Sleep apnea - watching me sleep

It's too easy to label a persons condition and sell them unneccesary equipment and or pharmaceuticals. Sleep apnea, IBS, acid reflux, ADD. List goes on

 

Whenever something comes out of the blue and is suddenly the most important thing, you have to wonder why. I've been a trucker virtually my entire adult life. I had never even heard of sleep apnea until a few years ago and now it's the most dangerous thing ever. I agree, it is all about the money. Nobody actually cares about making the roads safer.

 

I don't mind the selling, but they should only be prescribed to people who actually have symptoms. If I answer no to every question on the form then what symptoms am I displaying?

 

If it makes people sleep better, why not make everybody use regardless?

Is there a way to get a cpap without a diagnosis? I would like to try it just for my own experiment but i don't want the Man to monitor me for it.

 

I know that is difficult. But this is the new industry unfortunately. Just go with the flow and get healed untill you no longer need it.

 

The reason you can't just ask drivers if they have sleep apnea symptoms is because, people might not believe this but people lie, or they might not even know they have it.

Look at the OP, he said he was forced to take the test and has sleep apnea. He did not notice he had it untill the test.

Why do we check blood pressure? Why not just ask drivers and let them fill the info out themselves ?

 

Sleep apn

Sleep apnea has been around for over 20 years. My grandfather suffered from it for being extremely overweight. He couldn't stay awake for more than 10 minutes everytime he sat down in his chair. It got to the point we couldnt let him drive by himself for fear of him falling asleep at the wheel. After the study, they found he was stopping breathing over 30 times an hour. Once he was on the machine, that stopped completely.
The problem is, the people that suffer from it do not even know they have a problem, hence the study. The majority of people that suffer from this condition are overweight and have brought it on themselves with their lifestyle choices.
In today's sue happy world, companies have to protect themselves as much as they possibly can. As has been stated in numerous posts, driving tired is more dangerous than drinving under the influence of alcohol. This industry is heavily regulated in order to protect the drivers, those that share the road with them and the freight they are hauling.
So, you either use the machine, or put on your big boy pants, make some lifestyle changes to lose the weight in order to not require it anymore oyou find a new profession. It's just that simple.

 

Just adding an observation that not everyone who has sleep apnea is overweight. A man who used to be involved with my local chapter of the American Brain Injury Association was never overweight, but snored so loud the people in his apartment building (in Poland, where he and his wife immigrated from) complained about the noise. His severe untreated sleep apnea finally caused him to have a stroke and sustain permanent brain damage. That is obviously an extreme case (probably something of an outlier), so I'm not trying to scare people. But people do need to bear in mind that weight is not the only factor. Anyone who snores a lot and has insurance might want to consider discussing with their doctor.

 

That's why I said "majority". There are other health conditions that lead to apnea as well, such as enlarged tonsils.

 

Here we go again. I don't need a history lesson or more personal stories about sleep apnea. By the way I bet it's been around just a bit more than 20 years. Secondly, if the requirement is 4 hours a night then my question (and opposing counsels), is why do they let a driver operate a CMV with only 4 hours sleep? Can you name the medical study that says 4 hours of sleep is adequate? Secondly, I love how you berate people who are overweight but show no studies backing your claims. Could it be that the majority(if a majority exists) of people diagnosed with sleep apnea(if they actually have sleep apnea and are not just part of a scam) are overweight because overweight people are the ones targeted by the scam... I mean sleep study?

Now again I have to assume that you somehow think I'm anti sleep apnea. That I don't think it is real. So before you give me another lesson I am a believer. Again, what I am against and I cannot fathom why you don't, is that if a patient reports no symptoms then why is a sleep study needed? Heart attacks are a bad thing to have happen to a trucker, so are strokes and aneurysms yet unless the patient reports a symptom the doctor doesn't send them for testing.