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Nurse Who Writes

Field Notes


When Illness Becomes Identity: POTS, hEDS, Mold, Social Contagion, and the Market for an Answer
The disease can be real. The suffering can be real. And something social can still grow around both.

R.E. Hengsterman
Oct 7


Two Dead. Twenty-Six Patients Treated. Nurse Erica, Why Make This a Nursing Shortage Story?
Nurse Erica, stop turning this tragedy into a nursing-staffing controversy without evidence that staffing affected these patients.

R.E. Hengsterman
Oct 7


When the Megaphone Is Bigger Than the Message: A Leadership Lesson From UNC Healthcare
Whatever UNC intended to accomplish operationally, the phrase "bid for shift" created an enormous communication vulnerability.

R.E. Hengsterman
Oct 6


Kodiak Sciences, Wet AMD, and the Biotech Catalyst Every Trader Wants
For patients, the story begins somewhere much smaller. At the back of the eye.

R.E. Hengsterman
Sep 28


Never Fuck with Mother Nature: GLP-1 receptors, Blindness, and the Price of Biological Intervention
Regulators went even further, concluding that available evidence supported a causal relationship between semaglutide specifically and NAION.

R.E. Hengsterman
Sep 23


WITS Brain Mint: Why Its Formula Caught My Attention as the Author of The Shift Workers Paradox
What interests me more are combinations that might produce useful alertness: enough stimulation to think clearly and perform well, but without pushing the nervous system so hard that the worker ends up tired, anxious, overstimulated, and unable to sleep when the shift finally ends.

R.E. Hengsterman
Sep 21


Paraxanthine: A Smarter Caffeine Alternative for Shift Workers?
For decades, caffeine has been the obvious answer.

R.E. Hengsterman
Sep 21


Dengue Fever: When a Mosquito Bite Becomes a Medical Emergency
Mosquitoes are persistent, incredibly small, and nearly impossible to avoid completely. Scientists estimate there may be approximately 1 quadrillion mosquitoes alive worldwide at any given time—about 125,000 mosquitoes for every person on Earth.

R.E. Hengsterman
Sep 21


Free E-Book with Spotify Promo Code
10 Free Spotify Promo Codes for The Shift Worker’s Paradox This may be a little nerdy but stay with me. If you are a shift worker and spend time commuting, working out, walking, or hiking, The Shift Worker’s Paradox may be worth adding to your listening list. I wrote the book, and granted, it is not exactly a Tom Clancy thriller. But I do believe the audiobook has value, especially for people trying to understand what shift work does to the body and how to better protect thei

R.E. Hengsterman
Aug 6


Sleep Data After Two Nights Off Night Shift
The body slept long enough, but it did not appear to recover deeply enough. The app specifically noted that sleep was not sufficient to bring stress levels down overnight. This suggests that even after two nights off, the nervous system may still have been carrying residual strain from prior night-shift work, stress exposure, circadian disruption, or incomplete recovery.

R.E. Hengsterman
Aug 2


What If Hospital Lighting Is Quietly Making Night Shift Nurses More Fatigued?
What if the work environment itself is contributing to fatigue?

R.E. Hengsterman
Jul 22


What Shift Workers Can Take Away from This New Nursing Fatigue Study
The most important takeaway from this article is simple: night-shift fatigue is not weakness. It is physiology under pressure.

R.E. Hengsterman
Jul 7


Visceral Fat and Brain Health: The Cost of What You Don’t See
The body does not change in that instant. Perception does. What shifts is the threshold of what you are willing to register.

R.E. Hengsterman
Apr 5


The 3-Hour Window That Most Shift Workers Miss
One of the few strategies I have been able to apply consistently—across decades of rotating schedules—is far simpler:

R.E. Hengsterman
Mar 30


What Is Kratom—Really?
Kratom by itself is not the primary driver of severe outcomes. Kratom combined with other substances is.

R.E. Hengsterman
Mar 30


Understanding Illness, Disease, and Sickness: A Nurse's Perspective
Disease belongs to the body as object. Illness belongs to the person as subject.

R.E. Hengsterman
Mar 26


Vitamin B3 and the Aging Muscle: Why Niacin Might Matter After 40
We tend to think muscle loss belongs to old age. Images of frailty, walkers, and nursing homes dominate the conversation around declining strength. But the biology tells a different story. The process often begins earlier—sometimes decades earlier—long before most people notice the first signs of weakness. Today we are talking about something surprisingly simple: a vitamin. Not a trendy supplement or a biohacking protocol. Just niacin—vitamin B3 . The question researchers ask

R.E. Hengsterman
Mar 13


The Hidden Variables of Night Shift Work: What This Study Reveals About Health
Despite hundreds of studies, the scientific picture has remained inconsistent. Some studies show strong associations between night shift work and diseases like cancer or metabolic syndrome. Others show weaker effects or none at all.

R.E. Hengsterman
Mar 4


A Critical Review of Tout et al. (2024) Evidenced Based Sleep Hacks
Shift work is not simply an inconvenience of scheduling—it is a biological contradiction. In The Shift Worker’s Paradox, I argue that the healthcare system relies on a workforce whose physiology is systematically disrupted by the very structure of care delivery.

R.E. Hengsterman
Feb 23


Sucralose and Shift Workers: Navigating the Sweet Dilemma
One of the most abused concepts in online nutrition discourse is this:
If something shows potential harm at any level, it must be avoided entirely.

R.E. Hengsterman
Feb 13
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