Sleep and Your Health

Welcome to the Talking Total Farmer Health podcast from AgriSafe Network. At AgriSafe, we work to protect the people that feed the world by supporting the health and safety professionals, ensuring access to preventative services for farm families and the agriculture community. Before we dive into this episode, join us for this quick ad.

Hi everyone, today we are going to talk about sleep and how sleep deprivation can affect your health and safety. So, we’re going to hear from Susan Harris, an extension agent from Nebraska. Susan, would you please tell us a little bit about your work?

Sure. I am the one and only rural health wellness and safety educator for Nebraska extension. I think it was a bit of an experiment. I've been doing this for six years and I get to educate on anything related to health, wellness and/or safety. So that's a broad scope and things I have chosen have been all terrain vehicle and side by side safety, health, mental health, and stress awareness, and coping. And my biggest passion is sleep, and sleep deprivation, and what that does to us, and how we can get better sleep.

Wonderful. So it sounds like an experiment that is going well since you've been here for six years then?

Yes. And I tell you what, this sleep topic is high in demand. I mean, everybody, wants to get more sleep.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that when people think about any kind of safety or risk concern, like sleep doesn't come to the forefront of their mind. So really educating them about the risks of not getting enough sleep, especially in the agriculture world.

Exactly.

Where I mean, anything can go wrong at any time. And when you're sleep deprived, of course, that just -

It’s dangerous enough the way it is. And then when you throw in, you know, being sleep deprived, you're making poor choices, you're klutzy or you're not going to function and do things as you normally would if you're not getting enough sleep. So yeah, it's it's tough to get farmers and ranchers especially to stop what they're doing, let it go for the day, get some sleep.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. There's always something that has to be done. Yeah.

Always weighing on their mind.

It is. But gosh, we just were trying to find ways to help them get better sleep. We've actually we have a grant through CS-CASH, Central State Center for Agricultural Safety and Health that we are currently gathering data using these, they're called actigraph devices that we have 41 participants wearing these to measure sleep in a week of their busy time and a week of their not so busy time.

Oh that's good.

We can compare just to get that data to tell us, how much sleep are they possibly really missing out on during harvest or planting or calving?

Yeah. So what kind is it mainly geared towards those who are in harvest? Because we know when they're in harvest. Oh, boy, they do. They have long hours.

They really do. And we didn't focus down that specific for this first pilot project. This is just the first time anyone's ever done anything like this. We have talked about how, if this needs, if this goes further, we need to narrow the scope and choose which type of farmer or rancher that we're going to focus on because we have everything from people who raise goats, cattle, crops. You know, it's just a big gamut.

Yeah, because that's a that definitely is a wide range because myself, as a cow calf producer, there are times, you know, right now Missouri's having an ice storm. So and we're calving. So you it's always on your mind of, okay, they're going to drop a calf, you know, right in in the frozen part of the night or the thing that I think of during cattle calving is you've got a heifer that is waiting to calve and you're checking her every 2 to 3 hours. So that compared to someone who is during harvest, who doesn't get any sleep like in a row, is it is it better to be able to grab a couple of hours at a time or just go at it?

It's better to grab sleep when you can get it. Absolutely. Of course, ideally, I would tell you, it's better to to get it all at once, of course, because you have to go through the light, sleep in the deep sleep and the you know, there are those phases that you get about every hour and a half. And the more that you miss out on the phases, going from light to deep and staying in deep, and then, you know, yeah, the more actually damage it's doing to your whole body. I mean, your sleep cycle is what regulates virtually every system in your body. And when you don't get those really crucial ups and downs of the light sleep and the deeper sleep, your body is missing out on some really crucial functions.

Yeah, I don't think you realize exactly how much sleep can affect you. And because you just become so accustomed to it like it's a normal part of life to wake up tired.

Yeah. And a lot of people say, Oh, I can get by on 4 hours of sleep. I do that all the time. Well-

Almost Like a bragging, right?

Yeah, but what's happening, there are a few people, a very small percentage of people who can do that successfully and don't need that much sleep. But probably what's happening is that you are just surviving, you're barely functioning, you're probably overcaffeinated, compensate, overcompensating for the sleep that you didn't get. And it's just a vicious cycle that you're in. Yeah.

So if this happens where someone really lacks sleep, like truly lack sleep for an extended period of time, what kind of risks? Even just like physical risks and then versus mental, what happens?

It can mean a breakdown of your body functions. You can become ill and there is a very definite link between lack of sleep and physical illness, mental illness, it's all linked together. Everything is hand in hand. And so I think that's what I'm trying to educate people about, is that we don't think about that enough. You know, we always preach about our diet and our getting activity, but nobody ever preaches about sleep. It's always that last priority.

Right?

And when you put it as your first priority or a top priority, you would be amazed at how much better you dysfunction overall, physically, mentally, just emotionally in life generally.

Yeah. Well, think about how grumpy you are when you don't get enough sleep, and like, everything just seems to go wrong after that, doesn't it? Like you just have those days.

Yep. And it can usually tie back to that and think about children. Children is a big one. We see. You know, if I were to ask you or most adults, if I say how many hours of sleep should your kids get? I hear all the time people saying, well, 8 hours. You know, that's what we were taught. 8 hours. No, our children need so many more hours than that, so-

Yeah, they're growing.

Yeah, And, and they're, you know, they have their screens that they're looking at and their active social lives now and sports and things that are keeping them from getting enough sleep. And we're we as parents are probably guilty of letting that happen. And we're we're making our children ill physically, mentally. There are definite correlations between that and bullying and all kinds of situations that you don't want your child to go through.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's to our farmers and producers that are listening, the sleep affects every single aspect of your life. It's it's not just, hey, I'm going to be in a bad mood tomorrow because I didn't get enough sleep or, you know, maybe drowsy driving type thing. It's actual physical illnesses. In children, it can be almost developmental if it's on a consistent basis then. Right?

Absolutely. And that's something that I hope that people will start to consider, for sure.

Yeah, it's from personal experience. I was in a really bad car crash and I didn't sleep well for the first five years afterwards. And it was mostly it was pain. And I remember that first night that I feel like I actually hit REM sleep. I had not had that much energy. I mean, I couldn't even remember what it was like to feel that much energy. So these farmers who are just, I mean, working before daylight and then after they come home, they eat, they fall asleep at the dinner table. What kind of advice would you have for them? Maybe taking small steps at least to to get more sleep as a goal.

Right. Well, I do have my 30 tips and tricks and I do tell people, yeah, it would be ideal if all of us followed every single one of these. I don't even follow every single one because I'm sure. But what I have done and what many people have told me they've done is. They've adapted, like you said, baby steps. They'll choose one and they'll just try it for a week or two weeks. And when they've got that sort of in their routine, they'll choose another one. And as you just keep layering on these, it's almost like an armor of helpful tips, helpful things, routines that you can do. It's amazing how much you can accomplish in your sleep life, without a pill. That’s the thing. You don't need a pill. You just need very simple things, like making sure that you are getting up at the same time every morning if possible, and getting sunlight in your eyes. People don't realize how much light and temperature regulate our sleep. We need to sleep in super chilly rooms. A lot of people think they need to be warm and toasty, but that's not our bodies need to cool down a couple of degrees to sleep. Yeah, just really, really basic. Simple changes even in your daytime routine that you can make can make a big difference in how you sleep. And that's something that maybe a lot of people don't consider.

Yeah. So it sounds like you're kind of saying making the small changes turns into habits which just turn into normal, everyday life then.

Yes. And trust me, I was a sleep deprived person. This is probably why it's part of my passion. And once I researched it all through my graduate degree and I've interviewed so many experts that I have gathered lots of information over the years, and it has taken me all these years to sort of implement these things into my life. It's not an overnight fix.

Sure. Yes.

But the more that you can plant in your your daily routine, the better off you will be. I can say that because I'm living proof.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad we had this conversation. And we're bringing this to the forefront for farmers because it is almost like sleep is expendable. And that's that's the first thing to go. When you don't have enough time, I'll just wake up early or stay up later. So being able to just like give that knowledge to people to make the realization that it is truly important.

Yes, that's the goal.

Is there anything really any more specific that you want to give, like any tips or something very important that's on your heart that you want to talk to our farmers about?

Well, if they would like to access these tips they can find it at go.unl.edu/sleeptips . All one word. And they you can look at the whole list of 30 and see if any of them appeal to you and just try one at a time and see what helps.

Yeah, start with the easiest one that fits in your schedule and I think we should probably put that link in our show notes too. So it will be easily accessible to our listeners. Wonderful. So Susan, we thank you so much for being a guest on the Total Farmer Health Podcast. Thank you for agreeing to give our listeners a little bit more knowledge about something that's going to benefit not only their physical health, but their mental as well.

Thank you for helping to spread the knowledge.

Thank you. All right, everybody, that’s all for today. Thank you again for tuning in to another episode. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast to hear more from AgriSafe on the health and safety issues impacting agricultural workers. If you’d like to suggest topics, or have a story you’d like to share, contact us by email at INFO AT AGRISAFE DOT ORG, and title your email “T T F H Podcast.” To see more from AgriSafe, including webinars and our newsletter, visit w w w dot agrisafe dot org. This episode was created by AgriSafe Network. Script arranged by Laura Siegel, hosted by Carey Portell, edited by Joel Sharpton, with special guest Susan Harris.