Do you grind your teeth at night? How about abnormal amounts of snoring? Does your partner notice interruptions in your breathing while you sleep? Any or a combination of these could be indicative of untreated obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA. OSA is a condition where you experience repeated interruptions in your sleep that can have an overreaching impact on other parts of your life.  While in-lab sleep studies and at-home sleep tests are a surefire way to get you or your patients' obstructive sleep apnea diagnosed, dentists are licensed to have patients tested for sleep apnea because there are several...

Because it directly solves the problem of airway blockages during sleep, CPAP or AutoPAP therapy can immediately cure snoring and get you sleeping better. Once you fully acclimate to sleeping with your new CPAP mask, you might start noticing that you feel more alert and energized as soon as the next morning.  While starting CPAP therapy can be a challenging process that takes some time, you’ll find you suffer from fewer sore throats, headaches, and low energy that come from untreated sleep apnea.  However, as with all treatments, if it is not working or being used correctly, there is a...

While reviewing a series of rules and regulations can be confusing, the short answer is no, sleep apnea testing is not mandatory in order to pass the mandatory medical examination required for CDL testing. While there is no overarching law that mandates sleep apnea testing for a CDL, you will want to check and make sure that any company you drive for doesn’t have their own, more stringent sleep apnea testing requirements.  What Does The Law Say? While there is no clear law that mandates sleep apnea testing for CDL, you must pass a medical examination that states you are...

Nodding off at work is probably more common than you originally thought—in fact the CDC has gone so far as to call lack of sleep a “nationwide epidemic.” Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) has become such a frequent problem for some companies that Virgin Pulse, an organization that researches how to help employees and companies work better, conducted a huge study on exactly how prominent workplace sleeping really is.  The Results: 76% of employees felt tired most days of the week 40% of employees doze off during the day at least once per month 30% of employees were unhappy or very...

Drowsy Driving Prevention Week: November 3-10, 2019 Driving is dangerous, so it’s imperative that you be alert and aware anytime you get behind the wheel. Sleepy or drowsy drivers make an alarming number of mistakes—some tests show that driving drowsy is just as bad as driving drunk—and more people drive drowsy than you might realize.  An estimated 1 in 25 drivers over the age of 18 have reported having fallen asleep while driving in the last 30 days alone, and The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that drowsy driving is responsible for up to 6,000 fatal crashes each year....