The Australian health guidelines dictate that people should be completing either 1.25-2.5 hours of vigorous physical activity or 2.5-5 hours of moderate physical activity per week to stay physically and mentally healthy and reduce the prospect of health issues like heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers, but for most Australians, that’s easier said than done.
For a career like truck driving, where vehicle operators are required to remain sedentary in their cabs while their truck chews up the open road, that can become an almost impossible task.
Late night stops, poor exercise facilities, and the draining nature of hours on the road means exercise is often the farthest thing from a driver’s mind once they pull in for the night or set off in the morning.
Because of these difficulties – and the difficulties associated with accessing easily accessible and healthy food to stops across the country – driver health is suffering and, as the average age of the Australian truck driver continues to climb, it’s setting an already stretched industry up with another serious problem to deal with.
Dr Rosa Virgara of the University of South Australia recently led a study into health interventions that could improve the health of truck drivers, and found that tailored, multi-level approaches are required to enact positive change.
The meta-analysis conducted by Virgara and her fellow researchers reviewed the effectiveness of health interventions for over 2000 truck drivers from over 19 studies around the world.
Experimental studies regarding a range of health outcomes included physical activity, sedentary behaviour, sleep, diet, weight loss, drug/alcohol use and/or smoking were eligible, and it was found that there was a comparative lack of research into the occupation when compared to other key groups.
Truckies have higher rates of obesity and other chronic diseases than the general population. In fact, almost a third of truckies have three or more diagnosed health conditions at a rate of four times as many as the average person.
One in five drivers under the age of 35 also report severe phycological distress.
Virgara says a key take away from her study was more work needs to be done with industry to ascertain what will actually improve driver health outcomes.
“When we go and look at all the data and do our calculations, we get what we call a ‘statistically significant number’, Virgara tells ATN. “What was happening was things were favouring towards improving things like the amount of fruit and veg truck drivers were eating, how much physical activity they were doing, improving cardiovascular markers like blood pressure and cholesterol.
“But because the size of the studies wasn’t big enough, it wasn’t what you could scientifically call a strong result.
“There’s just not enough information yet about what the most effective interventions are. Some of them that seemed to be effective were things like individualised goal setting, or what we would label as ‘mentoring’ where they would touch base with drivers regularly through an intervention period.
“I think the biggest piece whenever you’re designing or trying to find an intervention to help people is actually consulting with the people whom you’re trying to improve their health.
“That means working with truck drivers directly, working with trucking companies, government agencies, getting all these stakeholders and end users together to co-design something that takes on all that input and implements it.
“We might have ideas of what we think might help them, but that might be very different to what they need.
“It’s like what any clinician does when they’re treating a patient, they always need to listen to the patient and combine that key information with what they already know.”
With the advancing age of large parts of Australia’s truck driving sector though, that time is rapidly running out.
Recently released data from NatRoad has found 47 per cent of drivers are over 55 years old, with the weighted average age of those in the industry sitting at 49 years.
The health problems being experienced by Australia’s truck driving force will not just make their jobs harder in the short-term, but Virgara says it could be an influencing factor on how much they will be able to enjoy their upcoming retirements.
“When you’ve got multiple comorbidities or health issues, they can compound and cause chronic problems down the track,” she continues.
“It might start as a bit of high cholesterol in your early 30s or 40s, but later down the track it could become metabolic syndrome and then diabetes.
“As with any health promotion type of any age group, you want to intervene and get people earlier in the piece because prevention is better than cure, and that’s what all of this is targeted around.
“It’s about preventing decline in health and promoting health improvement as they move towards retirement, so they can enjoy that retirement.
“You see a lot of people across a range of career types that get to retirement, and that’s when they get diagnosed with some pretty awful chronic diseases like cancer or chronic airways disease, and that opportunity to enjoy those golden years is not quite the same.
“If we think about our aging general population and aging truck driver population, it’s about keeping people out of nursing homes and in their own homes and minimising the potential impact of a lot of preventable health issues.”
Currently, there are several health interventions being trialled and installed across Australia, including the addition of exercise equipment at some of Australia’s larger highway rest stops. Some truck stops – like the Balranald Roadhouse on the Sturt Highway in NSW – have also opened free gym facilities for truckies.
And while improved physical health often results in improved mental health, Virgara says the addition of younger, more tech savvy drivers could help limit the feelings of isolation often felt by truckies spending hours alone on the open road.
“Our research group did another big summary study where we looked at interventions that help mental health,” she says. “We definitely know being physically active is one of the best treatment modalities for maintaining mental health.
“We’ve got a younger demographic that might use the CB radio, but they’re also pretty tech savvy and they can use their phones when they’re not driving.
“Social media platforms can be used to build a community of practice and people can support each other in that way, and we’ve seen great success in things like Men’s Sheds.
“Knowing that it is a predominantly male demographic that drives trucks, maybe there could be a similar intervention for truck drivers to improve mental health outcomes.”
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