One thing that makes me good at my profession is my passion (or curse, at times) for knowledge and learning. I’ll start with an idea and then go from there – research, interviews, research, testing, research, research, research.
My friends and family have lovingly referred to me as “Mr. Fix It” (or “Mr. Know-it-all” when they don’t like my conclusions) due to my need to take a problem and find a solution – all naturally if possible.
One friend likes to play a game with me where she will “nutshell” a problem and ask me to find the cause with very little to go on. For example, she recently told me that her friend who lives by an airport suffers from high blood pressure.
I am then to tell her why this is so. I must also assume that since she has given no information about her friend’s health history, age, and lifestyle choices (alcohol, cigarettes, etc.) that these have been checked out and are not a major contributing factor.
As the title of this article has exposed, airports are noisy. So? Why would this be important? In order to answer that I applied my research techniques and found an amazing amount of information on noise pollution and its effects on one’s health.
Noise pollution, also known as environmental noise is unwanted or unpleasant noise created by both people and animals and machines.
When noise is at 45 decibels, we are unable to sleep. When it reaches 85 decibels, hearing begins to become damaged, causing tinnitus (ringing in the ear) and hearing loss. At 120 decibels, ear pain can be felt.
Sometimes the noise is simply annoying, for example, loud people, barking dog or loud stereo system registering at a decibel level low enough not to cause damage but to still produce symptoms such as irritability, or frustration.
Commons sources of noise include cars, trains, airplanes, factory machinery and construction machinery.
Even when exposed short term to loud noise, people can experience high blood pressure, lack of sleep, indigestion, confusion and forgetfulness.
If exposure becomes chronic (i.e., working or living near high noise areas such as an airport), the effects can be devastating to one’s health. These effects include: heart disease, ulcers, permanent hearing loss and can even lead to mental illness.
While the U.S. does have laws governing noise pollution, they vary from state to state, city to city, with some having no laws at all because many still view the problem as a nuisance and not a health issue.
The best solution of course is to avoid the source of the noise but when that’s not possible for say working in or living near high noise areas, take steps to mitigate the risk of damage by following proper hearing safety protocols at work and insulating ones home to noise as much as possible.
While I can’t offer these tools, I can offer my program for regulating blood pressure with my High Blood Pressure program. This program includes exercises which reverse the stress caused by the high noise - therefore lowering your blood pressure even if you have to stay around the noise.
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