Living near loud traffic increases your risk of having a heart attack

Boring!  Of course people living near busy roads have worse health.  They are poor.  The rich don't live there.  And poverty is a major predictor of ill health

Loud traffic noise increases the risk of heart attack, a study shows.  Researchers say that each ten per cent rise in volume comes with a 12 per cent higher risk of heart attack.

Previous studies had investigated the combined effects of noise and pollution, although the results were inconclusive.

But the latest study of more than 50,000 people has found a ‘clear relationship’ between noise and heart attacks, reports journal PLoS ONE.

Dr Mette Sorenson, of the Danish Cancer Society, said that the reason for the relationship is unknown, but may be due to increased stress and sleep disturbances associated with high traffic noise.

He said: 'In this study residential exposure to road traffic noise was associated with a 12 per cent higher risk of myocardial infarction (MI) per ten decibel exposure to noise, showing a clear dose response relationship.'

Suggesting one possible explanation he said: 'Sleep disturbances can contribute to cardiovascular risk, leading to the hypothesis that exposure to noise during the night might be more harmful than daytime exposure.

'The sleep structure generally becomes more fragmented with age and elderly people are thus more susceptible to sleep disturbances.'

He said it was possible that changes in lifestyle caused by disrupted sleep could play a part.  But he adds: 'Stress and sleep disturbances can cause changes to lifestyle habits, including increased tobacco smoking and thus potentially a stronger association between traffic noise and MI among smokers.

'However we found indications of a high effect of road traffic noise on MI among never smokers.'

He points out that those studied mainly lived in urban areas, meaning other factors could be at play.

But he said: 'The present study shows a positive association between residential exposure to road traffic noise and risk for MI.'

SOURCE








The 1930s' Supersize Me: Bizarre experiment involved man eating only burgers for THREE MONTHS (and he didn't report any health problems)



The elite have hated popular food for a long time

Over 80 years before Morgan Spurlock even thought about eating McDonald's every day for a month, one Minnesota man resolved to chow down on up to 30 burgers a day - for three months.

However, unlike Spurlock's crusading attack on the fast-food giant, unheralded Bernard Flesche devoured burgers three times a day to show how healthy and safe they were and ultimately helpied them become synonymous with America.

Dubbed the 'White Castle Project', the 1932 initiative was the braind-child of White Castle owner Edgar Waldo 'Billy' Ingram, the father of fast-food burgers in the United States who created his patented 'Slyders' in 1921.
Needing to change the public perception of their burgers, White Castle commissioned an experiment in which a man was to eat up to 30 burgers a day for three months to prove they were safe to consume

Needing to change the public perception of their burgers, White Castle commissioned an experiment in which a man was to eat up to 30 burgers a day for three months to prove they were safe to consume

Even though his business was growing, the Wichita, Kansas, headquartered firm was still having difficulty persuading Americans to eat ground beef after the famous journalist and author Upton Sinclair exposed the poor hygiene of meat processing factories in his novel 'The Jungle'.

Nutritionist of the era waded in too declaring 'The hamburger habit is just about as safe as walking in a garden while the arsenic spray is being applied.'

Adding insult to injury, one anti-burger author said that the then unpoular snack was 'about as safe as getting your meat out of a garbage can standing in the hot sun. For beyond all doubt, the garbage can is where the chopped meat sold my most butchers belongs, as well as a large percentage of all the hamburger that goes into sandwiches.'

Deciding that these perceptions may be a problem, Ingram hired Jesse McClendon, Ph.D., a respected biochemist who had taught at Cornell University to research and eventually prove that burgers were safe.

Resolving that human experimentation was the most sensible way forward, McClendon convinced White Castle to endorse his study that would pave the way for thousands of American fast-food outlets and the popularity of cheeseburgers.

Forty-nine-year-old McClendon knew from previous research that dogs fed on lean-meat only diets did not suffer a depreciation in health.

So he proposed to White Castle that he would feed a single experimental human subject only White Castle burgers, bun, onion, pickles and all, plus water for 13 straight weeks.

Bernard Flesche, a University of Minnesota medical student stepped forward as a willing guinea pig for the burger-thon.

'He started out very enthusiastic eating about 10 burgers at a sitting, but a couple of weeks into it, he was losing his enthusiasm,' wrote his daughter almost 75 years later in a letter to her local newspaper in Minnesota about the little known experiment.

His sister even tried to tempt him with fresh vegetables during his three month burger stint but he stuck to his rigid diet of burgers only.

Similar in scope but not size, was Morgan Spurlock's 2004 'Super Size Me' documentary in which he dined at McDonald's restaurants three times a day for a month.

He gained 24 pounds, experienced mood swings, sexual dysfunction and took 14-months to lose the weight on a vegan diet.

The documentary changed the public perception of fast-food and the obesity 'epidemic' raging across the developed world.  McDonald's introduced a changed health conscious menu after the success of the film.

However, almost 80-years previous to that famous experiment, Flesche, who had spent 13-weeks eating burgers with no apparent effect on his health, ended his mammoth burger binge.

'The student maintained good health throughout the three-month period and was eating 20-24 hamburgers a day during the last few weeks,' said burger mogul Ingram.

Overjoyed by the success of the experiment, Ingram added that it proved customers 'could eat nothing but our sandwiches and water, and fully develop all their physical and mental faculties.'

The study was heavily promoted nationwide and helped White Castle become one of the largest fast food outlets in the U.S. until the emergence of McDonald's in the 1950s.

Flesche complete his medical studies and died from heart problems at the age of 54.

As a result of his participation in the White Castle study his daughter revealed that 'He never willingly ate hamburgers again.'

SOURCE