While we don’t discuss truck driver health as much as we should on this platform, we wanted to dedicate an entire segment to driver health. Your health is the most important thing in your life. As drivers, we don’t think about our health when we’re young, but as you age, your health can catch up with you if you’re not taking your health serious.
It can be difficult trying to stay healthy on the road. The good news, there’s a lot of different things that you can do to stay healthy as a truck driver. Let’s jump to it.
1. Get To Know Superfoods And Eating Healthy
Superfoods have a ton of benefits, they’re often high in nutrients and minerals. There’s a wide range of foods that get the “superfood” label, these include but are not limited to strawberries, blueberries, spinach, salmon, pomegranate, almonds, kale, and more. Here’s Harvard’s Top 10 Superfood List.
If you’re not a fan of the foods, no worry, you can get the same nutriontal value using supplements. I use Micro Ingredients, have been for years. They’re a trusted company, they have thousands of product reviews. They also have a cool section on their website that show you how to make recipes with your supplemental powders. You can see those here.
No excuses now ladies and gentlemen. What you put into your body matters, if you’re living on sweets and candy, it will catch up to you. Start carrying superfoods with you, if you don’t like the taste of them, pick up your superfood supplements.
2. Find Time To Get Active And Exercise
It’s tough to exercise on the road, right? Or is it?
No matter what schedule you have, there’s always free time. Rather than popping up the ole YouTubes, take the time to go for a walk. Heck, you can walk and watch YouTube at the same time my friends. Win-win!
In all seriousness, you need to walk daily. Sitting for hours a day in a truck can take a toll on you. You may not have issues but now, but if you’re constantly sitting and never moving around, it will eventually catch up to you.
Here’s what the credible Dr. Rachel Lampert says about sitting and the problems it can cause.
It’s clear that sitting—like a lack of physical activity in general—is a contributing factor in many cases of cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of death in both men and women, says cardiologist Rachel Lampert, MD. “The body has all kinds of negative reactions to sitting for long periods,” she says. “In addition to decreasing the blood flow to the legs, sitting impacts things like sugar regulation and blood pressure—by altering the normal function of blood vessels, it feeds into diabetes and heart attacks. We know that the more you sit, the more likely you are to have a heart attack or die from a cardiac cause,” says Dr. Lampert.
That’s scary – so make sure you’re staying active and moving.
3. Make Sure You’re Getting 8 Hours Sleep
This may be the toughest one for us truck drivers, getting that 8 hours of sleep in.
Think we struggle with this one because we live by the concept of “we’re not making money unless we’re driving.” While that’s true,
We’ve discussed this a lot at Truckers Logic, we’ve touched on truck driving diets, we’ve discussed the truck driver health challenge.
We’ve even touched on sleep and how it benefits you. We’ve had some great discussions about it.
Sleep is when your body recovers and if you’re not getting your full 8 hours in, your body won’t recover like it should. You won’t feel it a month from now, a year from now, but as time goes on, not getting sleep will catch up to you.
4. What Is It That You Love To Do
It can be touch to carry your passions on the road. For example, if you love racing on the weekend, it’s going to be touch to get in that car if you’re working on the road.
While you may not be able to race a car on the road, there’s likely many other things that bring you joy that you could bring on the road with you.
It can be lonely on the road. It’s important to your mindset and well-being to do things that bring you happiness. You know what that is for you, make sure you’re leaving some time for your passions.
Check out this great article here from Kaiser Permanente on the benefits of doing what you love.
In Closing
We discussed superfoods, exercise, staying active, and many other things in this article that will help you stay healthy.
Now, it’s your turn, do you have something to add to help other truck drivers stay healthy? If so, be sure to leave us a comment below.
