Shownotes Transcript
The views expressed by myself and the guests of this podcast do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government. Welcome to White Coat Warriors. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Myers. In this podcast, we talk about human performance optimization and training paradigms for you, the young medical professionals, and how you can use it in your own professional practices to help yourselves and your clients.
Hey everyone, and welcome to another exciting episode of White Coat Warriors. Here on WCW today, we have another great one for you. But before we get into it, if you like what we're doing, feel free to give us a five-star review or tickle that bell or give us a like, no matter what the platform you're listening to us on. And today, we have the great Megan Louts with us. Man, she's just a rock star when it comes to being a dietician. So she's the head of Rescue RD.
She's a summa cum laude graduate from Logan University and magna cum laude from James Madison and has over 10 years of tactical and fire rescue dietetic experience. And on top of that, she's a certified strength and conditioning specialist from the NSCA. Man, that is an amazing resume here, Megan. Glad to have you. Thank you.
I'm happy to be here. You make me sound like I'm really good at stuff. You are. That's why I've asked you on here. I've seen you talk, gosh, God knows how many times. Back in 20, I was the first time I saw you speak talking about the caffeine within firefighter populations. And that was very, very well done. Thank you. And ever since then, I try to catch your talks whenever I can.
So, yeah, and that I just hope you can impart some knowledge with us here. So before we kind of get into all the fun stuff with it, I kind of gave you a little bit of a synopsis. So why don't you kind of tell us a little bit more about yourself and your profession?
Sure. Yeah. So I am a registered dietitian civilian, um, and I specialize in first responders. So fire and police specifically, um, of course, corrections and dispatch, they all sneak in there. Um, I work full time for Fairfax County fire and police, which is a relatively large department just outside of DC in Virginia. Um,
And then I have my side business, Rescue RD, where I do consulting to departments across the country because fire and police nutrition is a huge gap in the market for dieticians who can adequately speak to shift work. And there's a lot of carryover to med students, for sure. Yeah. I think the key you said is shift work. And I think we will dig into that in a minute. That's kind of one of the crux of it.
I think the intersection between first responders, police, and definitely young medical professionals. So, but, you know, within that, it kind of, it's going to be a question we have to ask right off the bat. What is it like to work with firefighters?
Oh, you're never bored. It's the dream. It's my dream at least. Like I wear leggings to work. I get to curse at work. You know, it's always, you know, joking back and forth. And it always surprises them when you have a little snippy comment right back at them. Like they never expect it. And it's just, I live to torture first responders. Oh, yeah. So tell us a little bit. Do you got any good stories?
Oh gosh. It depends on where you want to go with that. I've got all kinds of stories, just in the caffeine component. Yeah. Do you have energy drink issues like we do in our populations? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're looking at 12, 24 hour shifts for, for our area, you know, up to 96 and some other areas in the country. So lots of energy drinks. And then also just like
a general frustration with the shift work. Like they don't have alternatives on the general internet. They're getting nine to five information on sleep, nutrition, fitness, and it doesn't really accommodate. So they just kind of get frustrated when things don't really fit their lifestyle. So you really have to make those adjustments. Okay.
Yeah. So within that, so you mentioned on that, that shift work and that, you know, the lack of knowledge from the nine to five, what kind of nutritional challenges does that cause with, you know, with your, with your population?
Sure. I mean, the list goes on. Yeah. We've got time. Yeah. We've got lots of time. I hope you have time. Yeah. From a nutrition standpoint. So I think one of the biggest challenges is the expectation that a lot of health professionals have with first responders or even shift workers in general of them. And for medical professionals, you have that of yourself and then you have that of your clients, right. Or your patients. And with that,
You know, the general population, the nine to fivers, right? Wellness is hard enough, right? Like they feel stressed. They have a lot going on. But their level of expectation to perform is not that high.
you know, for the most part, mentally and physically, right? Because first responders are running into burning buildings. They're chasing cops and robbers, right? You know, the expectation to perform is significantly higher, right? But then their baseline that the nine to fivers might be at is significantly lower because of sleep deprivation, exposure to trauma, overall stress load. So they have a significantly bigger gap than wellness professional, or excuse me, nine to fivers have.
And they don't have that information that's tailored to them. When you don't sleep, even one night of bad sleep, research suggests that you see a 24% increase in hunger due to an 18% increase in leptin, the hunger-stimulating hormone, and a 28% increase in ghrelin, the hunger-stimulating hormone. Yep.
With that comes cravings for sugar, sodium, fattier foods, that kind of stuff. So you're fighting those cravings. You're just fighting overall exhaustion. Exposure to trauma. You know, if you were in a pediatric code, you're not going to want to have a salad after that, right? Yeah.
if anything, it's going to be comfort food, right? And you're seeing this, this is not one or two exposures. This is regular exposures or potential multiple exposures in a shift to trauma and that sleep deprivation. So the food choices are impacted. We see that at the stations. We see an increase in caffeine intake. And then the other challenge is flexibility, right? So especially for fire,
only about three, one to 3% of calls are actually fire related. So the chances of them running a fire related call, like a burning building, a dumpster fire, a car fire are very, very unlikely for the structural side. Um, but if it does happen, what do they need to do with their diet? They need to increase their carbs. They need to do more sodium. They might eat quicker sugars. So those adjustments are really challenging when you don't have the education or the knowledge behind it.
Okay. Well, that's definitely a lot to unpack there. So let's kind of break it down into kind of two areas. We'll keep it simple. First one, we'll talk shift work. The next is the flexibility, which I love that you brought that up. So shift
Definitely, when it comes to shift work, I'm glad you brought up sleep. We've had several different conversations across leadership, strength and conditioning, and other medical. And sleep is a common, across all the episodes so far, sleep has come up at least once. And it's really interesting that you bring that up from a nutritional standpoint.
So what are some common strategies that you use with the population, especially on the shift work to really kind of help, you know, you know, kind of help with sleep, you know, effectiveness of the sleep or how they become more efficient with their sleep?
Yeah, there's a couple different things that you can do from a shift work standpoint. Number one, depending on how long you've been doing shift work, we have to evaluate whether or not you need a sleep study or not to see if there's some issues. And the reason I say this is usually people come to my office. They've been with the department 5, 7, 10, 15 years. And a lot of times the big key indicator is their sugar cravings are like out of control.
Like they just feel like they have no control over their sugar cravings specifically. So that's a little bit of a, you know, orange flag for me. And then I'll ask them, you know, if you're getting less than five hours of sleep and you're tossing and turning, to me, that's an indicator that we need to get you a sleep study done. Okay.
And the reason I am really diligent about that is firefighters specifically, we see, I think it's about 38% of firefighters have a sleep disorder and 80% of them don't know that they have it if they do.
And I think this starts to really kind of, and this is anecdotal, like just from my coaching, about 7 to 15 years in is where we're really starting to see that. And 7 to 15 years in is a 30-year-old for some people. 30, 40, way earlier than people think they're going to have sleep disorders.
Um, so getting them to a sleep study while that might take a couple months to get it done. Uh, I had a 30 year old who ate well, worked out well, struggling to lose body fat with major obstructive sleep apnea. No other real warning signs got the sleep study done. Now he's on the CPAP and he feels amazing. So it can happen younger and healthier, you know, quote unquote, healthier people than you think. Um, number two is nap strategies. So, um,
be saying to a first responder or a sleep deprived person, uh, on shift work that you're supposed to do seven to nine hours a night is like, like, okay, cool. Well, I guess screw me then. Right. Like, you know, I'm not doing that. I can't do that. That's not how it works for me. Um, so we really go with seven to nine hours of sleep per day. And if you have to get it in chunks,
And usually the chunks are 20 minutes or 90 minutes. 20 minutes is just like, yes, exactly. 90 minutes is the sleep cycles. You're getting through all four phases of sleep and, you know, waking up not less groggy, less angry than if, you know, if you wake up in the middle of those sleep cycles. And then 20 minutes is like a brain break. Like you're just trying to breathe, chill out, hang out. Right. And that's kind of one place that we'll look at too.
And then the third thing from a nutrition perspective, one thing that I've been talking a lot more about is tart cherry juice. Are you familiar with that? Oh, yeah. Very familiar. Yeah. As a matter of fact, down at Florida State when I was there, two of the professors were studying tart cherry juice. Dr. Arshmondi, he's probably read a lot of his articles. He's part of my doctoral committee.
Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I've been kind of noticing is so I started putting this into my slide specifically for like recruits for fire or police, because even though they technically have a nine to five hour wise, they are very reliant on energy drinks. Yeah.
and there's not a whole lot of education on improving sleep during the academy unless i take care of it right yeah and what i found is tart cherries can help with two things sleep and muscle soreness recruits that's their two big problems right um and anybody over the age of like i don't know 35 starting a new workout program
Same problems, right? So what tartar juice can do, I believe the dose kind of varies. It can be as low as four to 12 ounces maybe. I don't know if you've seen something else. Yeah. Four to 12 ounces. For muscle soreness, it's in the morning and in the evening. And then for sleep, it's in the evening.
But what I've found by telling recruits to do that, they've actually seen a decrease in energy drink use with recruits. Now, I also have energy drink tangents that I force them to sit through. But the tart share issues gives them an out. You know what I mean? Here's a thing that could maybe help improve sleep. And for some people, they, whether it's placebo or not, I'll take it. They're like, this is amazing. My sleep is so much better. Yeah.
My muscle soreness is better. Other people are like, eh. So that is one thing that I've found that has given an alternative. When people don't have the luxury of quantity, they can work on the quality.
Yep. Yeah. Same thing with what we have with our, with the population that I work with is the same thing is they may only have, let's say six hours just due to work, family issues. Okay, fine. How can we optimize those, that six hours? It's usually we talk about nutrition, you know, eating, you know, how soon are you eating dinner or a last meal of the day?
You know, before going to sleep, because again, it's glucose stability, which goes back to kind of what you were saying. You know, usually we find like 90 minutes to two hours before is when you should cut it off.
But that also helps with weight management as well, kind of what you're getting to. Yeah, so from there, it's then talking about sleep hygiene stuff. How's your room? Are you playing with your phone too late? We talked about the different strategies. I've mentioned it before. It's the rule of 6-3-2-1.
Yeah. So little things like that. But yeah, that's really cool. It's I'm glad to hear that. Now,
On the other side, so I know you probably have a nice little bell curve. Well, I would call it almost an inverted bell curve where the median is actually dipped and you have peaks on the ends when it comes to your population where you have those that are very hyper aware of their wellness and their optimization strategies.
Those who do not or they're just naturally gifted or whatever it is, then you have some in the middle. Not as much, but some. And I imagine at least that's what I've seen when I've worked with first responder populations. So let's take this side out and kind of focus on this side, those who don't really know too much and
What are some of the nutritional strategies that you give just in general for just basic wellness purposes with that section of the population? Yeah. Well, I actually kind of see it in a slightly different way. Like there's the kind of green, yellow, red almost. Oh, okay. Yep. Yeah. Like there's the green who if they come to me, like they're just coming for a gold star for the most part. Like they're like, please just like reduce my anxiety and tell me I'm doing everything perfectly. And I'm like, yes, here I am.
And then there's the red and the red is they are, they are in the trenches. Like they, there's a mental health thing going on. Maybe there's a lot of stress that they, they have either no interest or life has beaten them down so much that
that they have no motivation. It's usually a mental health thing. So a lot of times the red flags for those are like divorces, significant weight gains, just general low energy or like a flat affect like yours kind of.
Yeah. And they do not want to come to me. Like it doesn't matter who tells them to go to me. They have no interest in me whatsoever. Okay. And then there's some people in that yellow area, that kind of gray area in the middle where it could be an education thing or it could just be a – like less of an education. Like they know what to eat. It's a targeted education thing. Okay.
So I maybe I guess that's kind of the same thing, but that's how I kind of see it is the green doesn't really need me. The red's not ready for me, but the people who I can adjust in the middle is going to be in the yellow. So in terms of like basically at the end of the day, working with first responders or working with busy people who do shift work.
is better bad decisions, right? And this is from our strength coach, Jake Patton. He says it all the time and I steal it from him and I want it to be mine, but it's not. Excellent. But better bad decisions. And I think that's a great explanation because you are dealing with populations who are very type A, who want to do things by the textbook, right? But the textbook isn't real life,
And that is where a lot of newer medical health professionals struggle is why are they not doing what the textbook says? Well,
The textbook isn't accounting for the fact that these people don't have time, they don't have money, they don't have energy to do these things. So you have to take it down several notches. Okay. It's going to feel like it's not enough. So for example, energy drinks, right? I've gotten to the sad point in my career where I'm recommending Monsters and Red Bull because they're the half the caffeine to the bang, Celsius heat and rain. That is true. Right? Mm-hmm.
And I'll still give the education on why energy drinks are bad, why we don't want to have a regular use of them. But there's always going to be that alternative. It's not healthy, but it's meeting them where they're at. And it's actually cutting their caffeine in half.
So that's kind of where I'm getting at with the better bad decisions. It's not textbook, but it's broken down into more of a stepwise manner so that they can achieve something rather than just be like, damn, I suck. Screw this. I'm not doing it because change is hard. Mm-hmm.
So what about actual foodstuffs? What are, what's some of the advice that you kind of give those personnel when it comes to foodstuffs? Because yeah, we could talk caffeine all day long. I have my own personal war against energy drinks with, with my, with my clientele. And I've gotten it in the same, after a couple of years, I'm like, okay, like you said, it's,
Well, there's no viable alternatives. And so it's the lesser of two evils, right? And kind of go there at least with the lesser, you can get more hydration in there. So you get more water. So, okay. It's a minor win. But yeah, when it comes to food stuff, what's some of the tactics and techniques and procedures that you use with personal shift work?
Yeah. So, um, the other big thing for that, for breaking stuff down is the nine to five nutrition information is my plate and we'll just eat whole foods. Well, when you work shift work, especially super long shifts or overtime, or you get held over or you have to study after your shifts, um,
Whole foods go bad. You know, you buy them, they sit in your fridge, you get too tired to do the meal prep so they rot in your fridge and you just wasted all that money and you get frustrated. So the eat whole foods, the my plate doesn't work for people who do need off of plates and who don't have time to make the whole foods. So then it becomes what are better options for fast food, frozen, non-perishable options. Oh.
And again, for a lot of health nuts, that gives them the anxiety. They are, they, they think I'm nuts. You know, I've been to California for the California firefighters and they said, get a more knowledgeable nutritionist. And I'm like, guys, come on. Like, you know, it's, you have to meet people where they're at and where they're at is convenience. So convenience, like one of the big things with the non-perishables is always having a go back.
for police, for fire, for medical, for the dietician, quite frankly, because what happens is when you get held over or stuck on a call, stuck with a client, stuck in rounds, whatever, your meals get delayed. And what happens when your meals get delayed? You lose your freaking mind, right? No one goes to Chick-fil-A and gets a salad after lunch has been delayed three to four hours, okay? Not even the dietician, okay? It's convenience. Yeah. Like you said.
And it's food choices too. So if I get someone to have an applesauce pouch or a protein bar or a fig bar or something, you know, and they get that down really quickly between whatever they're doing, it's going to prevent them from eating everything that's not tied down when they do get to get to that meal. Okay.
Um, plus also some of these calls, you know, like you, you could be stuck on a gas leak for three hours just standing there, you know? Um, it's same thing for, uh, police. I mean, some of their, uh, they could be on scene 24 hours or more. So, uh, which is crazy. Um,
You've got to have these non-perishable options. Some of my favorites are applesauce pouches, fig bars, cliff bars, protein bars, nuts and seeds, dried fruit, and not just craisins and raisins. We're talking like mango, banana, apple. Most people only know the craisins and raisins. Tuna packets, jerky,
Those kinds of things. Um, dried cereal even. Um, so, and you want to have like a gazillion options because you don't know what you're going to be in the mood for. Um,
And having those non-perishable options is huge. Other things, things in the freezer. So, you know, actually Costco has this cauliflower crust pizza. Oh, that's amazing. Okay. And I swear by it too, but it never comes well from like the dietician and the doctor, right? They're like, oh, the health notes think the cauliflower crust pizza is good. I swear I was not on board until the firefighters told me it was good.
Oh, yeah. You don't taste the difference. It's – yeah. Well, I mean, if you're like a doughy pizza person, like if you're a Chicago – it's not – like it's a thin crust. So you have to understand. But it's a good day-to-day pizza. That was convenient.
And it gets a decent, it's not super high protein, but it has enough and you get a veggie and it is what it is. So having stuff like that. And then the last thing too, when we're talking about convenience is meal prep companies are actually not as expensive as a lot of people think they are. Interesting. Well, and you have to think about
this. If you are spending $18 at Chipotle for a double meat bowl, first of all, you must be rich. Second of all, you're only getting one, well, for the firefighters, for me maybe, one meal, not two.
Yeah. So there are companies like Factor. A local one for us is Mighty Meals, Territory, Cook Unity. These are all meal prep programs that will deliver this fresh to your house or frozen. And they're usually about $9 to $12 a meal. Yeah. So when you think about it, if you're spending that money in fast food,
you know, it's, it's worth, you know, the convenience. Um, it also automatically regulates people's portions. So, uh, and they get a protein, a carb and a veggie. It's usually pretty balanced. Okay. And there's variety. So they don't get too bored. So now I understand nine to $10 a meal is probably expensive for some people, but you have to look at what you're spending in your budget otherwise. Right. Um,
You know, and also I have also, we called, we called Mighty Meals in Fairfax and we said, hey, would you give us a discount to our first responders? And they said, yes. And they gave us a 25% off discount for our first responders. Good. So it's also strategy that way. Like, yeah.
seeing if you can get that for your population. Yeah, that's really good. You know, especially having, you're talking those helpful options for, you know, for those on shift work. And yeah, it's just also looking at the budget, you know, maybe not buy the $7 coffee from Starbucks, even though I'm a,
Starbucks guy going through withdrawals living here in Germany. But yeah, it's got you got to look at the balance of things, what the goals are, what you're capable of doing, because nutrition, you could be doing everything else right. And I love the saying is you can do your physical right. You can do your cognitive drills right. Do your mental tools right. But if you don't have your nutrition, you're not going to make any advances.
Absolutely. Well, and the other thing is that for these populations, there's a tendency to skip meals.
and a tendency to skip carbs. And that impacts their mental performance and that impacts their energy levels. So sometimes just getting more regular meals and snacks and adding a carb with each of those meals and snacks, they see a significant improvement in energy levels. I love the fact that you're just focusing on the basics. I love that. You have to. Yeah, you do the basics well, everything else will fall in line. And that's really amazing.
It's lifestyle targeted is kind of what I really call it. Like if you call it the basics, they're like, this is lame. But when you really hyper focus, and I think this is important for med students when they're talking about their professional side, is there's a tendency for us, again, to just go with the textbook and be like perfect all the time. But if you overlook that person's lifestyle, okay.
they're never going to change because you never met them where they're at. So the lifestyle includes career, kids, you know, side jobs, overtime, all of those things.
Okay, great. Yeah. So man, this is just some amazing content and some knowledge that you're giving here. I'm even learning stuff and I've been doing this for about 20 years. But yeah, the one thing that, so we always think, you know, with nutrition, we're always thinking food and vitamins. But the other thing that usually kind of doesn't get discussed is hydration. Now we're talking now for those who are,
fairly new to this, especially when we start talking about human performance and wellness principles, there's a difference between drinking water and hydration. So I could go into that, but you know what? I don't want to take any more of your thunder, Megan. Why don't you, can you explain in layman's terms what hydration is?
Yeah. Well, hydration includes, uh, well, it depends on your losses, right. Um, and then also your intake. So, uh, a lot of times people overlook the electrolyte piece and if they are truly already pretty dehydrated, they're already compromised the sugar piece. Um, because there's a lot of sugar-free products out there now. Um, and to start with that, like one of the biggest problems I see with shift work other than sleep is, um, holding their urine.
Right. Like you don't have access to bathrooms and whether that's like the bathroom is five feet away and you're just stuck in rounds or you are truly in a patrol car and there is nowhere safe for you to go. Um,
So people purposely dehydrate themselves so they don't have to go to the bathroom. Right. Now, of course, with fire, police, SWAT, like some of those higher intensity units are going to have significant losses. With fire, it's up to 40 ounces. So like a Stanley cup.
in 30 minutes. Okay. So their losses are insane. Like your med student in an air conditioned place, probably fine. Surgeons, I'd imagine would have another issue, right? But a lot of times these more health conscious individuals are going for sugar-free electrolyte products. And the concern that I have with that is not that they don't work, they work, right? Sodium pools water across the cell membrane from the intestine into the cell to rehydrate the cell.
But what a lot of people don't realize is there's a power-up option, and that is called the sodium glucose co-transporter. And in order for that transporter to work, you have to have glucose available, right? ATP. And then you have to – then it'll pull sodium across, which then water will follow, right? So you rehydrate the cell two to three times faster, right?
So when you have a product that contains sugar, this is how oral rehydration solutions work is they rely not only on the electrolyte, but they also rely on the sugar or the glucose. Interesting. Okay. So when I have someone who's asking me, hey, Megan, how do I optimally rehydrate?
Well, I'm going to tell you to choose the product with the sugar and the sodium, right? With the oral rehydration solutions based on the WHO standards. So that is drip drop. I believe liquid IV and Pedialyte Sport are some of the most popular ones. But a lot of people are going for Element or Fire Salt or some of these other products that are sugar-free, which I'm not going to say they don't work. They do work, but they're not going to work as fast.
And if I've got a dehydrated firefighter or even a dehydrated surgeon, I need to fix that fast. Yeah. Right. So that's one of the biggest considerations with hydration. Interesting. Okay. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah. It's, it's really interesting to really see what all the different products out there and we don't really consider, yeah, yeah, this may be a healthier option, but doesn't meet my needs and well, understanding performance.
Because performance and healthy are two different things. They are? Yeah. Because I get a lot of like canteens or rehab units. So these are the units that show up to really big alarms, big fires, like lots of firefighters are there, lots of cops are there, like big incidents. And they show up and they bring snacks, like a food truck. And they're like, how do we make this healthier?
And I'm like, well, healthier is not what you want at these major alarms, right? You need sugar and sodium. It needs to be quick. Yeah, it needs to be quick fuel and you need the sodium to replace for rehydration purposes. But that's not the stuff I want you to be, you know, taken down when you're just sitting watching TV in the day room.
It comes down to context. So sugar and sodium are performance enhancing in high intensity scenarios, but high sugar, high sodium diets, when you don't really do a whole lot of those high intensity scenarios can be long-term, lead to long-term health consequences.
Exactly. Yeah. So it's a similar, so it's a similar approach where it's with the Ironman athletes that I work with. Right. And so it's during those long, really long exercises. Okay. We're, we're switching out the fuels. We're actually using a mix of slow burning carbs, you know, and start hitting the higher carb counts, Joe, roughly about 60 to 90 per hour, plus a sugar-free diet.
electrolyte mix, you know, like noon or something like that. And that works out well, or we break it up in half for the water bottles, depending on how much they're drinking per hour, or if they could also eat simultaneously. Same thing with, uh, with the tactical populations. Now, the thing that we need to consider is, you know, let's take shift work aside.
So let's kind of flip it on its paradigm a little bit. So sometimes, you know, with our young medical personnel, but they're not working shift. They may just be working long hours, but they're get, let's say they are getting, you know, three squares, you know, balanced or even four if they're breaking it up smaller per day. How would you change that strategy or if you would?
When you said three small – did you say meals or did you say – Meals. Sorry, meals. Yeah, if they're eating three meals a day or if they're breaking up to smaller four, five, six meals a day, how would you advise the hydration strategy based on that type of scenario? Yeah. Well, so it kind of – it depends. It depends on how active you are. Okay.
And the challenge with active is it varies significantly for shift workers, right? So I go based off kind of their step count, and this is all anecdotal. I'm just kind of making this stuff up. And the reason I use step count is if you're getting 10,000 steps per shift without even trying, that's a medium. That's a medium busy. If you are getting 15,000, 25,000 steps in a shift-
without trying, then that's a pretty active shift. You're at a busier station. You're physically moving. You're not just mentally moving. You're physically moving. So if you're on that higher end, you're going to need at least, I go by the Institute of Medicine standards, 90 to 125 ounces of fluid, 90 for women, 125 for men. Those are the minimums. But also keep in mind that that includes juice, that includes coffee, that includes tea.
So from my understanding, research suggests that especially in habitual coffee drinkers, people's total body hydration over the course of the day stays the same. They lose more fluid in the first hour, but they replaced it with the liquid from the coffee. So it didn't even down. Now, of course, if you're doing jet fuel or like Death Wish and the super high caffeine stuff, there's other issues there, which I always have to mention because they are doing that.
Um, so those all count towards that. So that's the, the minimum. So we're talking, if you do the Stanley's, like we're talking about two, two to three of these a day, 40 ounces. So, um, and how you spread that out is, it's kind of up to you. I mean, I would suggest evenly throughout the day. Um, you know, or if you know, you're doing hot stuff later in the day, really kind of front loading that maybe adding a liquid IV, um, or drip drop. I do tell people if you sweat, this is anecdotal as well. If you sweat through one uniform, um,
which many of my first responders will sweat through several uniforms throughout the course of the day, you need probably one liquid IV or one drip drop so that you don't feel hungover at the end of your shift. So it was a little over the place, but I don't know if that helps. Yeah. No, that's actually really good advice. I mean, it's the same thing. You know, if you're in a high, if you're in a high intense or just even a hot OR, yeah, you're going to have the same thing. Yeah. Or stress sweats.
Same thing. You're still losing water. You're still losing the iron. You're still losing the calcium. So your pH is dropping. So –
I mean, you might as well front load then. You know, if you're going to be in an OR scenario, whether you're a resident or a surgeon or whoever you are, and you know you're not going to be able to get anywhere, try and get that liquid IV in an hour before. That way you can still kind of go to the bathroom right before you have to start the surgery or whatever. And then you kind of front loaded it. What most people do is they forget. They do it on the back end. And then they still feel like garbage. So you kind of want to front load.
Very interesting. Again, always learn something from you. It's application. You don't learn this from a textbook. You learn this by slamming things around and hoping for the best and seeing what happens. I love it. Just trial and error. Yeah. It's really good.
But that's where it goes. I think you really hit it on the point where the textbook does not meet reality all the time. The textbook teaches you the box. Now you have to start thinking outside the box when the environment changes. Yeah. And it depends. A textbook doesn't teach. It depends. Right. Yeah. So, you know. Yeah. It's what keeps us all employed. I love it.
So, yeah, I mean, so this has been great. I mean, I got to have you back. I mean, there's more to kind of unpackage here, but we are starting to run short on time. I mean, so with all that, if you had one piece of advice to kind of give to, you know, our young medical professionals and even some of our senior, some of the senior medical professionals that listen to this, what are some of the advice you'd give them personally to kind of help with, you know,
professional performance, but also with some of the advice they might be able to give to their clients as well.
Yeah, I think it just comes down to like, it's okay to make better bad decisions, right? Or healthy-ish decisions. So, you know, if you have, all you have the option for for lunch is pizza and a side salad, you did the side salad and said two pieces of pizza. That's a better bad decision, right? And a lot of people will just spend a lot of time beating themselves up because it wasn't the perfect option.
So in these scenarios, you've got to pick the better bad decision, right? So it's okay. And just so you know, a lot of people don't realize there's room in our diets for discretionary calories. So if you need some ice cream at the end of the day to take the edge off, have a little bit of it. Keep it controlled. But try not to have a bunch of sweets throughout the day. So again, it comes down to you kind of have to negotiate with yourself.
Um, you know, it's, it's, you know, trying to make those slightly better decisions with your food, with your hydration, um, and, and try and figure out strategies that work with your lifestyle instead of how can I make my nutrition and everything super perfect because that can actually lead to a disorder. Um, so, and I used to do bodybuilding and that's exactly what happened to me. So, you know, the gray area is okay.
Yep. Excellent. I love it. Well, Megan, it's been a pleasure. I mean, I hope I know I learned something. I know. I definitely hope our audience did and I hope they enjoyed it. So, I mean, if they,
If there's any questions or anything, is there a way that they can get in contact with you or reach out to you? Yep. So rescuerd.com is my website. Megan at RescuerD's email. I'm also pretty active on LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. While it's firefighter focused, it's really just for people who don't have time, money, and energy. Right? So that's at rescue.rd. Excellent. Yeah. So reach out. Follow Megan on LinkedIn. Yeah.
And the amazing website, just the tidbits she puts out on a daily basis is amazing. So a lot of my, a lot of my colleagues follow you as well, kind of turn them on to you. So you'll see some, some air force people following you too. So, all right, well, thanks for your time and I hope to talk to you again in the near future. Absolutely. Thank you. All right. Thank you. I hope you all enjoyed this podcast. See you next time on WCW.
A Hood App Media Production. Hi, I'm Bryce Curry with the Influent Network. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I wanted to invite you to check out heyinfluent.com for more episodes of this podcast, other podcasts across our network, and check out some of our blog posts and come back often as new content is added weekly. Go to heyinfluent.com for more information.
