Sleep apnea - watching me sleep

Are drivers with enlarged tonsils routinely sent for a sleep study?

 

At first (before I put my reading glasses on) I thought he said enlarged "toenails"! I thought, Good Lord, I hope that's not me! LOL

 

Because most of the symptoms manifest when you are asleep. Only a sleep study can determine if you are getting the required amount of rem sleep. The only symptom that people can notice is exhaustion and I would think that most people would just chalk that up to being overworked and their normal daily routines. The other conditions you mentioned have symptoms that people can notice when they begin to manifest. Most in the medical profession agree that adults should get between 7-9 hours of sleep a night.

 

So then documenting four hours would actually make your company more liable in the event of a crash. Secondly, is the questionnaire carefully worded to expose symptoms? I mean surely it is right. Then you would draw the symptoms out of the patient. No need to send someone to a sleep study and threaten his livelihood and cause stress(which I hear is also unhealthy) just for him to prove he does not have sleep apnea. Symptoms of many diseases hide better than the sleep apnea ones yet again, we do not make drivers do test to prove they don't have heart disease if they are symptom free. I'm thinking this is because there is little money to be made by doing that.

 

Only a sleep study can allow you to be scammed into a CPAP. I can just as easily put it that way.

 

Direct from WebMD:

In adults, the most common cause of obstructive sleep apnea is excess weight and obesity, which is associated with soft tissue of the mouth and throat. During sleep, when throat and tongue muscles are more relaxed, this soft tissue can cause the airway to become blocked. But many other factors also are associated with the condition in adults.

More than half of people with obstructive sleep apnea are either overweight or obese, which is defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 25-29.9 or 30.0 or above, respectively. In adults, excess weight is the strongest risk factor associated with obstructive sleep apnea.

Each unit increase in BMI is associated with a 14% increased risk of developing sleep apnea, and a 10% weight gain increases the odds of developing moderate or severe obstructive sleep apnea by six times. Compared to normal-weight adults, those who are obese have a sevenfold increased risk of developing obstructive sleep apnea. But the impact of BMI on obstructive sleep apnea becomes less significant after age 60.

Study conducted by University of Illinois Chicago School of Medicine:

Risk factors for sleep apnea include:

• supine (flat on back) sleeping
• obesity
• chronic sinusitis
• large neck circumference
• recent weight gain
• menopause
• large tonsils or adenoids
• Down syndrome
• smoking
• family history of sleep apnea
• recessed chin or large overbite

 

First of, did you really cite Web MD? Second, again, are more overweight people counted because they are the ones targeted?

 

Are you kidding me? There is much more money to be made in the pharmaceuticals for heart conditions then selling someone a $500 one time cost machine. If they detect anything in a routine medical exam that they may think is the beginning of heart disease, they're going to order more tests and require more frequent checkups. Hence the reason behind the one and two year med card.

 

Obesity has absolutely destroyed this country's overall health. For the first time in history my kids generation will have a shorter lifespan than their parents due to this. The majority of health conditions can be attributed to obesity and poor nutrition.

 

The doctor gets a kick back from the sleep clinic, the clinic gets a kickback from the CPAP manufacturers. It's all based on a subjective test whereas heart disease, one, required an actual doctor to diagnose and two, provable results.

Lastly, looks like we should target lots more people
Sleep apnea Risk factors - Mayo Clinic