A 55-year-old man who suffers from the same sleep disorder as Joe Biden crashed his motorcycle four times in nine months.
The construction worker, whose case has been revealed in an American medical journal, continually fell asleep while driving due to excessive daytime sleepiness.
It was so serious that, on the day of his admission, the man closed his eyes and collapsed, injuring his right eye after hitting the edge of a table.
Doctors diagnosed him with obstructive sleep apnea, for which the 81-year-old president has also been treated, and put him on a respirator to open his airways at night.
Biden is the oldest president of the United States, he is 80 years old, and last June he was photographed with marks on his face (circled) consistent with the use of a CPAP machine.
Vietnam’s streets are notoriously chaotic, like this roundabout in the country shown above. Experts say excessive sleepiness increases risk of accidents
The patient, who was from Vietnam, complained of snoring constantly at night and often woke up suddenly gasping for breath.
The 55-year-old man stated that mornings were also marked by headaches and feelings of drowsiness. – and that they had gained 22 pounds in two years.
The case was revealed in American Journal of Case Reportsamid warnings from doctors that excessive sleepiness can increase the risk of traffic accidents.
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is caused by blockage of the upper airways during sleep and affects about 39 million people in the US each year.
In many cases, it is related to obesity, which can cause fatty deposits to build up in the airways, making them heavier and more likely to collapse when lying down.
But it can also be caused by old age, as airway muscles weaken over time, making them more likely to collapse when someone sleeps.
It puts people at much higher risk of dementia, which is thought to be linked to prolonged sleep disruption.
The patient in Vietnam was a 55-year-old construction worker who suffered from the same sleep disorder as Joe Biden.
Doctors also measured the patient’s neck to diagnose the condition, which is caused by the airway becoming blocked while someone sleeps, leaving them struggling to breathe.
President Biden has been suffering from symptoms consistent with OSA since at least last June.
The White House revealed the condition after the president appeared with marks on his face consistent with the use of a CPAP machine.
He also had symptoms of OSA in 2008 and 2019, said the president’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, but this was reported to have resolved after sinus and nasal passage surgeries.
Dr. O’Connor says Biden remains a “healthy, active and robust” man who “remains capable of successfully executing the duties of the President.”
In the Vietnam case, the patient was also diagnosed with obese hypoventilation disorder (OHD), a breathing disorder that causes an obese person to have too much carbon dioxide and too little oxygen in their blood.
Doctors treated the patient by asking him to use a CPAP machine for six hours every night.
After three months, the patient reported that his sleep had improved and he was now alert enough to drive.
They also say they had lost almost 5 pounds and that their blood pressure, which had previously been high, had dropped to a normal level.
His accidents were related to daytime sleepiness and the patient confirmed that he had not consumed alcohol before the accidents.
Doctors revealed the case in part to warn about the dangers of tired driving, with about 328,000 crashes on U.S. roads related to drowsiness each year.
The doctors, from a military hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, wrote in the report: ‘In summary, OSA… manifests symptoms of excessive daytime sleepiness, which substantially increases the risk of traffic accidents.
“Unfortunately, this issue has not received the necessary attention in Vietnam.”
The CDC says everyone should sleep between seven and nine hours each night on average.
But surveys suggest that more than a third of Americans fail to meet this threshold, amid brightly lit lights in city centers and a growing plethora of distractions, from televisions to cell phones to computer games.
