Sleep Apnoea and Keeping Your Driving License: What You Need to Know

[00:00:00]I know that there are people out there, maybe some of them are watching this video right now, who know that they snore very loudly and that their wives or partners have told them, "Look, I think you've got obstructive sleep apnnea," but they will not go to their GP because they're really worried about the consequences of doing so. One of them may be that they just don't want to wear one of these CPAT masks. They're scared of having to wear this thing for the rest of their life and it's something that they'd really not ever want to do. Some people drive for a living professionally, truck drivers or people who need to be in the car just to earn a living and they're worried that if I get diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnnea, I'm never going to be able to provide or protect my family. We'll lose the house. All those sorts of other things. So, I get it. You know, as a man, we want to protect our family. We want to be able to provide. And if you're not, then what what are we here for? What are we doing? So, I'm pleading with you to go and get yourself tested with have a sleep study and and just get it sorted out because if you wore one of these CPAP machines for 3 months, showed good compliance, the DVLA will let you drive again. Uh it's really, really useful because then you get treated and you're not putting everyone else at risk. Remember the people with obstructive sleep apnnea cause loads of fatal injuries on the motorway because it's a very long boring drive and 40% of car accidents in this country are caused by people with obstructive sleep apnnea and you know each death um is about a million pounds lost to the economy. So please think about it there are people who will say look I don't care I can't do this. So in that situation, all I can think of to do is to help you try and get yourself better and fingers crossed you can do all of these things which are evidence-based that help you with your obstructive sleep apnea without you needing to see a doctor. I don't recommend this. I want you to go and see the doctor to get treated properly. But if you insist on not seeing anyone, this is what I would do. So I'm going to start off with easy things first. There are some exercises that you can do that tighten up your throat and tighten up the the muscle bulk of your throat and that reduces your snoring and obstructive sleep apnnea by approximately 50%. It's not always 50%.

[00:02:15]That's an average of everyone. But what we're really doing is tightening up the muscles in your throat. So they're not flapping around so much and collapsing and blocking your breathing. Because remember, as we age, we lose about 1 to 3% of muscle mass per year. But no one exercises their throat muscles anymore.

[00:02:30]So, what I'd like you to do is do do these exercises for your tongue and your throat. I've got three or four videos here that you'll see all about exercises for uh snoring and obstructive sleep apnea. That will improve your breathing.

[00:02:43]You need to do half an hour a day for at least 3 weeks before you start noticing the difference. You're trying to tighten up these muscles. If you're, you know, strengthening up your muscles, it doesn't happen instantly after one night's worth of doing this stuff. I found a lot of people say to me that when they do these exercises, it seems to work best just before they go to bed, but try and do it during the day as well. What you're not trying to do is make it very big and strong. I don't want you to be doing all that sort of stuff. I want you to tone it up, but not make it so big that it starts blocking your throat. So for example, those people the bodybuilder types who use um growth hormone testosterone, those people get terrible obstructive sleep apnnea even years and years down the line because all the muscles in their body get um expanded. These ones which is the ones they want but also in their throat which blocks their breathing. So if you could if you're out there and you're a bodybuilder, you're thinking about using these drugs just don't. It causes long-term problems. So please try and avoid that. Anyway, back to my people who are refusing to see their doctor. Try these exercises. Keep going with that. It's not going to solve it.

[00:03:48]It improves it a lot, but it's not going to solve it. The next thing you should do is try and open up your nose as much as possible. Breathing through your nose certainly helps. There is one major group where if your nose is blocked, your when you're lying on your back, your tongue rolls back and starts blocking your breathing. So what we want to do instead of your jaw slacking back like this, we want to open up your nose as much as possible. Literally everyone snores with a blocked nose. Women, teenage girls, everyone snores. So try and open up your nose. A lot of people feel like my nose seems fine. Just see if it really is blocked. Just sniff on one side, sniff on the other side. And importantly, if you wake up in the middle of the night or if first thing in the morning before you get out of bed, before you roll over, whatever, do a sniff on each side to see if your nose is blocked. You'll be surprised about how many people actually have a very blocked nose in the middle of the night or, you know, throughout the night and wake up with a blocked nose and they go, "Oh, my nose is blocked." They sniff a few times, blow their nose, go downstairs, have a cup of coffee. by the time they've made their cup of coffee, their nose has opened up again because they've stood up and all the sort of fluid has drained away or they've got away from their bed and there's house dust, all sorts of reasons why your nose can get blocked at night. So, think about that as well. It's not just during the day, it's also at night that we're really worried about. If you've got a blocked nose, you're much more likely to have obstructive sleep apnnea. So, if you're trying to fix your breathing, use a nasal spray, use nasal dilators, all sorts of things that you can see on my channel. I'll put some videos up here about that. I think the way you sleep, the sleeping position is really, really important. I bang on about this a lot.

[00:05:27]So, what I would say is that either you learn to sleep on your side. You can get something called a woody nose backpack.

[00:05:33]It's a big back rucks sack thing that forces you to sleep on your side, so you physically can't sleep on your back. If you're like a tortoise or like a reverse pregnancy, you physically can't sleep on your back. If you're the s sort of person that snores less or breathes better when they sleep on their side because their partner keeps rolling them over to to stop them from making so much noise, then this might be a good thing for you. Wear one of these woody nose backpacks when you're sleeping at night.

[00:05:58]That forces you to sleep on your side.

[00:06:00]That can really help. There are problems obviously about sleeping on your side and there's stuff about that on my YouTube about sleeping on your side. But if it improves your breathing even by 20% which it does in 80 something% of people and actually 60.3% of people are completely cured of obstructive sleep apnea when they sleep on their side.

[00:06:19]That's a massive amount of people. So use that to get yourself to breathe on your side. Remember you won't find instant results. All these problems with sleep, you need to pay back all the sleep debt, all the deprivation you've had for such a long time. It takes about three weeks of relatively good sleep to pay back your sleep debt. So, just keep going and any little slight improvement to make sure that you're not putting yourself or other people on the road at harm and you can carry on providing for your family. All of that is really, really important. Now, some truck drivers, etc., will have like a little cabin at the back that they can sleep in. Actually, if you think about it, you could just sleep in your chair. If you're really worried about snoring and obstructive sleep apnnea, sleep sitting up if you can at all manage it. Wear one of those neck brace things. Now, the reason why I say that is that a lot of people with obstructive sleep apnnea when they sleep at at least 60° don't have obstructive sleep apnnea. To to sort of give you an idea of this, 45% of the population snores really loudly.

[00:07:24]Not really loud, but they do snore. But on an on an airplane, if you look around the cabin at night, you'll see that hardly anyone is snoring because everyone's sleeping sort of at about 60 degrees and suddenly that 45% has come down to less than 1%. You may get the occasional person who's sort of snoring like this and and their partner or their next door neighbor puts their head up or something like that. But sleeping sitting up really helps those people.

[00:07:49]So, if you are a truck driver and you're trying to make sure that you're alert, vigilant, and can drive safely and you're refusing to do the right thing in seeing the DVLA and telling them about your probable obstructive sleep apnnea, then sleep sitting up. Get as much sleep as you possibly can and make sure the quality of that sleep is really good because obstructive sleep apnnea would degrade. Even if you do not feel tired whilst driving, the evidence shows that even though you feel I feel fine, I don't feel tired at all, you're much more likely to have a road traffic accident. Uh there was a study done in Spain, I think, where they found all these people who had road traffic accidents and said, did you feel tired?

[00:08:25]Why why do you think you crashed? Said, "No, I didn't feel tired at all." And then they did a sleep study on them. And the vast majority of these people who said they did not feel tired also had obstructive sleep apnea who had this car accident. So people just don't know that they're tired. It's only when you treat the obstructive sleep apnnea that they go, "Oh my god, I was so tired. I had no idea how tired I was." And you forget what normal is. Everyone just thinks, "Oh, I'm getting a bit old." And you know, I'm getting a bit tired. And you know, this is normal. It happens to everyone. My dad used to sleep well watching TV on a Saturday afternoon before much of the day. All that sort of stuff. Actually, it's probably obstructive sleep at your own case. Get really good quality sleep so you can do your job safely, effectively. You can look after your family and not kill someone on the road. Now, I'm going to talk about stuff that you probably won't like. Alcohol is not great for your sleep. A, it destroys your ability to have dreams. And if you don't have dreams, you you get a brain fog. You can't memorize things. Your concentration levels go because it reduces the amount of dream sleep you get. So, don't drink alcohol. If you are going to drink alcohol, leave it enough hours for you to not be drunk or have the effects of alcohol before you go to bed. So, if you have one unit, like a like a a quarter of a pint of beer, then you need to wait at least an hour or so before going to bed because each unit takes at least an hour to come out of your system. So, if you have a pint, that's 5 hours or sometimes some three to four hours, 5 hours sometimes before you're allowed to go to bed. So, just think it through. If you've got obstructive sleep at or worried about it, alcohol, although it messes up your dream sleep, also makes everything sort of flop back and block your breathing.

[00:10:06]You may feel it helps you sleep, but it's just helping you fall asleep. It doesn't give you good quality sleep. It actually retracts your ability to sleep.

[00:10:15]I think I read in in a book, I can't remember where, where, where, where, where, where, where, where, where, where, where, where they showed that there were a bunch of students who were taught this terribly complex thing on a Monday and then 50% of those students on the Friday were made to get drunk. They were drank loads of alcohol and they had the whole weekend to recover. And then all the people came back on the Monday after, a week later, to do a test on what they learned on the on the preceding Monday. And the people who got drunk on that one night, no, no one revised or anything. Those people who got drunk on that one night had terrible scores compared to the people who did.

[00:10:51]It messes up with your ability to um sort of process data, make associations.

[00:10:57]So dream sleep is really important, but also alcohol messes around with the uh the the muscles. So they block your breathing even more. So, please don't drink if you're worried you've got obstructive sleep apnnea or at least drink earlier on in the day. I wouldn't say wake up in the morning, have a vodka. You're getting me into trouble here. But just be careful with alcohol.

[00:11:18]Sort yourself out first and then go back to alcohol when you know that you're safe to do so. I'm going to upset some other people now. Smoking is not great for obstructive sleep apnnea or your sleep. It's a stimulance. It keeps you up a little bit. It blocks your nose. It messes around with your lungs. If you can't breathe anyway and your lungs aren't working very well, the quality of your breathing isn't very good, then why are you smoking? Just try and stop the smoking. I know you're going to gain some weight, but you'll get through it.

[00:11:43]If it's really important to you to keep with your livelihood and you really care about your family, then stop smoking. I mentioned weight. That's my last big one. You need to lose the weight. If you look on the NHS website about BMI calculator, then you need to look at that and put down your actual height and your actual weight right now and what racial group you're in because actually you realize, oh, I need to get down to the middle of a normal sort of BMI to try and reduce the amount of obstructive sleep you have. It doesn't cure it.

[00:12:18]Losing loads of weight is incredibly hard with obstructive sleep, much harder than normal people. But if you could lose the weight down to a very normal middle of the range BMI, you'll find that you'd be at least 30 to 40% better. A lot of people think, "No, I'm not overweight. I'm fine." But look at that BMI calculator and try and get at the the middle range of normal. For example, I need to lose another seven kilos. It feels like a lot because I'm Asian. I'm injured by origin and therefore I need to get my BMI down to about 20 for me to be within the normal range or or middle of the normal range.

[00:12:53]So don't go for the upper middle limit of normal. Go for the middle of normal.

[00:12:57]Try and get the perfect weight. And don't think to yourself, oh no, look, I'm very muscular. I'm very broad. I've always been like this. It's important.

[00:13:05]It doesn't make a difference if you got lots of muscle and not much fat or the other way around because actually if you go to these bodybuilding sort of um these gyms where everyone's really muscular, 80% of those very muscular guys have obstructive sleep apnea and they know that if you um push your body to extremes, you're going to get extreme results. They talk about arm weakness and all sorts of things in their hand.

[00:13:29]They lost sensation. They know that these all things happen. And a lot of these people are on CPAP because they know it obstructs their breathing. Some people go, "Oh my god, I've never been that weight." But actually, if you want to get better, if you want to make sure that you can carry on driving, looking after your family, looking after your kids, looking after your wife, making sure that they're provided for, you need to do these things. I know it's really hard. It's going to be, as I said, much harder than all the other people out there. And actually, losing weight is commonly misunderstood. A lot of people think I just need to exercise and run all day. Actually, losing weight by running or exercising doesn't work very well. It's very good to stop you from regaining the weight, but it's not great at getting rid of obstructive sleep apnnea, losing the weight in the first place. So, what you need to do is basically cut down the number of calories you eat. There are loads of diets out there. You can do whatever you like, but actually all you need to do is reduce the amount you eat as much as possible and know that it's going to be so so difficult. It's not going to be easy. You'll find it almost impossible.

[00:14:35]But when men put their mind to it, particularly if it's about what they are, they can do it. You can do it. So don't don't be scared.

[00:14:46]Just go for it. And your your wife will like it or partner will like it. your kids will mean it will mean great things to your kids because you'll be around for longer. Losing 10 kilos of weight or more will be great for other parts of your body as well. So, just do it. If you can sort yourself out, stop the alcohol smoking, lose the weight, exercise your throat, um don't take any of these drugs and other things. Once you feel like actually partner saying, I don't snore so much anymore. I'm breathing much better. you might feel a little bit more, oh, actually, maybe I can do a um a sleep study now, find out what's going on, and then think about going to see your dentist. Uh the dentist could give you a mandibular advancement device. Some people use a tongue retaining device or an INAP device. These are things you can purchase over the counter. I'd go and see a dentist properly for a mandibular advancement device. There are loads of other devices and things out there. Um, I've even got a pillow that helps you sleep on your front. Um, so the tongue rolls forward out of the way. There are loads of options out there. This channel's full of ideas. So, don't just sort of blanket out and just carry on regardless and this is something I just can't deal with. Got to do something about it. Be a man. Get on with it. And please don't bury your head in the sand because something awful could happen to you, someone else on the on the road or for your wife or your kids. Please, please either get yourself checked.

[00:16:16]That's the number one thing I really want you to do. If you physically won't do that and you're insistent on carrying on, then hopefully this video has given you some information. And please get yourself sorted out as quickly as possible. Um, take care. Thanks a lot.

[00:16:30]Bye.