While participants with chronic tinnitus reported more difficulties hearing in noisy environments than controls in some studies, participants with chronic tinnitus also more frequently reported symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. It is interesting to note that participants in one study with chronic tinnitus did not report more noise exposure than controls, despite this finding in other studies. This latter finding is not surprising given that participant recall limits the accuracy of self-reports of noise exposure and that exposure episodes’ frequency and repetition affect the participant’s recall.

Due to its potential connection to aging, many people believe that tinnitus is only a problem for adults. However, research in publications has indicated otherwise. Tinnitus affects between 4.7% and 46% of children in the general pediatric population and among children whose hearing is good. It also affects between 23.5% and 62.2% of children who have hearing loss. However, these estimates may not relate to real-world situations.

Some experts say that the numbers for children’s tinnitus prevalence are too low because of problems with communication. On the other hand, it could be said that kids lie about having tinnitus when they are asked to please the person asking. A subjective experience, tinnitus in children may be very difficult to know its extent in the population. In adults, its assessment may be quite different.

Often, chronic tinnitus-related distress (TRD) happens along with or instead of psychological or psychosomatic symptoms like depression, anxiety, or other somatization symptoms that may or may not happen in the context of clear medical factors like vertigo, sweating, blurred vision, headaches, periods of weakness, pain, nausea, or shortness of breath.

People who said they had chronic tinnitus were more likely to have weaker middle-ear muscle reactions, fewer cochlear nerve responses, and more activity in the central auditory pathways.

Reports indicate hearing loss linked to getting older before age 65 is more common in men, especially in people who have been around noise a lot. Also, in line with what has been written, people with chronic tinnitus were more likely to have had a concussion and show signs of anxiety and/or depression.

People who say they have tinnitus are often given the wrong diagnosis and think that their doctors do not understand or appreciate their condition. This feeling that their doctors do not understand can make their condition worse by making them depressed, stressed, tired, unable to cope, losing the ability to do daily tasks, having poor cognitive functioning, or even committing suicide. It is a very serious condition when we consider its far-reaching effects on someone’s life and their psychological difficulties.

There is a lot of agreement around the world that specialized cognitive-behavioral therapy should be used to help people with tinnitus. This is because there is more evidence that this type of therapy works to reduce patients’ distress and impairment. However, it has been suggested that CBT could also change how people experience tinnitus, but this has not yet been tested across studies.

Numerous options are available in addition to those that doctors provide, both online and elsewhere. When searching online, it is important to be wary of any claims that they can “cure,” “reduce,” or “eliminate” tinnitus. You can download many sound-therapy apps for free or very little money and use them on your phone.

One new app is receiving favorable attention. The MindEar app uses chatbots to help people with tinnitus use a virtual cognitive-behavioral therapist. The app also uses sound therapy, mindfulness, and meditation techniques to help people tune out the effects of their tinnitus in their minds.

For anyone with tinnitus, the thing to remember is that there are ways to learn to cope with it and to utilize various means at their disposal in a self-help mode. All is not lost, and the future will bring even better resolution to those affected by tinnitus.

The post Do You Hear What I Hear? The Bane of Tinnitus appeared first on Medika Life.

I very much enjoy walking outdoors, preferably around trees. I prescribe physical activity (such as ambulation) to my patients. Movement helps reduce the risk of everything from heart attack and stroke to early mortality.

Stanford University (USA) researchers discovered that individuals walking 90 minutes in a natural area (compared with subjects who walked in a high-traffic urban setting) had lower activity in a brain region associated with depression.

I Prescribe Nature to My Patients

I OFTEN PRESCRIBE NATURE TO MY PATIENTS, as exposure to the natural world has been associated with improvements in well-being. Read more here:

Many others have opined on the subject.

“Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn — that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness — that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 1899–26 March 1973) was an English singer, actor, composer, and playwright known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called “a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise.” Here is his witty take on walking:

“I like long walks, especialy when they are taken by people who annoy me.”
― Noel Coward

Last week, I logged nearly 25,000 steps walking in New York City in one day. But are there downsides to my practice of walking? What are the negative effects of road traffic and air pollution?

Road noise and high blood pressure

Today, I want to share with you the results of the first large prospective study directly analyzing the effect of road traffic noise on the incidence of newly-diagnosed high blood pressure (hypertension).

Let’s cut to the takeaway message:

The study offers a higher level of evidence that we should modify road traffic noise and pollution from the individual and societal levels to improve cardiovascular health.

To better understand the association between long-term road traffic noise exposure and a new diagnosis of high blood pressure, researchers conducted a prospective population-based analysis in UK Biobank.

First, they estimated road traffic noise at a baseline residential address. Second, the researchers used medical records to find incident hypertension. Finally, they estimated high blood pressure risk for 240,000 subjects free of hypertension at baseline, adjusting for potentially confounding factors.

After a median of 8.1 years, the researchers discovered a dose-response relationship: The higher the noise exposure, the greater the risk of having a diagnosis of hypertension.

For every 10 decibel increase (in average 24-hour road traffic noise level), there was a 1.07 times rise in the chances of having high blood pressure. The researchers adjusted the data for fine particles (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) exposure.

Exposure to air pollution and traffic noise exposure led to the highest high blood pressure risk.

Summary — Road noise and high blood pressure

Chronic exposure to road traffic noise appeared to be associated with a higher risk of receiving a hypertension diagnosis. The effect estimates were stronger in the presence of higher air pollution.

Study author Jing Huang says that “they were a little surprised that the association between road traffic noise and hypertension was robust even after adjustment for air pollution.”

I will stay indoors during higher pollution times unless I can head into one of the many forested areas in Seattle.

The post Road Noise Might Be One Reason Your Blood Pressure is High appeared first on Medika Life.

Worldwide up to 1.5 billion people have hearing loss which may reach 2.5 billion by 2030. Fifty-five million people have dementia, and we are now learning that hearing loss, a factor not considered previously, may play a role in its development.

Research studies have now identified midlife hearing loss as an independent risk factor for dementia, which is involved in 9% of cases of dementia. The question which begs an answer is how could hearing loss be related to dementia, and this is the area where hearing pathology and the amelioration of hearing loss may play significant roles.

Healthcare professionals already saw the effect hearing loss had on the emotional state of their patients. Patients with mild to moderate hearing loss were often depressed and began to seclude themselves, avoiding conversations in groups or settings where music was playing. It decreased their interest in social activities, and, therefore, hearing loss began to affect their physical stability as well. Less interaction often leads to fewer physical activities, which plays a role in physical and emotional health as it also affects the immune system.

Researchers now know that the brain’s memory center, the hippocampus, is also affected by hearing loss. Studies have shown a direct relationship between manipulating auditory information, whether speech, music, environmental, emotional or other sounds, with this prime memory area of the brain.

Hearing involvement in cognitive processing and dementia may be worse than patients realize. In a study that tracked 639 adults for nearly 12 years, Johns Hopkins expert Frank Lin, M.D., Ph.D., and his colleagues found that mild hearing loss doubled dementia risk. Moderate loss tripled risk, and people with a severe hearing impairment were five times more likely to develop dementia.

Hearing loss, therefore, is a formidable challenge in terms of dementia and maintaining cognition. Various brain scanning methods have verified the physical extent to which brain atrophy is affected by hearing loss.

Although hearing loss may come as a function of aging and changes in the hearing mechanism of the ear, we now know that environmental noise can exacerbate this loss and bring on neuropsychiatric outcomes such as memory impairment, a.k.a. dementia. The sources identified as most concerning for noise exposure include traffic noise and other environmental noise-producing factors. This could be most relevant in job situations where noise is constantly present.

Not only does noise affect hearing, but it also affects the central nervous system and the brain, which may increase the risk of stroke, dementia, cognitive decline, neurodevelopmental disorders, depression, and anxiety disorder.

The Role of Hearing Aids

The question of hearing loss and its relationship to dementia also brings into consideration another question; would treatment with hearing aids be helpful in either delaying dementia or in reversing some forms of it? Previously, studies that attempted to measure cognitive outcomes when hearing interventions were provided have been short-lived because of the general population’s lack of hearing aid use or compliance.

Hearing aids have been out of the financial reach of many (costing between $4-$6K) or have been unsuitable because of their design or effects on environmental sounds; we have little evidence to go on. Now, however, that the FDA has agreed to the provision of selling over-the-counter hearing aids and negating the need for a medical exam or an audiology exam, there may be noticeable changes in the hearing-loss population.

The difficulties, however, still exist because many will find the units out of reach for them because of pricing. Still, we hope that competition and technological developments and innovations will make them available to the larger population.

Could hearing aids be remediation in some manner and tap into the brain’s ability to change the hippocampal structures destroyed through hearing loss? Biologists know that the brain contains stem cells that might be brought into use through innovative techniques not yet envisioned by researchers but potentially viable in abstraction.

Could these hippocampal cells be prompted to replace sections devoted to cognition that are atrophied by hearing loss? The question is intensely exciting and necessitates research toward that end.

The post Hearing Loss Contributes to Mental Suffering and Dementia Despair appeared first on Medika Life.