Lifestyle Medicine Strategies for Combating Sleepiness and Fatigue in Professional Drivers

Summary

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.

Conditions

• Sleepiness, Daytime
• Fatigue
• Sleep Disorders, Circadian Rhythm

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Lifestyle Medicine Strategies

LM addresses health risk factors in primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of developing disease rather than limiting resources and medical expenditures on acute care and reacting to illness, injury, and disease. The intervention will target the four pillars of the LM approach including physical activity, diet, stress, and sleep. Certified in LM strategies professionals will consult participants from the LM group in a biweekly base in order to improve their lifestyle habits.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Thessaly

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Giorgos K Sakkas, PhD · University of Thessaly

• Efthmios Dardiotis, MD, PhD · University of Thessaly

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

25 Years

Max Age

60 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-09-01

Primary Completion

2023-01-01

Completion

2023-01-31

Countries

• Greece

Study Locations