Lifestyle Medicine Strategies for Combating Sleepiness and Fatigue in Professional Drivers

Sleep has a number of health benefits, including memory and learning, vitality and energy as well as high quality of life levels. Lack of sleep impairs judgment, impacts longevity and safety, and increases the risk of a number of diseases including obesity, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, mood disorders, and impaired immune function. In addition lack of sleep or disturbance of normal sleep cycle could have a major impact on people's lives and working performance such as driving. Daily sleepiness is a problem concerning professions with a non-fixed schedule. Specifically, professional long-haul drivers confront sleepiness problems and in combination with fatigue, they are prone to driving accidents and other incidents. Sleep quality and quantity are closed related to fatigue which is one of the most common reasons for driving and working accidents. In recent years, car accidents involving professional drives have increased significantly. The main reasons for those accidents were fatigue and sleepiness due to long hours of driving or difficult working conditions according to the recent European report (Driver Fatigue in European Road Transport - etf-europe.org). Lifestyle Medicine addresses health risk factors in primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of developing disease rather than on acute care and reacting to illness, injury, and disease. Lifestyle Medicine strategies targeting modifiable risk factors, such as diet, sleep, stress, and physical activity. By applying those regimes the investigators could improve physical and mental health levels that can affect the quality of sleep, reducing daily sleepiness and fatigue, in professional drivers operating coaches and trucks. Any intervention that could improve alertness and reduce fatigue and sleepiness in those people, will automatically improve safety, reduce driving accidents and save lives and resources.