- Overweight
- Male
- Smoking
- Alcohol use
- Sedentary lifestyle
- Middle age
- High blood pressure
Truck Drivers and Untreated Sleep Apnea
The health condition called sleep apnea causes a person’s breathing to stop during their sleep. In order to start breathing again, the person will briefly wake from sleep though they may not realize it is happening. This pattern can happen hundreds of times per night, which means that people who believe they got a good night’s sleep may actually have had constant interruptions in their sleep and may have never reached the deeper stages of the sleep cycle. This can cause unexpected fatigue throughout the waking hours.
Many people have sleep apnea that is undiagnosed and, therefore, untreated. This means that they have unexplained fatigue and may not recognize just how tired their body is during their daily activities. This is a particular concern for truck drivers as fatigued driving is a major cause of devastating truck accidents and injuries.
In addition, truck drivers often have many risk factors for sleep apnea, including: