Obstructive sleep apnea ranks as one of the hottest health issues in American trucking today.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is in the midst of three listening sessions (the third and final one is scheduled for Wednesday, May 25) on what many believe is a contributing factor in truck driver fatigue and subsequent related accidents.
Often, when someone is diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea, they are often prescribed to use a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine when they sleep.
Now, there may be a different, somewhat unusual “prescription” for sleep apnea.
“People with sleep apnea are at war with their windpipes. But they might be able to get some help from a different kind of wind pipe—namely, the Australian Aboriginal instrument called the didgeridoo.
And
“Alex Suarez, a didgeridoo instructor in Switzerland, noticed that his own sleep apnea symptoms lessened after several months of practicing the instrument. Some of his students experienced the same thing. So Milo Puhan, a doctor and professor at the University of Zurich, and his colleagues set out to test the didgeridoo effect.”
