![]() If you’re pregnant try to avoid loud noises as much as possible since research has shown that a fetus’s hearing can be damaged in utero.How can I protect myself Protecting your baby’s ears The same study when on to show that people who struggle with nocturnal environmental noise often also suffer the next day from daytime sleepiness and tiredness, annoyance, mood changes as well as decreased well-being and cognitive performance. So the loss of sleep doesn’t just stop at that, it usually has its consequences on your internal organs. You and I know that sleep disturbances cause our health to deteriorate. But that could just be my opinion let’s hear from Science.Ī 2014 study has shown that environmental noise, especially that caused by transportation means, is a significant cause of sleep disturbances. So it’s a no-brainer that noise ruins our sleep. We all are irritated by noise, I’m pretty certain you’ll find it difficult if not outright impossible to get a sound sleep if you have a dog barking just outside your window at night or if your nextdoor neighbor decides to play loud music at night. And it often gets progressively worse with time. When you can no longer hear the speech of others clearly someone might say the word “copy” and you would think they said “coffee”. ![]() This is temporary deafness and it usually goes away after some time.īut with prolonged continuous exposure to a cocktail of noises, there comes a time when your clogged ear sensation doesn’t go away. You might have even experienced it before, when (after being there for a long time) you step out of a nightclub, a construction site or just about any place rich in background noise you feel as though your ears are clogged and you can’t hear well. We usually require a decent amount of research before we agree, however we sort of know by experience and common sense that noise can certainly damage our hearing. It’s hard to believe noise can cause heart disease or brain damage. Now here’s the problem as long as we keep being exposed to noise these hormones will keep flowing even while we are asleep until they reach dangerously high levels which can lead to high blood pressure, stroke and heart failure. Well according to research, one of the key reasons is that noise increases the flow of stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline, into the bloodstream. “How is it even possible for noise to damage the heart?” You wonder. Hard to believe, I didn’t believe it at first too but after poring over tons of research I became a believer.Ī 2018 review of a paper in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, showed that people who are exposed to noise stand a risk of developing one or more of coronary artery disease, arterial hypertension, stroke, and heart failure.Īccording to a similar study, long-term exposure to traffic noise may account for about 210,000 coronary heart disease (CHD) deaths in Europe every year– that’s about 600 deaths per day. Yes!! You read that correctly, sustained exposure to background noise does harm your heart. To test this hypothesis, his group exposed rat pups to pulses of white noise throughout their infancy and found that the pups’ cortices were devastated. “How would such noise affect the developing brain?” Merzenich wondered. There is always a din.” he continues “White noise is everywhere now, coming from fans in our electronics, air conditioners, heaters, and car engines.” “Infants are reared in continuously more noisy environments. Scientists believe that background noise might hamper the proper growth and development of infant’s brains.Īccording to Michael Merzenich, Professor Emeritus and Neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco. He also cited a similar study, conducted on children living in public high-rise housing above the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago, that study also found that the closer these children’s floors were to the highway, the lower their intelligence. Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist, researcher and faculty at the University of Toronto’s Department of Psychiatry, in his book The Brain That Changes Itself cites one disturbing study which showed that the closer children lived to the noisy airport in Frankfurt, Germany, the lower their intelligence was. It turns out, the continuous background noise also known as white noise which comes from machines and other appliances, can harm your brain, it does so by overstimulating your auditory cortex– the part of the brain that helps us perceive sound.ĭr. Generally speaking, sounds above 85dB are harmfulĪnd remember, the louder the noise and the longer the duration of exposure to it the more harm it causes. Leaves rustling is about 30 dB, a heavy traffic or lawn mower is about 90 dB, and a loud rock concert is about 120 dB. A sound’s loudness is measured in decibels (dB). Of course, background noises aren’t equal, some are louder and more harmful than others.
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