Photo credit: Robbie Sproule licensed under CC BY 2.0
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
This thoughtful piece talks about chronic disease, pointing out that it is not inevitable or natural. The author, Dr. Clayton Dalton, writes that:
[T]raditional cultures across the globe, from hunter-gatherers to pastoralists to horticulturists, have shown little evidence of chronic disease. It’s not because they don’t live long enough – recent analysis has found a common lifespan of up to 78 years among hunter-gatherers, once the bottlenecks of high mortality in infancy and young adulthood are bypassed. We can’t blame genes, since many of these groups appear to be more genetically susceptible to chronic disease than those of European descent.
So what is the reason for the absence of chronic illness among these cultures? “Evidence suggests it is how they live,” Dr. Dalton replies. And what factors do these different cultures share? Dr. Dalton writes that the “common denominator [is] defined by the absence of modern banes: absence of processed foodstuffs, absence of sedentary lifestyle, and likely absence of chronic stressors.”
Dr. Dalton doesn’t specifically mention noise-induced hearing loss, but that’s another chronic disease that he could have included in his essay.
I spoke about this at the 12th Congress of the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Noise in Zürich in June. Similar to Dr. Dalton’s comments about hypertension and diabetes, I presented information showing that significant hearing loss is probably not part of normal aging, but represents noise-induced hearing loss.
A useful analogy for noise and hearing is sun and the skin. It turns out that skin and subcutaneous tissues sag as we age–that’s normal–but deep wrinkles, age spots, and skin cancers are the result of ultraviolet exposure. Similarly, I’m sure there are changes that occur in our hearing as we age, but profound hearing loss (25-40 decibel decrement in hearing) is most often the result of noise exposure.
In the end, how we live our lives matters. If we want to hear well into old age, we have to work to preserve our hearing all during our lives. How? It’s easy: avoid loud noise or wear ear protection if you can’t.
