Tag: #snorerx

Sleep Apnea Test? There’s an App for That

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Obstructive sleep apnea is certainly something that has the potential to be dangerous. This particular sleep disorder is known to obstruct (get it?) the airways in a person while they’re sleeping. This means that the person who is suffering from this disorder will actually stop breathing several times during the night. It can be scary to think about and not everyone is aware they have it. Maybe you sleep alone and there is no one to catch the sounds you’re making. Maybe you sleep with a heavy sleeper who wouldn’t notice if an earthquake happened. Whatever the reason, it’s important to take that step forward into investigating when you don’t get a good night’s sleep more than once a week.

The great news is that there’s an app for that (frankly, there are also some pretty excellent devices, as you probably will note in this SnoreRX review). Really, there is an app that was developed that will measure the sounds you make while you sleep to see if you suffer from obstructive sleep apnea:

With new technologies been invented for early diagnosis and treatment of various disorders, the Ben-Gurion University, Israel has come up with an innovative smartphone-based system for assessing a patients’ obstructive sleep apnea and sleep–wake activity, a study of how sleepy one feels. The technique of assessing the activity is cheap and easy to use and can possibly serve as an alternative over the traditional polysomnography in few studies.

The patient is not required to be connected to any sort of sensors to assess the activity. Instead, it performs on a program that can be downloaded on the smartphone to examine sleep and speech sounds. The microphone of the smartphone is used by the software to hear the sounds a sleeping person generates. The recorded sounds are processed and classified to determine specific events such as coughing, wheezing, or snoring.

To evaluate the accuracy of the software, the research team performed an analysis which included 350 volunteers. It was found that the smartphone-based system was able to accurately verify the sleeping events and assess the sleep–wake activity and obstructive sleep apnea in the subjects.

Professor Tarasiuk and Dr. Zigel said, “We have built a contact-free speech signal analysis that can aid in early diagnosis of sleep disorders and obstructive sleep apnea.”

Via: http://greaterpatchoguedaily.com/smartphone-app-analyzes-obstructive-sleep-apnea/12098

It’s great to see new technology being developed to help people. Not everyone has the time or money to invest in visiting a sleep clinic or even bringing up this potential issue with a doctor. Being able to test it out in your own home gives you that freedom to be more comfortable in your surroundings. By visiting your healthcare professional armed with information, you can circumvent difficult tests or bypass the waiting game while your doctor tries to determine what tests are needed and when you could go. It doesn’t replace the need for a healthcare visit; it enhances it. This is especially useful for those who live alone or for those who think it’s just a snoring issue. Snoring can be a sign of sleep apnea so instead of passing the earplugs over, fire up the app and see what comes out of it.

Suffer from Sleep Apnea? Here’s One Job You Should Rethink

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There are plenty of issues that people with sleep concerns will face. When you can’t sleep well, it throws off your entire day and sometimes your whole week! Snoring is a major sleep issue that more people suffer from than they realize. If you sleep alone, you might never know that you are a snorer until you can’t figure out why you’re so tired every single day. There are several causes for

snoring but the most common is that your muscles in your mouth and throat are so loose it causes vibrations when you breathe. This is what gives way to the snoring sound we’ve all come to identify, thanks to television.

Another major sleep issue is Sleep Apnea and Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). Those who suffer from OSA will literally stop breathing several times at night. This interrupts the sleeping pattern and deprives the brain of oxygen.  It can have serious side effects for the waking hours and generally a special machine is needed to help the sufferer breathe and sleep uninterrupted at night. This is why a mouthpiece like the SnoreRX can be huge. It can easily contain your apnea. Read our SnoreRX review here.

Because the side effects of untreated snoring can severely impact your job, some occupations are making testing for OSA a mandatory component:

On July 8, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) closed its period for public comments regarding a proposal that would make it mandatory for all commercial drivers to be tested for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), which has been identified as one of major causes of truck accidents.

The NTSB, in consultation with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), is expected to make its recommendation before the end of 2016, which could authorize the U.S. Department of Transportation to propose a new law regarding the treatment of sleep apnea among commercial truck drivers.

[…]

Because sleep apnea interrupts the sleep cycle, people with this disorder often struggle with focusing and remaining alert during the day.

And occupations such as truck driving are physically and mentally taxing, which when combined with sleep apnea, can make for a fatal combination for other drivers.

Sleep Apnea Stats Among Commercial Drivers:

Some recent statistics show that truck drivers are particularly vulnerable to developing sleep apnea.

A joint study by the University of Pennsylvania, FMCSA and the American Transportation Research Institute of the American Trucking Associations, found that 28 percent of commercial truck drivers have mild to severe apnea.

The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reported in 2014 that drowsy driving resulted in 328,000 accidents, 109,000 injuries, and more than 6,000 fatalities each year.

What’s even scarier is that truck drivers are more likely to exhibit certain risk factors of sleep apnea.

Via: https://www.yahoo.com/news/rise-sleep-apnea-related-truck-135800526.html

Does this mean that sufferers of sleep apnea can never be truck drivers? Of course not. What this means is that the industry has identified a potential safety issue and are taking the steps to manage it. The good news is that the more people who are identified as having OSA, the more assistance they can get. Remember, not everyone has someone in their bed who can let them know what they do in their sleep. There is no other way for people to find out just what goes on during the night if no one tells them.

While this may be an occupation people with OSA should rethink going after, it doesn’t mean that being a truck driver is impossible. Driver fatigue has long been a serious issue for truck drivers so it should be comforting to know that serious thought into the causes of fatigue are being investigated. We will continue to need truck drivers until they invent teleportation. Until that time, let’s make sure our roads, and our truck drivers, are safe.