:24:56,800 --> 01:25:01,520
getting colds and flus, you know, like just immune system pieces,

1466
01:25:01,720 --> 01:25:06,960
everything from that to the injuries to the and it would depend on injuries like

1467
01:25:07,160 --> 01:25:11,440
they're that's where we're going to really need to look at the the stations,

1468
01:25:11,640 --> 01:25:14,840
the busy stations, the busy departments.

1469
01:25:15,040 --> 01:25:16,920
But I think you should really see everything improve.

1470
01:25:16,920 --> 01:25:19,680
I think you should see overall health and wellness improve.

1471
01:25:19,680 --> 01:25:21,440
I think you should see,

1472
01:25:21,640 --> 01:25:24,880
you know, we know that obesity is related to more lost work days.

1473
01:25:25,080 --> 01:25:26,840
And I think it was like an average like

1474
01:25:27,040 --> 01:25:30,560
fifteen hundred dollars more per firefighter per year that is obese for

1475
01:25:30,760 --> 01:25:33,280
related to injuries, I think is what it was calculated at.

1476
01:25:33,480 --> 01:25:34,440
So you should see those.

1477
01:25:34,640 --> 01:25:38,560
You should see less, you know, less obesity and more

1478
01:25:38,760 --> 01:25:42,720
and less injuries because so much of so much of the injuries are driven.

1479
01:25:42,920 --> 01:25:45,640
So many of the injuries are driven by things like

1480
01:25:45,840 --> 01:25:49,560
like musculoskeletal strains, sprains, those types of things.

1481
01:25:49,560 --> 01:25:53,280
So I think you I think and I don't know, you know, and I get it.

1482
01:25:53,280 --> 01:25:55,120
We need the empirical evidence to back this up.

1483
01:25:55,120 --> 01:25:58,960
So we're trying to design the studies in a way that we can can capture these pieces.

1484
01:25:59,160 --> 01:26:02,360
But I think you would overall see everything

1485
01:26:02,560 --> 01:26:06,960
like fewer workers, compensation claims, less likelihood of people going out

1486
01:26:06,960 --> 01:26:08,520
on disability, those types of things.

1487
01:26:08,720 --> 01:26:13,000
I mean, I think it will improve overall mental health

1488
01:26:13,200 --> 01:26:17,440
injury like I my hypothesis is all of it would get better.

1489
01:26:17,440 --> 01:26:19,800
But we'll have to see. It's an empirical question.

1490
01:26:20,000 --> 01:26:20,800
Yeah.

1491
01:26:21,000 --> 01:26:22,080
I ask it.

1492
01:26:22,280 --> 01:26:26,560
I think, again, going back to what makes sense, I mean, obviously it makes sense

1493
01:26:26,760 --> 01:26:28,080
with the injuries was interesting.

1494
01:26:28,080 --> 01:26:30,200
You asked me about sleep when I was doing sport science.

1495
01:26:30,200 --> 01:26:32,040
The other thing that I did learn is that

1496
01:26:32,240 --> 01:26:35,560
when you sleep is after breaking down the muscles through training, it's when

1497
01:26:35,760 --> 01:26:39,760
you're rebuilding and so your muscles, your tendons, your ligaments,

1498
01:26:39,960 --> 01:26:42,880
that's when they rebuild after the stresses of the day.

1499
01:26:43,080 --> 01:26:46,680
So if you're taking away that rebuilding time through sleep,

1500
01:26:46,680 --> 01:26:49,000
they always say, oh, it's always the fit guys that get hurt.

1501
01:26:49,200 --> 01:26:52,240
It is because we take our training seriously.

1502
01:26:52,240 --> 01:26:55,560
And not only are we pulling hose and doing drills out in the yard,

1503
01:26:55,760 --> 01:26:59,960
then we're lifting weights or doing CrossFit or ultra marathons or whatever

1504
01:27:00,160 --> 01:27:05,400
the person's thing is. And so there is it's not if it's when you will get a breakdown.

1505
01:27:05,600 --> 01:27:08,160
But again, if you give more rest and recovery,

1506
01:27:08,360 --> 01:27:12,640
your at your firefighters have become become greater athletes because

1507
01:27:12,640 --> 01:27:13,800
then they're going to be more resilient.

1508
01:27:13,800 --> 01:27:15,200
They're not going to get hurt as much.

1509
01:27:15,200 --> 01:27:18,760
I mean, again, from the strength and conditioning gurus have had on here,

1510
01:27:18,760 --> 01:27:23,240
they validated that completely, even with the sporting athletes they work with.

1511
01:27:23,440 --> 01:27:26,720
So I will say because I've heard that, oh, if you don't work out,

1512
01:27:26,920 --> 01:27:31,200
you're not going to get working out. And I'm like, well, yeah.

1513
01:27:31,400 --> 01:27:35,560
But if you look at injuries, so, yeah, if you work out,

1514
01:27:35,760 --> 01:27:41,120
you're more likely to get a some type of like overall rate of injuries higher.

1515
01:27:41,320 --> 01:27:44,680
But they tend to be minor sprains, strains, those types of things.

1516
01:27:44,680 --> 01:27:47,760
If you work out particularly, we asked specifically working out on duty,

1517
01:27:47,960 --> 01:27:52,960
you are half as likely as your colleagues that don't do that to get a fire ground

1518
01:27:53,160 --> 01:27:59,040
injury, so that catastrophic fire ground break or whatever.

1519
01:27:59,240 --> 01:28:03,720
So I think that at the end of the day, like, yeah, you might have a strain or sprain.

1520
01:28:03,920 --> 01:28:07,360
And I think a lot of the programs that really get like knocked for,

1521
01:28:07,360 --> 01:28:09,440
oh, you're always you're going to get hurt, you're going to get hurt.

1522
01:28:09,640 --> 01:28:11,880
It's because they're programs that people love to do.

1523
01:28:11,880 --> 01:28:13,680
And so they do them more like, yes,

1524
01:28:13,680 --> 01:28:18,000
the more that you work out, the more often you work out, the more

1525
01:28:18,200 --> 01:28:22,280
the more likely it is you're going to get injured because that's what you're doing.

1526
01:28:22,480 --> 01:28:24,880
But the more time I spend watching TV,

1527
01:28:24,880 --> 01:28:28,520
the more likely I'm going to get injured spending, you know, I'm going to get injured

1528
01:28:28,720 --> 01:28:31,560
watching TV because that's what I'm spending my time doing.

1529
01:28:31,760 --> 01:28:36,560
So I think the overall like I would much rather have someone get that strain or

1530
01:28:36,560 --> 01:28:40,360
sprain that can be rehabbed properly and that they are able to fix that faster

1531
01:28:40,560 --> 01:28:43,280
than a major fire ground injury.

1532
01:28:43,280 --> 01:28:44,760
Yeah, I agree completely.

1533
01:28:44,960 --> 01:28:47,760
People would say, you know, you work out on shift and say,

1534
01:28:47,760 --> 01:28:49,440
aren't you afraid you're going to be tired?

1535
01:28:49,640 --> 01:28:51,880
I'm like, no, I'm probably going to be fit

1536
01:28:51,880 --> 01:28:54,400
at the most people in the fire ground, even though I'm tired.

1537
01:28:54,600 --> 01:28:58,080
And that's the difference. Right. Right.

1538
01:28:58,280 --> 01:29:01,680
All right. Well, then let's let me see here.

1539
01:29:01,680 --> 01:29:04,960
What else? So, yeah, and that's the last thing I want to hit then, really,

1540
01:29:05,160 --> 01:29:09,560
because we've obviously painted the picture of how this is an impact that can

1541
01:29:09,560 --> 01:29:13,280
either continue to be negative in the fire service or create some incredible

1542
01:29:13,280 --> 01:29:17,520
improvements, everything from health to mental health, financial savings.

1543
01:29:17,720 --> 01:29:22,880
But here we are now at an amazing opportunity to actually start doing some research.

1544
01:29:23,080 --> 01:29:27,640
Now you've got departments like Boca, sorry, Boynton Beach and then Gainesville

1545
01:29:27,840 --> 01:29:29,840
in a few months that are literally about to.

1546
01:29:30,040 --> 01:29:32,080
So if you could capture them right before.

1547
01:29:32,280 --> 01:29:35,680
And I think I think UF or somewhere around there might be.

1548
01:29:35,880 --> 01:29:37,120
You know, we've got an option then.

1549
01:29:37,120 --> 01:29:42,840
So to, you know, to create studies to kind of further,

1550
01:29:43,040 --> 01:29:46,720
I mean, really capture this horrible system, hopefully, as we start going away

1551
01:29:46,920 --> 01:29:51,600
from it, what needs to happen, who are the governing bodies and what should be

1552
01:29:51,800 --> 01:29:55,160
the studies so we can capture this information because we didn't before.

1553
01:29:55,360 --> 01:29:57,080
All we've got is today.

1554
01:29:57,280 --> 01:30:01,400
So what we what what has been working well, and I've actually talked to the people

1555
01:30:01,600 --> 01:30:05,600
in Florida, is we're creating a what are the standard measures that we should all

1556
01:30:05,600 --> 01:30:11,680
be using so then we can compare because it's the number of variations is like

1557
01:30:11,880 --> 01:30:16,440
insane, the number of variations, even of shift schedules that you can do.

1558
01:30:16,640 --> 01:30:20,160
So we're looking at how can we standardize data collection on that?

1559
01:30:20,360 --> 01:30:24,160
One of the things that we have in that we have a proposal in on, but we also are

1560
01:30:24,160 --> 01:30:27,920
putting it in and moving forward with an IRB just because we need the data as it

1561
01:30:28,120 --> 01:30:33,360
evolves is to do all right, let's study these things pre and post

1562
01:30:33,360 --> 01:30:37,520
with surveys, let's study pre and post where we are in everything from mental

1563
01:30:37,720 --> 01:30:40,960
and physical health to injury and then look three months out.

1564
01:30:40,960 --> 01:30:42,400
How does it improve sleep?

1565
01:30:42,400 --> 01:30:45,240
Does it improve all these other health parameters?

1566
01:30:45,440 --> 01:30:47,600
And look at what data we have available.

1567
01:30:47,800 --> 01:30:50,080
So a couple of departments I've talked to have

1568
01:30:50,280 --> 01:30:56,600
can access for like fifteen eighty two medical data and their blood work data,

1569
01:30:56,600 --> 01:31:01,360
those types of things, but even like at the most basic, let's get the survey data out.

1570
01:31:01,360 --> 01:31:05,120
Let's get people to answer the questions about where things where things fall.

1571
01:31:05,120 --> 01:31:07,520
So then we can start looking at some of the relationships.

1572
01:31:07,720 --> 01:31:10,920
So we're going to standardize data collection processes and protocols.

1573
01:31:11,120 --> 01:31:14,680
The study that we have that's currently under review is studying a couple of

1574
01:31:14,680 --> 01:31:17,760
departments, they're getting ready to change their shift to start time,

1575
01:31:17,960 --> 01:31:21,880
but developing that protocol so anyone can use it and then they could just put it

1576
01:31:22,080 --> 01:31:26,720
in once you have the data in and cleaned, you just basically can run,

1577
01:31:26,720 --> 01:31:32,320
you know, with the same the magic statisticians can run the analysis

1578
01:31:32,320 --> 01:31:33,280
for the different departments.

1579
01:31:33,480 --> 01:31:35,960
So let's you know, let's look at it, let's quantify it.

1580
01:31:35,960 --> 01:31:38,720
And then I think the faster we're able to quantify it,

1581
01:31:38,720 --> 01:31:41,600
the further people are going to be able to move forward.

1582
01:31:41,800 --> 01:31:44,040
Yeah, I think I mean, there's a need for capturing it.

1583
01:31:44,040 --> 01:31:45,680
But at the same time, I love that phrase,

1584
01:31:45,680 --> 01:31:47,920
you know, don't wait for science to prove what you already know.

1585
01:31:48,040 --> 01:31:52,520
And so I know some departments are just going to wait and see how this department

1586
01:31:52,720 --> 01:31:54,280
does and you're talking about years.

1587
01:31:54,280 --> 01:31:57,120
But meanwhile, you're still burying your your firefighters.

1588
01:31:57,320 --> 01:32:03,640
So, you know, I think the the research is important, but also not waiting for some

1589
01:32:03,840 --> 01:32:08,520
incredible white paper to validate the fact that, you know, you can stop killing

1590
01:32:08,720 --> 01:32:14,480
your firefighters and like mechanistically, I can't imagine one a scenario

1591
01:32:14,680 --> 01:32:19,000
where it's going to get worse, you know, like there's not one.

1592
01:32:19,200 --> 01:32:22,360
There are some things that I understand, like, all right, we probably do want to

1593
01:32:22,360 --> 01:32:26,160
wait for that, you know, does this actually increase carcinogen

1594
01:32:26,360 --> 01:32:28,520
exposure or decrease it, those types of things.

1595
01:32:28,720 --> 01:32:34,600
But for this, like, I can't imagine a negative like you're not going to start

1596
01:32:34,800 --> 01:32:36,720
to people become more well rested.

1597
01:32:36,720 --> 01:32:39,800
And so then you're going to get more injuries like that doesn't mechanistically

1598
01:32:40,000 --> 01:32:44,520
make sense. So I don't think that's I think that more departments,

1599
01:32:44,720 --> 01:32:46,760
the faster we can get departments to change the better.

1600
01:32:46,960 --> 01:32:49,360
But I think you're always you know, it's that normal curve, right?

1601
01:32:49,360 --> 01:32:50,880
You're going to have your early adopters

1602
01:32:50,880 --> 01:32:55,440
and then you're going to have the people who need who need some more of the data.

1603
01:32:55,440 --> 01:33:00,440
So then we'll get that and then we'll get then and then we'll light it on fire.

1604
01:33:00,640 --> 01:33:03,520
Yeah, well, speaking of early adopters,

1605
01:33:03,520 --> 01:33:06,280
one of the beautiful things that I've heard, some of the people that had the

1606
01:33:06,280 --> 01:33:09,440
courage and this is what we need now, only say there's no downside.

1607
01:33:09,440 --> 01:33:12,520
The downside is you got to look in the mirror and say it's time for me to advocate

1608
01:33:12,720 --> 01:33:16,000
for myself, my family and my people if I'm in a leadership position,

1609
01:33:16,280 --> 01:33:18,880
because that's all that's left, you know, and if you don't have courage,

1610
01:33:18,880 --> 01:33:21,920
then step down and let someone else come into it.

1611
01:33:21,920 --> 01:33:25,760
You know, but and then also with such a fragmented profession that it's also,

1612
01:33:25,760 --> 01:33:26,680
you know, communication.

1613
01:33:26,680 --> 01:33:30,320
And I've been very vocal about how disappointed I am that our union

1614
01:33:30,320 --> 01:33:33,600
that beats their chest has never fucking talked about standardizing the workweek.

1615
01:33:33,800 --> 01:33:34,840
Shame on you.

1616
01:33:35,040 --> 01:33:39,320
So it's up to us from the firefighter through to the commissioners to all have

1617
01:33:39,520 --> 01:33:44,120
a courage to say, debunk our own fairy tales, our own myths and then say enough is

1618
01:33:44,320 --> 01:33:46,760
enough, you know, we're going to force this change.

1619
01:33:46,760 --> 01:33:51,000
But with the early adopters, a big selling point is we have a recruitment crisis

1620
01:33:51,000 --> 01:33:52,520
at the moment. Oh, my God.

1621
01:33:52,720 --> 01:33:57,200
I think that's, you know, personally, my opinion is that a big part is that young

1622
01:33:57,200 --> 01:34:00,680
people are very smart with access to all the information and they're looking

1623
01:34:00,680 --> 01:34:04,480
at the fire service going, this doesn't look great, you know, and it's the

1624
01:34:04,680 --> 01:34:06,480
profession is, but the environment isn't.

1625
01:34:06,680 --> 01:34:12,840
So by going to a 24 72, these departments are seeing people lining up around

1626
01:34:13,040 --> 01:34:15,240
their door again, just like the good old days.

1627
01:34:15,240 --> 01:34:18,920
Yep. Oh, 100 percent recruitment and retention.

1628
01:34:19,120 --> 01:34:24,080
I mean, I think that that we have to make it just has to appear more.

1629
01:34:24,280 --> 01:34:26,880
I mean, every meeting I'm in that comes up

1630
01:34:27,080 --> 01:34:30,240
as a key issue that departments across the country are facing.

1631
01:34:30,440 --> 01:34:32,520
And so I think anything and everything we

1632
01:34:32,720 --> 01:34:37,400
can do to make this look like a more attractive, be a more attractive job,

1633
01:34:37,600 --> 01:34:42,520
allow more. I mean, I know that like conceptually older generations are like

1634
01:34:42,520 --> 01:34:44,160
a work life balance. We never had that.

1635
01:34:44,160 --> 01:34:46,200
Well, just because we didn't doesn't mean they shouldn't.

1636
01:34:46,400 --> 01:34:48,680
And maybe it's time we start learning from them.

1637
01:34:48,880 --> 01:34:51,800
Like, you know, sometimes I'm like, oh, work life balance.

1638
01:34:52,000 --> 01:34:55,440
I don't. And I'm like, wait a minute, maybe I should be taking the time off.

1639
01:34:55,640 --> 01:35:00,400
You know, maybe I don't have to wake up every morning and

1640
01:35:00,600 --> 01:35:02,600
get an hour's worth of work in before the kids get up.

1641
01:35:02,800 --> 01:35:06,800
Maybe I could drink coffee and kick my feet up.

1642
01:35:07,000 --> 01:35:10,680
So I think that there's some really cool things coming with the next generation.

1643
01:35:10,880 --> 01:35:12,640
And I do think they have more of an

1644
01:35:12,640 --> 01:35:15,440
understanding of things like the importance of sleep, because I think a lot

1645
01:35:15,440 --> 01:35:18,160
of the people, honestly, who are not pushing for this yet,

1646
01:35:18,360 --> 01:35:21,760
don't understand how important sleep is.

1647
01:35:22,000 --> 01:35:25,320
You know, it seems like that's just I mean, sleep is a luxury.

1648
01:35:25,320 --> 01:35:26,360
You can sleep when you die.

1649
01:35:26,560 --> 01:35:29,240
Well, you will die sooner if you don't get enough sleep.

1650
01:35:29,440 --> 01:35:35,080
So, yeah, well, I always tell the ones that are resistant to not only the sleep

1651
01:35:35,080 --> 01:35:39,000
conversation, but also the mental health conversation about addressing some things

1652
01:35:39,000 --> 01:35:43,880
that you've just buried down and filled alcohol over is performance.

1653
01:35:44,080 --> 01:35:47,160
You know, there's a lot of guys that, you know, wear their leather helmets and grow

1654
01:35:47,160 --> 01:35:51,440
out their moustaches, but they talk about it's for them being in their chest.

1655
01:35:51,440 --> 01:35:53,320
And so, OK, well, let's break that down for a second.

1656
01:35:53,360 --> 01:35:55,040
If you're worried about performance,

1657
01:35:55,080 --> 01:35:58,120
then you need to address the things that are crazy in your mind.

1658
01:35:58,120 --> 01:36:01,760
So you can actually have a relaxed mind to get into a flow state and maybe

1659
01:36:01,760 --> 01:36:05,520
visualize that bedroom you're searching and finding that child under the bed.

1660
01:36:05,720 --> 01:36:08,280
But the same thing applies to sleep deprivation.

1661
01:36:08,280 --> 01:36:09,920
Find your favorite athlete.

1662
01:36:10,120 --> 01:36:14,760
I guarantee you they've got psychologists and all kinds of people working on their

1663
01:36:14,960 --> 01:36:19,120
sleep at a guy on the show, Nick Littlehales, who literally travels with teams

1664
01:36:19,320 --> 01:36:22,680
and they have their own bedding role for the athlete that they put on the floor.

1665
01:36:22,880 --> 01:36:24,360
So they optimize their sleep.

1666
01:36:24,560 --> 01:36:29,080
But you're telling me you're advocating for a shittier work week that will make

1667
01:36:29,280 --> 01:36:32,720
you far worse cognitively, and yet it's for them.

1668
01:36:32,920 --> 01:36:36,040
And if it's really for them, doesn't that include your family?

1669
01:36:36,040 --> 01:36:39,000
So why are you pushing against the very thing that will get you home more?

1670
01:36:39,200 --> 01:36:41,480
So even all those conversations, you know,

1671
01:36:41,480 --> 01:36:45,840
it's this rah rah bullshit that I'm so fucking sick of rather than truly booing.

1672
01:36:45,840 --> 01:36:47,000
OK, it's for them.

1673
01:36:47,040 --> 01:36:48,880
Well, then let's actually look what that looks like.

1674
01:36:49,080 --> 01:36:52,360
What are the high performing groups around the world do for them?

1675
01:36:52,560 --> 01:36:56,640
Self care is a huge part, because if you're not in the highest level

1676
01:36:56,840 --> 01:37:01,160
of physical and mental performance, you might fail and you might push that

1677
01:37:01,160 --> 01:37:06,360
wrong drug or miss the tube or miss a child in the search or shit the bed

1678
01:37:06,360 --> 01:37:08,800
while you're holding your, you know, your extrication tools.

1679
01:37:09,000 --> 01:37:13,920
So even from that point of view, the naysayers, OK, so you're literally voting

1680
01:37:14,120 --> 01:37:18,040
to be a shittier firefighter. That's what you're saying.

1681
01:37:18,240 --> 01:37:20,480
I yeah, that sounds good.

1682
01:37:20,680 --> 01:37:23,040
That sounds makes sense to me.

1683
01:37:23,240 --> 01:37:25,200
Yeah, that was a rant. I'm sorry.

1684
01:37:25,400 --> 01:37:30,480
No, I mean, I can't I can't disagree with you, but I think things are changing.

1685
01:37:30,480 --> 01:37:32,560
Like I'm going to be.

1686
01:37:33,720 --> 01:37:37,360
Optimistic, I think we're going to I think I think it's changing,

1687
01:37:37,360 --> 01:37:41,520
like I think this is culture change, and I think it's, you know, having you beat

1688
01:37:41,720 --> 01:37:44,360
this drum and getting the.

1689
01:37:44,560 --> 01:37:49,280
You know, getting data in the hands of people, all that kind of stuff that I think

1690
01:37:49,480 --> 01:37:51,040
will.

1691
01:37:51,840 --> 01:37:55,000
Move the needle like I think we I think we.

1692
01:37:55,000 --> 01:38:00,440
I think that we are at a point in chain of change.

1693
01:38:00,640 --> 01:38:01,560
Yeah, I agree.

1694
01:38:01,760 --> 01:38:04,960
And this is why these conversations need to happen, because there are a lot of

1695
01:38:04,960 --> 01:38:08,640
conversations about how great the job is and it is, you know, I lived it.

1696
01:38:08,840 --> 01:38:10,720
But these are the uncomfortable

1697
01:38:10,720 --> 01:38:14,040
conversations that we have to have about literally reframing the way we think

1698
01:38:14,040 --> 01:38:18,080
about this stuff. But if we want to, you know, improve our health and performance

1699
01:38:18,080 --> 01:38:21,680
and stop going to so many funerals with bagpipes and last bells,

1700
01:38:21,880 --> 01:38:23,240
then this is the conversation.

1701
01:38:23,240 --> 01:38:26,120
This is the courage that a firefighter has.

1702
01:38:26,320 --> 01:38:28,080
This is where it needs to be applied is

1703
01:38:28,280 --> 01:38:32,360
to finally advocate and push change and get this work week fixed.

1704
01:38:32,360 --> 01:38:34,680
And then we can start hitting some of the other areas.

1705
01:38:34,880 --> 01:38:37,080
Yeah, I agree.

1706
01:38:37,280 --> 01:38:39,400
Any closing thoughts, any other areas you

1707
01:38:39,600 --> 01:38:43,600
want to kind of throw in there before we close this up?

1708
01:38:43,800 --> 01:38:46,440
I think we covered all of the topics.

1709
01:38:46,640 --> 01:38:50,680
I would just say that, like, I think my closing is that like this is change

1710
01:38:50,680 --> 01:38:55,440
happening. You know, it's not happening as fast as you or I would want,

1711
01:38:55,640 --> 01:38:57,200
but it's happening pretty fast.

1712
01:38:57,400 --> 01:39:01,360
Like if you look traditionally at the whole, you know, the tradition of the fire

1713
01:39:01,560 --> 01:39:04,800
service and and things were slow to change, like.

1714
01:39:05,000 --> 01:39:09,200
I think we're going at a pretty good clip comparatively.

1715
01:39:09,400 --> 01:39:10,840
Like, is it as fast as business?

1716
01:39:11,040 --> 01:39:12,400
No, but.

1717
01:39:12,880 --> 01:39:15,960
I'm going to I will remain optimistic

1718
01:39:16,160 --> 01:39:19,640
that we are on the precipice of change.

1719
01:39:19,640 --> 01:39:23,440
I said the revolution has begun on my post because I believe that I really do.

1720
01:39:23,640 --> 01:39:25,600
So the paradigm shift.

1721
01:39:25,800 --> 01:39:27,520
You're having a podcast about this.

1722
01:39:27,560 --> 01:39:30,080
I've been invited to speak on this multiple times.

1723
01:39:30,280 --> 01:39:33,400
And now there are several Joel and

1724
01:39:33,920 --> 01:39:39,200
Joel Billings was funded by FEMA to basically redo the sleep.

1725
01:39:40,960 --> 01:39:45,720
Like the summary and sleep that Kerry Kuehl's group did decades, probably two

1726
01:39:45,720 --> 01:39:50,280
decades ago, he's updating that now and bringing together sleep scientists to

1727
01:39:50,480 --> 01:39:54,320
discuss like what we need to be talking about, like, oh, that would not have

1728
01:39:54,520 --> 01:39:56,600
happened 10 years ago.

1729
01:39:56,800 --> 01:39:58,560
Brilliant. Well, I'm so excited.

1730
01:39:58,560 --> 01:39:59,640
So thank you so much.

1731
01:39:59,640 --> 01:40:01,000
I mean, obviously, we just kind of really

1732
01:40:01,200 --> 01:40:05,800
focused on this one particular topic this time, but hopefully now people, you know,

1733
01:40:05,800 --> 01:40:09,280
when they have that, I need the research will understand where there is research

1734
01:40:09,280 --> 01:40:12,240
and then where there's not. And obviously, the if you really want

1735
01:40:12,240 --> 01:40:16,240
research, I've got Rachel Mulquall from the Navy, Kirk Parsley from Navy Seals,

1736
01:40:16,440 --> 01:40:21,160
Alison Breger from the Army, you know, I've got sleep people, you know, from very

1737
01:40:21,360 --> 01:40:24,480
comparable positions if you absolutely need them.

1738
01:40:24,680 --> 01:40:26,080
Yeah, they figured it out.

1739
01:40:26,280 --> 01:40:27,040
We will, too.

1740
01:40:27,240 --> 01:40:30,280
Absolutely. But I want to thank you so much because this was needed.

1741
01:40:30,480 --> 01:40:35,080
You know, this this hopefully now will kind of appease some of those those

1742
01:40:35,280 --> 01:40:39,120
needs for research and understand that, you know, in areas we just don't have it.

1743
01:40:39,120 --> 01:40:41,640
And then, you know, in other areas, take a step back and go, well,

1744
01:40:41,640 --> 01:40:43,400
this is actually common sense.

1745
01:40:43,600 --> 01:40:47,880
So and then in other areas still, you've got the papers that you talked about.

1746
01:40:48,080 --> 01:40:51,880
And even the research that we don't have yet, like we have a close enough

1747
01:40:52,080 --> 01:40:56,040
approximation that we can make pretty, pretty certain statements on.

1748
01:40:56,240 --> 01:40:58,280
So, well, thank you so much.

1749
01:40:58,280 --> 01:40:59,720
I mean, it's been such an important

1750
01:40:59,920 --> 01:41:04,360
conversation and an absolutely invaluable part of this kind of group of

1751
01:41:04,560 --> 01:41:09,880
conversations to hopefully make the case where people will understand the importance

1752
01:41:09,880 --> 01:41:14,400
of this work week conversation and advocate for change in their own department.

1753
01:41:14,600 --> 01:41:16,360
Well, and thanks for continuing to push

1754
01:41:16,560 --> 01:41:18,880
this issue, because I know it gets frustrating.

1755
01:41:19,080 --> 01:41:23,120
Occasionally I have like these what the fuck are we doing moments like

1756
01:41:23,320 --> 01:41:24,480
nothing's changing.

1757
01:41:24,680 --> 01:41:28,160
But then I look around and I'm like, no, this is this is progress.

1758
01:41:28,360 --> 01:41:31,080
It's slow, but it's progress.

1759
01:41:31,080 --> 01:41:43,600
It wouldn't be happening without you doing stuff like this.