Noisy neighborhood? Your heart can pay a price

MONDAY, Nov. 5, 2018 (HealthDay News) – Living in neighborhoods saturated with noise could be more than just boring, new research suggesting that it seems to increase the risk of serious heart problems.

Chronic sounds from traffic and airports seem to trigger the amygdala, a brain region essential to stress regulation, have revealed brain scans.

The noise is also associated with increased inflammation of the arteries, risk factor for stroke, heart attack and heart disease, said Dr. Azar Radfar, principal investigator. She is a research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

"We are not the first group to talk about noise and cardiovascular disease," said Radfar. "What we are really showing here is the mechanism linking noise to major adverse cardiovascular events."

For the study, Radfar and colleagues analyzed images of 499 healthy people, looking specifically at their brains and blood vessels.

The investigators then used participants' personal addresses to obtain estimates of noise levels in their neighborhood, based on aircraft noise data and US Department of Transportation roads.

The researchers found that residents of the noisiest neighborhoods had higher levels of activity in their amygdala and more inflammation in their arteries.

The research team then followed study participants for an average of 3.7 years to determine whether these stress symptoms could lead to heart problems.

The results showed that people exposed to chronic noise were more than three times more likely to have a heart attack, stroke, or other major cardiovascular event than people who were less exposed to noise.

This risk remained high even after researchers took into account other risk factors, such as air pollution, hypercholesterolemia, smoking and diabetes.

But the study could not prove that the noise was increasing heart risks.

Nevertheless, the amygdala appears to increase heart risk by triggering the release of hormones that fuel the inflammation of blood vessels, the researchers concluded.

Dr. Nieca Goldberg is Director of the NYU Langone Tisch Women's Health Center in New York. According to her, based on this research, noise is "a link in the cardiovascular risk chain, and I think it's an interesting question for doctors who ask their patients to assess their risk heart ".

Radfar even suggested that people affected by transport noise might consider soundproofing their homes.

At the community level, road and urban planners can protect the population by integrating road noise barriers into road construction, Radfar suggested.

And, added Goldberg, if you are in a noisy neighborhood, you can also consider other ways to reduce your stress. These can include yoga, meditation or aerobic exercises.

The results will be presented on November 11 at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association in Chicago. Such research is considered preliminary until it is published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

The US Environmental Protection Agency is more interested in noise pollution.