Nearly All Truck Drivers May Be Tested For Sleep Apnea

Ask and ye shall receive...sorta lol.

So, a detour ran me about 20 minutes out of route, and...I showed up about 20 minutes late, and the consignee said they couldn't take me tonight, have to unload in the morning..so.....now I'm parked at walmart lol. Funny how that works out

Nice, this is hot on the heals of an Australian study that concluded, "therapy with CPAP plus usual care, as compared with usual care alone, did not prevent cardiovascular events in patients with moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea and established cardiovascular disease."

Study: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1606599

The government needs to stay out of medicine. They screw up everything.

Big Scott in primcipal I do agree. However in this case the government made the request, medical professionals crafted the guidelines.

With that said what is bothersome for me having never exhibited any symptoms of SA, is my age (57) my neck size and BMI. Years of athletic training left me an above average size neck and muscle mass. Body fat percentage, waste size, and resting heart rate are also indicators being ignored.

If I have SA and didn't know it, I'd want to be treated for it. But like Big Scott suggests, there may be more to this. We should all start investing in companies manufacturing CPAP devices. Looks like we'll help drive up their sales.

I was jammed into a facehugger myself. I'm 44, and 240ish lbs at 5'8" Without seeing me, you might think that I'm a belly-dragger, but I'm not. Like you, I was very athletic when young. My BMI , when measured by the military or by simple tests tends to run to the high 30's, but immersion tests have always shown me to be about 5% lower than simple tests.

At 17 years old, and 135 lbs, I had almost no body fat, with an 18" neck, 25" thighs, a 24" waist, and 48" chest. My inseam is 28" at 5'8", which gives me a much longer torso than most people my height. Enough longer that doing situps by myself with my legs bent has always been nearly impossible for me.

I stopped growing taller at around fifteen, but my shoulders have gotten significantly wider. When I went through basic training, I was 185 lbs, with just a tiny bit of a belly.

So, I was on the Stevens watch list for Sleep Apnea. They were telling me that I would need to return every 30 days to the yard for checkups. I know for a fact that I did not have, and do not have sleep apnea , as I hadn't needed more than 4-5 hours sleep a night for over 20 years, with no tiredness issues, and I never snore unless I am forced to sleep flat on my back, which I will never do willingly, even when asleep. This is confirmed by the fact that the facehugger does not make any difference at all in my stamina.

But I'm stuck in one anyway, because I volunteered to take the test because I knew it would clear me. Mistake.

The first test came back positive for sleep apnea. I looked at the test results, and they were utter male cow fecal matter. The sleeping positions were impossible for me. The times of activities and positions were impossible to reconcile. Essentially, it was obvious that the data was either bad or falsified for at least six different reasons.

The doctor agreed, and we retested the next day.

The next results were mathematically correct, but still broken. Clearly bad or falsified.

Why did I know this? Because I intentionally did not tell the testing company that I was planning to record the test, but I used my laptop to video me for the entire night sleeping. I sleep exclusively on my sides, flipping back and forth every two hours or so. The video showed this, and the audio did not record any of the snoring that was claimed to be in audible ranges. The test results had me sleeping for hours on my stomach and back, and some on my right side, but never on my left. The left side is the side which I had the finger tester on. When I flip sides at night, it is normally due to tingly sensations in the arm I am sleeping on. In other words, oxygen deprivation because I am laying on my arm. Blood in the arm, does not impact the brain, and should have been compensated for in any competently performed test. The low oxygen levels recorded coincided with the three+ hours I spent sleeping on my left side.

The doctor pretended like he didn't understand my objections, and the arrangement between the doctor, who is no longer at Stevens, and the company that was either incorrectly reading or falsifying data forced me into the facehugger, despite the two back-to-back impossible test results.

I took my video to the Stevens safety department, and the test results, and explained what had happened. They said they could not reverse the doctor's decision. A month later, that doctor was no longer at Stevens (not sure if it was because of me or not, there were many drivers I spoke to who complained of his quackiness), but I'm still in this facehugger every night until I can get a real test by a competent doctor who knows they can't sell me a facehugger because I already have one. Then I'll put the damn thing on the pavement and run over it with the truck.

Moral of the story? NEVER voluntarily take a sleep apnea test. Make them force you to, and if they do, tell them you are going to record the session on video, with audio, and do it. If the test comes back positive, compare it against your video. If I had TOLD them I was going to record the test, I probably wouldn't be in this position, where I'm going to have to spend $1000-ish dollars to take a test so that I can stop wearing a $1000 dollar machine that I never needed.

End Grump.

I didn't do it voluntarily, I answered a questionnaire, and from that, they determined that I needed a sleep study.

They mailed me a package, and I did the sleep study in my hotel room. No, I did an actual sleep study back in 2008, at an actual sleep study clinic. They hooked me up to electrodes and different things, and I had to stay the night there at the clinic. The results came back negative for apnea.

Now, at the hotel, I was in an unfamiliar bed, and I wasn't particularly sleepy that night, but I knew I needed to get the test done, so I did it, and I wasn't to sleep right away.

I didn't end up falling asleep til around 11pm or so. In the morning, I got up and took the device off but I couldn't shut it off. As per the instructions, it said press and hold the button til it turned off, but it wouldn't turn off. With the device still running, I put it all in the return envelope and mailed it back.

About a week or so later, they told me I tested for moderate sleep apnea. I told them about what happened and they said that it didn't affect the results of my test, that the period monitored was within the time I was asleep.

Now, I have spoken with a friend of mine who is a respiratory therapist and who is studying to deal with sleep issues who told me it is possible for someone who does not have apnea to develop it over in time. Things like weight gain and a few other things can cause it to appear.

Thusly, I'm going to be shelling out $1350 here in about a week or two for my new, shiny sleep machine.

I've heard some hate it, I've heard some can't live without it. The ones who like it apparently say it helps them wake up more refreshed every morning. I figure if there is a possible positive outcome, I'll give it a whirl. If it does nothing, or I hate it, I'll request a new sleep study at an actual sleep clinic.

What's the big problem with wearing a mask and getting a good nights sleep?

I've been wearing one for about 18 years now and sleep through the night.

Will they not let you drive if you're on one? Or do they look at your machines log to see if you're using it every time you sleep?

I take maps without mine but, when I hit the sack for an all night sleep , I use mine 100% or the time.

If you have sleep apnea then you need to be treated for it. If you don't have sleep apnea then you have nothing to worry about. It's a winning situation either way.

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Quoted for Truth.

Our company doesn't really do any testing for it, but does required drivers who have been previously tested or diagnosed to disclose it to the Dr at the DOT physical, and let that Dr make the call as to setting up the next steps. But I am in the camp of "If a company requires any sort of test, drug screen, medical, physical, etc - the company should pay for it".