Easing the STRESS of our NOISY WORLD
The sounds you chalk up as merely annoying can have a surprising impact on your heart, sleep and weight. Here’s how to recapture some quiet and protect your health.
Clang. Ping! Buzzzzz. Roaaaar. Rumble rumble. Clang. Boom! No matter where you are right now, chances are you’re surrounded by noise. Maybe you’re in your backyard and the kids next door are yelling, someone down the street has revved up their lawnmower, and there goes a plane overhead.
Perhaps you’re sitting on a train and, along with the non-stop rumble along the tracks, the people across the aisle are talking so loudly they’re practically yelling, and someone’s playing a video game on his phone without earbuds. Or maybe you’re sitting at your kitchen table in what should be pure quiet, but what you hear is a constant hum emanating from your fridge, your smart TV and other devices.
Yes, any of these scenarios may be a little annoying or downright crazy-making, but it’s having an impact on more than your mood, says environmental health scientist Rick Neitzel, PhD. For starters, there’s the obvious – the louder the world gets, the more it affects our hearing. Then there’s the psychosomatic toll. One study published in PLoS One found that strong annoyance with noise was associated with increased depression and anxiety; other research has shown that exposure to noise – both high sound levels in occupational settings and relatively low environmental noise – can spike blood pressure, heart rate and the release of stress hormones. It’s no wonder the World Health Organization found that after air pollution, noise pollution is one of the biggest
threats to public health. “Even though from a mental perspective we have adapted to our loud world and become remarkably good at screening out certain noises, the key thing to understand is that our nervous systems are still responding to that noise,” Neitzel says. Which means the near-constant buzzing, humming, roaring and banging around us are affecting us on deep levels – whether we’re consciously bothered by it or not.
YOUR BODY ON NOISE
To understand why noise can do so much damage to our bodies and our health, you need to know what happens when we’re exposed to sound. Sound is essentially a bunch of vibrating
air molecules, explains Colleen Le Prell, a leading researcher in the area of hearing loss prevention. Those vibrating molecules push on the eardrum, which makes the small bone in the middle of the ear start moving. That bone pushes on the fluid-filled cochlea and causes wavelike motions in the fluid, much like the ripples created when a rock lands after being thrown into a pond. The movement alerts the inner ear’s hair
cells, which live in that fluid, to transmit signals to the brain so the sound can be analysed: How loud is it? Where is it in relation to me? Have I heard it before? Should I be scared? Within milliseconds, the brain recognises what the sound is (Oh, that’s a leaf blower! Uh-oh, that sounded like a siren!) and spreads the message to other parts of the brain. Our brains are constantly interpreting
what we hear to discern not only potential threats, but also what can be blocked out so we can, say, have a conversation in a noisy restaurant. But even sounds the brain blocks out affect our body systems, says Neitzel. If the brain perceives a sound as alarming
or even just annoying, that sets off a surge in cortisol, adrenaline and other stress hormones that help us run for our lives from a threat, explains Amanda Edwards, a clinical audiologist. The problem? This hormonal response tends to happen when we are chronically startled by sounds that aren’t life-threatening (car alarms, jackhammers, even loud laughter at a restaurant bar) and can elicit those potentially unhealthy physiological responses, says clinical psychologist and stress management expert Paul Salmon, PhD.
Our reaction to noise also has a profound effect on our physiological response, Salmon says. Let’s say you’re reading when your neighbour starts up his leaf blower. The buzzing sets off a stress response, but the mind chatter that follows makes matters worse. “You might think, ‘What is he doing using his leaf blower now? Doesn’t he know people are trying to relax? How inconsiderate!’” Salmon says. “As you start generating these thoughts, images and self-talk around the sound, you get worked up. That heightens and prolongs your stress response.”
HEALTH DOWNSIDE
It might be tempting to brush off this stress as just another fact of life. Yet a growing number of researchers say the impact noise has on our bodies, minds and moods is too great to ignore. First, there’s the risk to our hearing, says Le Prell.
“When a sound is extremely loud, and particularly when it happens in impulses, like firecrackers or what sounds like a firearm discharging, it can tear those hair cells in the inner ear, which is permanent damage,” she explains.
Chronic noise – such as frequent exposure to road traffic and planes overhead – causes smaller injuries to those hair cells, which can recover if you give them the chance. “Think of those hair cells like a patch of grass,” Edwards says. “If you trample on grass, it’ll lie down and eventually
spring back up. In the same way, exposure to loud noise knocks the hair cells down temporarily, and they pop back up within days. But if you don’t give them a break from noise, they may never pop back up – and your hearing will be impaired.”
While the kind of noise pollution the majority of us are exposed to on a regular basis isn’t likely to lead to significant hearing loss, it is disturbing our sleep, affecting our ability to focus, and messing with our stress hormones, all of which are factors that can contribute to heart disease, says Neitzel, whose research explores the links between noise pollution and various health impacts. One study published in the British Medical Journal found that high blood pressure was significantly higher in those who were exposed to roaring aircraft at night. And our clamorous world may be a reason we’re gaining weight: research has found that loud music can drive unhealthy food choices, thanks to the stress response it sparks. Writer Anne LeClaire, who lives in a seaside town, says it wasn’t until she started spending some days completely silent that she realised how loud her world really was – and how much it was affecting her.
“The first day I did that was profound,” she says. “I moved more slowly. I could feel my shoulders drop and my breath slow down.” She started having silent days twice a month. “When you spend a little more time in quiet, you quickly realise how it affects you physically and emotionally.”
INCREASING THE PEACE
There’s much we can do to combat the effects of our noisy lives, says researcher Rachel Buxton, PhD, who studies the impact of noise pollution. Here are some things to try.
Get out into nature and really listen. You don’t need total silence to reap the benefits of quiet. The sounds you hear when you take a walk in the bush or sit on a quiet beach produce the opposite effect of the sorts of noise we’re more often exposed to in cities, Buxton says. “A growing body of evidence shows that when you go into a natural area, it makes you more focused, boosts mood, improves memory and lowers stress levels,” she says.
Upgrade to sound-isolating headphones. If you’re using regular earphones to block noise, you may have to turn the volume way up to compete with it, and that does more harm than good, says Le Prell: “Sound-isolating or noise cancelling earphones block those background sounds well enough that you’ll be able to listen to something at a quieter level.”
What’s with white noise? Research shows that even when people think they’ve slept through sounds, they’ve had cardiovascular responses that activated their fight-or-flight responses, moving them from deep sleep to a lighter sleep stage, increasing blood pressure and even disrupting their heart rate. For this reason some people like to listen to a sound machine, humidifier, fan or some other form of white noise while they snooze. But is this good for your health? The jury is still out. While some research shows this static-like sound benefits issues like tinnitus, animal research suggests it may have negative impacts on the brain’s ability to filter and process information.
Start meditating. Once you become aware of the sounds you’re exposed to, you may realise just how noisy life is – and feel even more annoyed. One antidote, says Salmon, is meditation. “You learn to notice that any sensation – like a noise – often has an accompanying narrative in your mind,” he says. “And that’s what is stressful.” Meditation helps lessen your reactivity. “You learn to say, ‘that’s just sound’ rather than get into this elaborate story about the annoying car horn or oblivious coworker,” Salmon explains. The result? You won’t feel so riled up – and at least some of the impact of our banging, clattering, buzzing world will roll off you.