A chiropractor noticed his patients kept complaining about fatigue, morning headaches, and poor sleep. He had the same symptoms, got a sleep study, and was diagnosed with mild obstructive sleep apnea. After starting CPAP therapy, his symptoms improved, and he began wondering if sleep apnea might explain why so many of his patients also report neck and back pain.
When I'd be evaluating these people, I would get their complaints, things like that. And I was starting to realize, like, I kind of filled some of these, you know, the fatigue, waking up with a light headache, restless sleep, all these types of things. I go, well, maybe I have this. So I went out and got a sleep study, found out I do. I have mild sleep apnea. Got a CPAP machine, started feeling immensely better with some of those. But I started realizing with those same drivers, they're always the ones that are like, oh, you're a chiropractor? My neck's killing me all the time and my low back's hurting. And you can chalk that up to what they do for a living, of course. Just their normal posture. But I also thought, well, why is it that the ones that have sleep apnea seem to have a higher rate of these complaints, or at least they're telling me about it, compared to the ones that don't meet the criteria for sleep apnea? So that kind of got me thinking about it a little bit, and then my own diagnosis.
