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Stars Books Grandparents Fish Whispers Paper & Pencil Grass According to the World Health Organization’s Guidelines for Community Noise, noise is an increasing public health problem. Noise can have the following adverse health effects: hearing loss; sleep disturbances; cardiovascular and psychophysiologic problems; performance reduction; annoyance responses; and adverse social behavior.
JUNE 7, 2013
SILENCE! I magine this harrowing scenario: you’re having a big weekend with friends, maybe during the holidays when over-eating is a primary part of the festivities. Every time you turn around there’s a buffet table sagging under the weight of all your favorite foods. And then someone is serving you a feast they’ve slaved over just for you. You can’t say no. After three days of stuffing yourself you feel like you won’t eat for a week. But then the strangest thing happens. A week later — even a month later — your appetite still hasn’t returned. It’s all you can do to eat a cracker. One M&M and you’re stuffed. The weight loss was nice at first, but now you’re approaching skeletal. Your doctors are seriously concerned. They’re force feeding you through tubes, but it seems as though your body doesn’t even recognize food anymore. Through medical care you manage to avoid death, but your appetite never returns, even decades later. Sound pretty far-fetched? It isn’t. In fact, that’s exactly what can — and does — happen to people’s hearing all the time. Overindulging in sound so much that it causes hearing loss can happen over many years, or within an hour ot two: ask someone who stood near the giant speakers at a high-decibel concert. Just make sure you ask them loudly so they can hear you. To put it another way, if you don’t look for opportunities to chase after the title word of this article, you’re eventually going to get there anyway.
The sounds of silence “So we’re supposed to live in a silent world to prevent living in a silent world?” Not even close. We’re supposed to avoid prolonged exposure to excessive noise to protect our hearing. How? Expert audiologists at Eisenhower Army Medical Center gave us the scoop, so listen up. “Noise-induced hearing loss is caused by damage to the microscopic hair cells, called cilia, which are found in the inner ear,” explains Terrie Ziegler, CCC-A, an audiologist at Ft. Gordon. “Cilia are small sensory cells that convert the sounds we hear Please see SILENCE! page 6
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