Thank You 

Dear Reader,

Thank you for picking up The Shift Worker’s Paradox.

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This book was written for those who keep the world running while the rest of it sleeps. Nurses. Paramedics. Factory operators. Pilots. Anyone who has ever stepped into fluorescent light at 3 a.m. and wondered what it was doing to them.

Over ten years of night shifts taught me that fatigue isn’t just tiredness, it’s biology pushed past its limits. The sleepless body isn’t weak. It’s misaligned. And no amount of grit, caffeine, or positive thinking can outpace a broken rhythm.

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I wanted this book to be a bridge, between the lab and the breakroom, between what science knows and what workers live every night. You’ll find research, yes, but also lived experience. Strategies drawn from both clinical evidence and the messy reality of exhaustion, caffeine crashes, missed meals, and the quiet isolation that so often defines life out of sync.

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You won’t find quick fixes here. You’ll find systems. Frameworks that honor your biology instead of fighting it. Each chapter builds toward one central idea: if you can’t change the schedule, you can still change the strategy.

My goal was never to write another health manual. It was to write a survival guide for the circadian age, a book that helps you understand what’s happening under your skin and gives you back a measure of control.

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As you move through these pages, remember: you’re not broken. You’re adapting to an environment your body was never designed for. That adaptation takes knowledge, compassion, and deliberate rhythm.

This book is that rhythm. A map back to yourself.

 

Let’s start there.

—R.E. Hengsterman, MSN, MA, M.E., RN