Episode 44: Death and Taxes with Annette Zapp, CSCS*D

"Only two things are inevitable, and you can only cheat on one."-paraphrased from Benjamin Franklin

We're not getting out alive, but at least we can thrive instead of merely surviving.

As firefighters, we tend to be extremists: all or nothing instead of all or something. We keep pressing the reset button, starting over, and posting about "day 1" and 6-week challenges.

How about a little less extremity and a little more consistency?

So what, now what?

Go after either low-hanging fruit or a big bang-for-the-buck item instead of everything at once!

*****

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• Episode Transcript

  Annette: [00:00:00] Hey listeners, it's AZ. Welcome back to Episode 44 of the Fire Rescue Wellness Podcast. I am finally, finally feeling better. Not a hundred percent, but feeling better. Thanks. A lot of people reached out via text and Instagram messages, and even a few emails. People reached out to say, “hope you're feeling better.”

  So I do appreciate that and thanks for the well wishes. Today, I wanna talk about death and taxes. There's only a couple of things in life that are inevitable and death and taxes are two of those things. But even your taxes, you can cheat on those, but we're never gonna be able to cheat death.

  We are not getting out of here alive. Now, I'm not trying to be negative or, be a downer here, [00:01:00] but I wanted to bring some attention-shine a big light on the fact that so many of us in this day and age are simply surviving. We're not thriving, and there's definitely a difference. Those two things are not the same thing

  We're surviving because we're resilient. Holy hell. The human body is super resilient. It has to be. We sleep deprive it, we feed it garbage, we feed it alcohol, we show it stress and trauma, and then we sleep deprive it some more, and your body just keeps coming back like, “Hey girl, I'm showing up again. Let's get started.”

  But when we really, really drill down, that is not a great way to live, and we would obviously prefer to thrive instead of survive. So another analogy I also love to use is not dead, is not the [00:02:00] same thing as kicking ass. Let that sink in for a second.

  My podcast is aimed primarily towards firefighters, but I think I have a fair amount of other listeners out there. So in case you are outside of the fire service, and you don't know this, there are four main ways that we are losing our firefighters, and I like to divide those into two buckets, the on-duty bucket and the off-duty bucket.

  Some of the causes of death spill over in between the two buckets, but the on-duty causes of death are primarily cardiovascular disease and accidents, and then the off-duty causes of death are primarily cancer and suicide. And so that might, that might shock you a little [00:03:00] bit, but let's just take cancer.

  The World Health Organization has declared shift work a type 2B carcinogen, which means that it likely causes cancer in humans. So it doesn't matter if you are a nurse, a cop that works overnight, a firefighter that's getting up to go on calls overnight, or the person that stocks the shelves at your local grocery store.

  If you are working shift work, overnight shift work, your chances of getting cancer are higher than the general population. So then we add to that the fact that the World Health Organization has declared firefighting a Group1 carcinogen, which means they are sure that the chosen career of firefighting is a cancer causing agent.

  So we have those two things fighting against us. And so [00:04:00] no wonder that cancer is one of the main things that is taking our firefighters. So again, recapping. We have the on-duty and the off-duty causes of death that are cardiovascular disease, accidents, suicide, and cancer. And that might sound alarming and overwhelming.

  But the great news is that there are modifiable risk factors that can improve our chances. So back up the truck a little bit.

  When you go to your physician and maybe they say, Hey, you, your blood pressure's running a little bit high. What they'll tell you is that there are modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors.

  The non-modifiable risk factors are unfortunately, your genetics (you don't get to choose your parents), your [00:05:00] gender, and your age. You can't change those things. But there are lots and lots of modifiable risk factors that you can address, such as a healthy weight, smoking cessation, easy on the alcohol, observing a nutritious diet, exercising, all of those things are modifiable risk factors that you have a degree of control over.

  And so, now, if we pull that truck forward into the parking space, into the cardiovascular disease, suicide, cancer, and accidents, the great, great news is that there are so many modifiable risk factors that we can control and have a positive impact on those things. And so the big ones are sleep, [00:06:00] healthy fueling or nutrition and exercise. Those are the big three things that can have a huge impact on those four causes of death for our firefighters. Then we can also add in attention to our mental health and whether that looks like engaging in counseling, engaging in a gratitude practice, mindfulness practice, whatever that looks like.

  Those mental health interventions have not only a positive impact on suicide risk, but also on all of the other causes of mortality. So this is great news, but if you're sitting out there listening saying, “yeah, yeah, that's awesome, but it also seems really overwhelming. There's so many things that I could do and there's so [00:07:00] many things that I need to do. I just don't know where to start.”

  Well, hold on for a second because really. You really just, you wanna grab onto one or two things that you can do consistently. Because I see this, I see this over and over and over again. People posting on their social media, posting like back at it day one, and they're just like off to the races and doing all of the things.

  And then, they fall off the radar and then a month later, back at it day one, doing all of the things all over again, and I just wanna sometimes back up and say, how's that working for you? How is that extreme [00:08:00] on the program mentality working for you? Because I don't think it's working for you.

  And, my friend Chris from 4th shift, he, he had a hilarious post, I don't know, it was like six months ago, but it was kind of a little hack on the 75 hard, and he said his graphic was 14-ish, medium, meaning instead of focusing on 75 days of the most strict as the absolute strictest possible program, why not just focus on the two weeks that are in front of you and keep some consistency going, doing a little something every day for the rest of your life rather than the next 75 days going hard, hard, hard, and then falling off into the abyss, and then, oh yeah, [00:09:00] you're starting 75 hard again.

  Again, it's no cut on 75 hard, but how's it working for you? If you are consistently like, “I'm hitting the reset button, I'm starting over. It's day one.”

  Again, I just don't think what you're doing is working for you. And so here are a few things for your consideration.

  So we know that sleep is very impactful. We know that nutrition is very impactful and we know that exercise is very impactful. We know that attention to your mental health is very impactful. So we already have four giant things that can make a difference. And when you're looking at making a change, you can look at it in two different ways. You can pick the low-hanging fruit, the thing that's gonna be the easiest for you,[00:10:00] or you can pick the one thing that's the biggest bang for your buck and focus on that.

  I personally like to go for the low-hanging fruit, keep shit easy. And so if you're looking at this menu, this laundry list of items of things that you could do to improve your health, and you say, Oh, I could. I could walk every day for 15 minutes.That that's all I have to do. That sounds really easy. Then pick that. Pick the thing that seems so easy.

  It's almost insulting but it’s good because then you're gonna be able to stick to it and you'll be able to layer on another habit relatively quickly. Once you're walking every day, you've been walking for a couple of months, it's not such a big deal to go back to that menu [00:11:00] of items and say, you know what else I could do? I can make sure and eat vegetables at lunch and vegetables at dinner. That seems incredibly easy. And then you go with that. So that's the low-hanging fruit.

  Some people like to get the biggest bang for their buck and they try to get the biggest bang for their buck by doing everything. That's the person that keeps starting over.

  So instead of doing everything, look for the one thing that will have the most impact. And I'm gonna be honest, for most people, it's probably improving their. sleep.

  Getting not only more sleep, so quantity, but better sleep quality. And if that sounds daunting to you, maybe it's time to go [00:12:00] back to the low-hanging fruit.

  But if you say, yeah, now I think I could, I think I could do that. I'm gonna encourage you to give yourself more opportunity to. As your first action item, because let's be, let's be honest, if you need eight hours of sleep and you are only in bed for four hours, you are not going to get eight hours of sleep.

  There's no way it's happening. So creating a longer sleep opportunity for yourself is going to more than likely improve your sleep. Now, there's a lot of other things that you can do. You can revamp your sleeping space. You can decrease the exposure to blue light. You can avoid alcohol and nicotine and caffeine, and all of the things that disrupt your sleep.

  There's all kinds of ways to improve your sleep, but when you're looking at the big picture, [00:13:00] giving yourself enough time to sleep is key. It's absolutely critical. So that would be one of those big bang for your buck items.

  Another one I can think of right off the top of my head is decreasing your use of alcohol. Because alcohol, let's be honest, it's, it's not a one fold thing. It's not a if then thing. It's an exponential. So while you're drinking, more than likely you're less active because you're doing social things such as watching a game at a bar, or maybe having a conversation at a house party. You're less active, you're consuming calories in alcohol, you're lowering your inhibitions, so more than likely you're eating food that you normally wouldn't eat, [00:14:00] and then at the end of the night, you're gonna go home and you're not gonna sleep as well, because the impact of alcohol is exponential. So that would be another big bang for the buck item, regardless of what you choose.

  I would be very mindful and very thoughtful of picking something that's either so easy that it almost seems insulting that's the low-hanging fruit or so impactful that it's going to have an outcome that you will be able to see relatively quickly. You get a couple, two, three, good nights of sleep and you already have positive feedback for that intervention.

  So just in summary, we're not getting out of here alive. Our risks as firefighters, are [00:15:00] modifiable, just like the general population. We can either pick a low-hanging fruit or a big bang for our buck item, but the critical, critical learning point here is to not try to do everything you can do everything.

  For six weeks or 75 days, or until the class reunion, I know you can do everything, but as soon as that clock turns over 1201 on the last day of your program, you're going off the rails because that's what you've always done in the past.

  Okay? No specific calls to action today, but if you haven't already gone over to follow @spring4change on Instagram, do it! Youu won't regret it.

  This has been AZ and I am out.