Sleep Apnea and Truckers, Getting Truckers Help is Crutial

Here’s an interesting piece from Truckinginfo.com; they’re having a conference in Baltimore next May on truckers and sleep apnea. Sleep apnea happens when your bronchial airway gets blocked for second or minutes at a time during sleep, cutting off the flow of air to the lungs and thus depriving the sleeper of oxygen. That can cause extra sleepiness, high blood pressure and other complications that can lead to less-than-alert drivers. A lot of snoring can be a sign that someone has sleep apnea.

One common tool to help sleep apnea is a continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machine, where a small stream of air is blown into the nose, propping the airway open while the user sleeps. The CPAP machines are about the size of a large alarm clock and often come with small humidifiers to moisten the air going into the nose; CPAP machines run less than $200 for basic models. However, they can only be sold with a prescription, so your doctor will have to come up with a sleep apnea diagnosis and write you a prescription for a machine.

Lugging a CPAP around on trips can be a bit of a pain, for you’ll have to hook up the machine, put water in the humidifier and then unhook things when you get back up and on the road. Also, some folks might not want their conditions known or look unmacho for lugging one around.

However, the piece noted that sleep apnea make truckers six times more likely to get into an accident. That will mean that it is in a trucking company’s best interest to make sure any truckers and trucking company's with sleep apnea get treated.