Photo credit: sl wong
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
Reuters reported last month that the Federal Food and Drug Administration is seeking to lower sodium levels in processed food. This effort is based on recent research showing that cutting salt intake by as little as one teaspoon a day is as effective as first-step medication to treat high blood pressure. The lead researcher, Dr. Deepak Gupta at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, stated: “Just as any physical activity is better than none for most people, any sodium reduction from the current diet is likely better than none.”
Why is this important? Prevention of disease is always better and almost always less expensive than treatment of disease. Unfortunately, there’s very little glory in preventing disease, and very little money to be made trying to do that, unless one is a vaccine manufacturer. Preventing the chronic diseases so common in the industrialized world today — “diseases of civilization” such as hypertension, heart disease, chronic lung disease and many forms of cancer — relies more on personal health behaviors than on interventions by doctors, making the task even more difficult.
Studies show that if doctors take the time to discuss not smoking with a patient, or starting to exercise, these healthy behaviors will increase. The effects of a physician intervention are great enough to reach statistical significance, but in my opinion not great enough to have a real impact on population health. The FDA’s efforts to get food manufacturers to reduce the sodium content of their processed food products are likely to be more effective.
Publicizing the dangers of salt intake will convince at least some people to reduce their salt intake. I like to say that salt is poison. That’s a little radical, but humans evolved with very low sodium intakes because unless one lived near the ocean, food containing sodium is rare in nature. Salt was so rare that Roman soldiers were paid, at least in part, with it. In fact, the Latin root for the English word “salary” is “salarium” or, salt.
I hope the federal government takes a more aggressive approach to preventing noise-induced hearing loss. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention correctly states that this is the only type of hearing loss that is entirely preventable. I wish the government would set limits or at least recommended exposure levels for noise, just as it has for salt or sodium intake. I wish the Consumer Product Safety Commission would required warning labels on personal listening devices, earbuds and headphones, stating “WARNING: USE OF THIS PRODUCT CAN CAUSE HEARING LOSS AND OTHER AUDITORY DISORDERS.” I wish the Federal Trade Commission’s Division of Advertising Practices would enforce prohibitions on false advertising against vendors who advertise headphones with the industrial-strength 85-decibel volume limit as safe for children as young as 3, without an exposure time specified.
In the meantime, I’m trying to spread the word about the dangers of noise. Preventing noise-induced hearing loss is simple and inexpensive. If it sounds loud, it’s too loud and your auditory health is at risk. Turn down the volume, leave the noisy environment or use hearing protection and your ears should last a lifetime.
