Your chosen profession requires you to demonstrate physical fitness to maintain your license.
As a professional passing isn't good enough. Your ability to make a living depends on your health. You need a strategy to stay fit, because it's your job.
My name is Ben Harriott, and I'm with Rocklin Mobile Chiropractic. This is video three in a four video series
on passing the DOT commercial driver physical exam the first time every time.
Every professional has standards he has to meet in order to excel in a chosen profession
Whether you knew it or not your profession requires you to be healthy
Just like an actor has to maintain his appearance or a football player has to protect his knees you have to stay in shape
We can get into a conversation about whether that's fair or not, but that's wasted breath
Instead consider yourself lucky that the side effect of your continued employment is that you'll also enjoy good health
This video is about a strategy for passing your DOT physical exam that you need to pass at least once every two years
In order to keep driving a commercial vehicle
And we're already at the first strategy. Strategy number one is to embrace that.
The most important thing you can do to make sure that you pass the CDL physical the first time every time is
to stop worrying about whether you'll pass.
Passing is minimal performance.
It's like saying you're squeezing past the requirement. As a professional, you should not be comfortable meeting only the bare minimum standards for your profession.
After all, if you're walking the knife edge of qualification, you're dancing with unemployment.
As a professional, you're seeking to exceed the minimum standards, If you embrace your fitness as part of your
profession, that is the first most important step in ensuring that passing is never an issue for you.
The next strategy is to determine your starting point. If you're going to exceed the standard for professional driving, you have to start somewhere.
Let's figure out your baseline health status and go from there.
We'll start by calculating your body mass index, your BMI. That is a number that represents, in a uniform way, your weight in
relationship to your height
So divide your weight, in pounds, by your height, in feet.
Then divide that result by your height, in feet, a second time.
Finally, multiply that number by 4.9.
The result is your body mass index. If it's over 30,
you need to make some lifestyle changes to get your weight down. A body mass index of 25 and above is
overweight, and over 30 is considered obese by medical standards.
If you found that you're obese, you're in good company
because, in the United States in 2017,
38 percent of adults are obese by medical standards
and the percentage of Americans overweight is approaching 70 percent. The problem
is that overweight and obesity dramatically increases the likelihood you will suffer from high cholesterol, high blood pressure,
sleep apnea, cancer, and many other health problems down the road.
Normal body weight correlates with a BMI of eighteen point five to twenty four point nine.
You need to get your body mass index down below 30 and work on continuing to reduce it to below 25.
This requires you to increase your activity and start seriously looking at your calorie intake.
It's not easy, but it is important. If you succeed in reducing your body mass index, that will be the most
significant step you can take to make sure you pass your DOT physical exam throughout your career.
Fortunately as you reduce your body mass index many other chronic conditions begin to improve as your BMI continues to drop below 25.
The third strategy is to prepare for your exam.
This is actually an extension from establishing your starting point. There are two critically important conditions that occur to people
often without their awareness.
Understanding your health status will help you determine if you are at risk. You need to know, honestly,
if these are a possible complication for you, because you absolutely
must get medical help at least in the short term, to get them under control before your CDL physical exam.
First, I want you to measure your blood pressure over several consecutive days. If
you don't have blood pressure measuring equipment, go to your local drugstore and use the public measuring stations there.
Second, I want you to ask your partner if you snore loudly.
If you're single, arrange to record yourself sleeping to see for yourself.
A blood pressure adder above 140 over 90 or indications of untreated sleep apnea,
snoring loudly is a big indicator, can each be cause for failing a DOT physical exam. If your blood pressure is normal
and there's no possibility of sleep apnea - you're good. Schedule your exam. But if either of these are questionable
It's important that you know that this is not just an issue for your license.
Sleep apnea causes permanent heart damage,
mental fogginess and increases your susceptibility to falling asleep behind the wheel.
And high blood pressure is known to be associated with strokes heart attacks and as a general indicator of hidden disease processes
already underway in the background.
As a professional driver whose continued involvement in in this chosen profession depends on physical fitness
you need to get medical assistance immediately,
to get these assessed and start treatment, so you can continue to make a living driving.
And then you'll want to make the lifestyle changes
needed to get your health back under control, get out from under medical dependence, and enjoy the later stages of your life yet to come.
A DOT physical exam is performed by a screening doctor, certified by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the FMCSA.
The purpose is to qualify you as fit to drive. Not to diagnose or treat you.
Diagnosis and treatment is the role of your personal physician or your medical group.
So, while it's great to know that you're fit to drive according to a once every two years certification exam
This is not enough to ensure that you're properly cared for. Especially if you're taking your fitness seriously, as part of your job.
You should be under ongoing care with a treating physician. Even if you're only treatment is a periodic checkup, ideally at least once per year.
It only makes sense then, that you would want to strategically time those annual physicals to be scheduled just ahead of your commercial driver physical
recertification exams. This way, when you get your annual physical exam
from your personal doctor, you can take full advantage of that service.
Let me explain further:
Whether you have medical insurance, or you're paying out of pocket for your annual exam,
getting the full benefit of that checkup won't cost you more. So here are some things you should be taking advantage of while you're there...
First, tell your doctor that you're a commercial driver and that you have a commercial driver medical certification exam coming up.
Tell him that you want to make sure that you're not at risk for failing the exam due to high blood pressure.
Next, tell your doctor that you understand that sleep apnea is a really big deal for commercial drivers for medical qualification.
Ask him if he thinks that you might be experiencing sleep apnea, or if he has any specific advice
related to this concern. Next, if you're taking prescription medicine, have your doctor complete the
FMCSA prescription form. A link to this form is on my website at RocklinChiropractic.net.
This form provides the reason for any prescribed medications, as well as the
implications of that condition or the doctor's treatment on your ability to drive safely.
Next, if you're under treatment for any condition at all, ask your doctor if he feels that the current treatment is going well.
If it's adequate. If it needs to be adjusted and if he thinks that the condition or that treatment could impact your ability to drive safely.
This is a good time to ask the doctor if he thinks a note about this or anything else
likely to raise questions for a DOT FMCSA screening doctor would be helpful.
If there is anything to be noted, a copy of that note, on the doctor's office stationery
should be provided to the FMCSA screening doctor.
By getting your annual physical first and getting any supporting documentation
together in advance, you also demonstrate to the FMCSA screening doctor that you take your
responsibility to remain fit to drive seriously and that you're being proactive about it.
Ultimately the decision as to whether you're certified or not lies with the screening doctor.
The easier you can make this decision for him, the better. OK, this brings us to the the fourth strategy, The timing of your exam.
The last key strategy is the timing of the screening exam. Your license renews less frequently
than your medical certification because your medical condition can change fairly quickly.
And you don't want to have to mess around with both at the same time.
So, first I'd recommend that you get your physical exam certifications occurring several months before your license renewal month.
Now ultimately you want to be able to be take advantage of the 45-day window for pending results exams,
just in case. So the screening exam should be scheduled about two months prior to the expiration date for your current medical
certificate. If you, I mean, you don't have to wait for the certificate to expire to get a new one so if it's expiring near
your birthday, plan to get it early one time to separate those two events as I already mentioned.
And if you're getting a medical check-up
try to time that to happen before your DOT FMCSA medical certification exam to make sure that everything is go, and so you can take full advantage
of that service. So, recapping the four key strategies to passing your DOT physical the first time every time...
First key strategy is embrace fitness as a part of your job, and then do your job.
Two, get a starting point it by determining your BMI.
Do whatever it takes to get that number less than 30 and work towards getting it down below 25.
Three, look for any indications that you have hidden diseases like high blood pressure, or sleep apnea already affecting you and get medical help immediately.
Know that if you drive your BMI down successfully, these other disease processes will improve as well as many others. And
know that you can get out from under medical dependence on medical assistance in the majority of cases
and you'll reap the rewards in every aspect of your life.
Finally... Four...
Coordinate the timing of your certification exams with your annual checkups so that you can take full advantage of the supervision,
assistance and oversight of your personal doctor to make re-certification a breeze.
Well this is the end of video 3 on the 4 key strategies to passing your CDL physical exam the first time every time.
The next video is on avoiding false high blood pressure readings.
So, if you have concerns about blood pressure be sure to watch that next. If you don't
you can go right over to rocklinchiropractic.net and schedule your DOT physical exam right now.
You can do it any time of the day or night. We have online scheduling or you can call us if you prefer.
Just remember that at RocklinChiropractic.net we offer
DOT exams at the lowest possible price, at the most convenient times, and at the location of your preference. So
we look forward to hearing from you
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