Noise and health

The New York Times explores how noise impacts health:

Anyone who lives in a noisy environment, like the neighborhoods near this Brooklyn highway, may feel they have adapted to the cacophony. But data shows the opposite: Prior noise exposure primes the body to overreact, amplifying the negative effects.

I’m going to use this for the new reason my kids need quiet time.

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Fake sugars in your food

For The Washington Post, Anahad O’Connor, Aaron Steckelberg, and Laura Reiley visually describe the use of artificial sweeteners in so-called healthy foods. Like with their piece on coffee versus tea, anthropomorphized food items take you through, which I very much enjoy.

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Countries with the longest healthy retirements

Bloomberg compared retirement years in the context of life expectancy and healthy life expectancy. The latter represents how long the average person stays healthy, which is shorter than the former.

The data are clear on one thing though: it’s pensioners in Western Europe who enjoy the longest, healthy retirement periods. The Americas, by contrast, have some of the shortest.

In the above, the yellow dots represent retirement age, the green dots represent healthy life expectancy, and the purple dots represent regular life expectancy. Starting at the top and going clockwise, countries are ordered by the difference between healthy life expectancy and retirement age.

I like circles, but I think I would’ve gone with a more list-like layout here. The patterns and reference points get lost in all the dots and spokes.

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A multivalent mRNA flu vaccine

Scientists have recently developed an mRNA-lipid nanoparticle flu vaccine that protects against all known flu variants.

There are four types of influenza viruses but only the A and B viruses cause significant problems [Types of Influenza Viruses]. Influenza A viruses are the ones can have caused pandemics in the past and the current flu vaccinations are unlikely to offer a lot of protection since they are only directed toward the specific subtypes that are predicted to cause problems in the next flu season. The next global flu pandemic will probably come from a new influenza A virus that nobody predicted.

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#PrepYourHealth: Tips for Holiday Travel

A person packing a suitcase.

Holiday travel often includes visiting loved ones or taking a vacation. Whether you’re seeking a winter wonderland or an escape from subzero temperatures, follow these travel tips to stay healthy and safe during the holiday travel season.

Before Your Trip

No matter where you plan to travel, check CDC’s destination pages for travel health information. These pages include information about

  • vaccines and medicines you may need, and
  • diseases or health risks that are a concern at your destination.

Get up to date with your COVID-19 vaccines and seasonal flu vaccine. CDC recommends getting the flu vaccine every year.

Get up to date on routine vaccines. Routine vaccinations protect you from infectious diseases such as measles that can spread quickly in groups of unvaccinated people. Many diseases prevented by routine vaccination are uncommon in the United States but common in other countries.

Prepare a travel health kit that includes personal needs, especially those items that may be difficult to find at your destination. Take enough of your prescription and over-the-counter medicines to last your entire trip, plus extra in case of travel delays. You may also want to pack insect repellentsunscreen (SPF 15 or higher), aloe, alcohol-based hand sanitizer, water disinfection tablets, and important paperwork like your health insurance card.

Make sure you have a plan for getting health care during travel. Find out if your health insurance covers medical care abroad. Travelers are usually responsible for paying hospital and other medical expenses out of pocket at most destinations. Consider buying additional insurance that covers health care and emergency evacuation, especially if you will travel to remote areas.

During Your Trip

Choose safe transportation. Always wear your seat belt. If you are traveling with children ages 12 and younger, make sure they are properly buckled in a car seat, booster seat, or seat belt—whichever is appropriate for their age, weight, and height—in the back seat.

Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among healthy travelers. Be alert when crossing the street, especially in countries where people drive on the left side of the road. Find out other steps you can take to stay safe on the roads.

Protect yourself from the sun. Apply sunscreen with SPF 15 or higher when traveling. Protecting yourself from the sun isn’t just for tropical beaches. You can sunburn even if it’s cloudy or cold. You are at the highest risk for ultraviolet light exposure during summer months, near the equator, at high altitudes, and between 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Stay alert in crowded areas. Does your holiday travel involve markets, festivals, or other activities that involve a large number of people at the same place (mass gathering)? If so, learn some tips to stay safe at a mass gathering.

Considerations for cold weather travel

Wear warm clothing in several loose layers when traveling in cold weather or climates. Learn practical skills and lessons like how to prevent hypothermia and frostbite.

Considerations for warm weather travel

If you are traveling in hot weather or to a hot climate, wear loose, lightweight, light-colored clothing.

Your chances of getting heat stroke, heat exhaustion, or other heat-related illness during travel depend on your destination, activities, level of hydration, and age. The more active you are in high temperatures, the more likely you are to get a heat-related illness. Learn how to prevent heat-related illness.

Use insect repellent and take steps to avoid bug bites. Bugs, including mosquitoes, ticks, and flies, can spread diseases such as Zika, dengue, Lyme, and others. These bugs are typically more active during warm weather. Check your destination’s page to determine what you need to do to protect yourself from diseases spread through bug bites, including medications or vaccines when recommended.

After Your Trip

If you recently traveled and feel sick, particularly if you have a fever, talk to a healthcare professional. Tell them about your travel. Be prepared to answer questions about your vaccination history, destination(s), reasons for traveling, itinerary, and other aspects of your trip.

Resources

Thanks in advance for your questions and comments on this Public Health Matters post. Please note that CDC does not give personal medical advice. If you are concerned you have a disease or condition, talk to your doctor.

Have a question for CDC? CDC-INFO (http://www.cdc.gov/cdc-info/index.html) offers live agents by phone and email to help you find the latest, reliable, and science-based health information on more than 750 health topics.

Spotting spurious correlations in health news

When it comes to diet and health, you might see one day that a certain food decreases life expectancy. Then on another day, a different study suggests that food increases life expectancy. It’s hard to know which to believe. David Epstein provides some guidance:

If you’ve watched a lot of NFL games, you’ve probably heard a commentator at some point trot out a stat like: “The Chicago Bears are undefeated in division games following a bye week when they wear their alternate jerseys.”

It is possible that the combination of extra rest and unusual attire gets the Bears amped for division rivals, thus improving their performance — just as it is possible that using the sauna precisely 9-12 times per month at a particular temperature protects against dementia (at first). It is far more likely, however, that given a large database of games and conditions, there will be loads of correlations that occur just by chance; the more you slice and dice the data, the more you’ll find.

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Code (data) as therapy

For Wired, Craig Mod writes about how he uses code as a way to find order during less coherent times:

Break the problem into pieces. Put them into a to-do app (I use and love Things). This is how a creative universe is made. Each day, I’d brush aside the general collapse of society that seemed to be happening outside of the frame of my life, and dive into search work, picking off a to-do. Covid was large; my to-do list was reasonable.

The real joy of this project wasn’t just in getting the search working but the refinement, the polish, the edge bits. Getting lost for hours in a world of my own construction. Even though I couldn’t control the looming pandemic, I could control this tiny cluster of bits.

A couple of years ago, I spoke about how FlowingData is a personal journal in disguise. I find myself turning to data and charts, because those things feel familiar and can be a source of comfort.

So while reading Mod’s essay, it was easy to substitute in data and nod my head in agreement.

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Health conditions and income

A large proportion of those who died from Covid-19 had pre-existing medical conditions. The percentage of those who have pre-existing medical conditions changes a lot by income group. Based on estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we can see by how much. For New York Times Opinion, Yaryna Serkez charted the difference for the largest cities in the United States.

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Happiness and Health

When one goes down, so does the other. If only there were a way to keep more people healthy. Read More

DNA Is Not Destiny by Steven J. Heine

DNA Is Not Destiny: The Remarkable Completely Misunderstood Relationship between You and Your Genes
by Steven J. Heine
W.W. Norton & Company, New York/London (2017)
ISBN: 978-0-393-24408-3

Steven Heine is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, B.C., Canada). He has written a book about the perils of DNA testing and his main thesis is that the results of such tests are bound to make you fell unhappy because you will learn that you have a higher risk of several nasty diseases. He warns us that the science behind these predictions is not nearly as solid as the testing companies would have you believe but his main point is the psychological impact of the test results. He claims that we are not conditioned to put the results into the proper perspective because we are pre-conditioned to adopt a very fatalist view of our genetic makeup.

He had his DNA analyzed by a number of companies. Here's some of what he learned from 23 and Me.
23andMe provided me with a gripping set of predictions about my health with real concrete numbers—I learned that I have a 2.1 percent chance of developing Parkinson's disease, and this is 32 percent higher than the average person. The 23andMe experience "felt" satisfying because it provided a wealth of highly specific and personal information about my health. But then, so would the fortune-teller down the street, and at least she isn't claiming any scientific foundation to her predictions.
How many of us are prepared to ignore results like this because the difference between a 1.6% chance of developing Parkinson's is not much different that a 2.1% chance? Probably very few of us would pass that off as insignificant; instead, we would likely start to worry about when we will die of Parkinson's.

The science behind the prediction isn't anywhere near as accurate as 23andMe would have you believe but the potential psychological damage is very real. This book contains many examples of published genetic associations that have turned out to be unrepeatable and probably false. Those are obvious examples of bad science if genetic testing companies use those associations and ignore the failures to confirm the association. However, as a pschologist, Steven Heine is much more concerned with other issues such as how we interpret the results of scientifically valid conclusions.

He describes something that he calls "switch-thinking." This is the belief that a gene causes a disease and genes are like switches that are either on or off. If you have the disease gene then the switch is "on" and you are very likely to get the disease. Here's the problem: if you send your DNA for testing, then you can be certain that the results will be scary because it's guaranteed that you will have many "genes for" a number of diseases and defects. You cannot avoid thinking that your genes will determine your fate and that fate doesn't look good.
When I received the results from my own genotyping from 23andMe, I made sure to mix myself a stiff cocktail, take some deep breaths, and steel myself as I opened up my results for genetic health risks. And I'm glad I had that cocktail. Because if genes actually were the ultimate causes of diseases, I'd be in big trouble. According to 23andMe, I have "the genes for" psoriasis, prostate cancer, chronic kidney disease, melanoma, Parkinson's disease, ulcerative colitis, multiple sclerosis, narcolepsy, stomach cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, scoliosis, restless leg syndrome, male breast cancer, sclerderma, hypothyroidism, esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, hay fever, chronic lymphocyte leukemia, and high blood pressure. And these are just the elevated genetic disease risks for conditions that 23andMe rates as being grounded in solid scientific evidence—the list is much longer when 23andMe also includes conditions that scientific consensus rates as being more iffy. I had to keep reminding myself to avoid switch-thinking, but these heightened risks still made me anxious.
There's a lot of interesting stuff in this book; for example, there's a discussion about genetics and race and another about the misleading use of "genes for disease X." These topics alone make the book worth reading but the main point is the best reason. Steven Heine reminds us that while there might be some positive benefits of genetic testing for health reasons there's also a cost. That cost might be your psychological well-being. Although he doesn't say so explicitly, the general impression one gets is that the cost isn't worth it.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interesting in genetic testing and genetic counseling.