The Tragic Trend in Infants' Hearing Loss: As We Alter Nature, It Alters us in Return!
500% Increase in Neonatal Hearing Loss, and the September 11 Effect
Many people are worried about losing their sense of smell in the aftermath of COVID-19. This article explains why we should be worried about losing our other senses too, and not because of COVID-19.
Change is a 2-way Street
A frog is not the same frog if you move it to a different ecosystem, not only behaviorally but also genetically. Some 70 years ago, renowned microbiologist Rene’ Dubos had discovered that organisms behave differently in different ecosystems and when an organism is subject to damaging environmental forces, natural adaptation will not necessarily fight to reverse the impact of the damage but it alters the organism in new ways. Adaptation is about selection of the genome which is most resilient in the ecosystem, even if it means loss or retooling some of our organs.
Years after Dubos’ discovery, the new field of Epigenetics, which flourished in the 1990s, confirmed that environmental factors have a significant impact on the transcription and expression of our genes (the instruction code in our cells). I discuss this in detail in my book.
What does that mean to humans? It means as we alter and exploit our ecosystem, it’s foolish to think it will not change us in return. Even Winston Churchill had realized a simple version of this universal fact when he said: “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us!”
Change is always a 2-way street even if we think we are in charge. Our interaction with our ecosystems is like a reciprocal game of humans vs. nature, in which humans try to play by a different set of rules to have the upper hand without realizing in the long-term (long game) mother nature will always get its way! And it’s to protect us, like a caring parent does. Here is an excerpt from my book:
“For example, in many underprivileged communities, children and adults develop a thicker skin and more resilient temperament in their affectual response to environmental stress, hence they probably demonstrate less stress-induced cortisol sensitivity than residents of higher income neighborhoods. But prolonged adverse childhood events (ACE) or early life stress (ELS) have also been shown to epigenetically lead to stress-induced structural remodeling of the brain. They induce shrinkage of the hippocampus [memory] and prefrontal cortex [deliberative analysis] and expansion of the amygdala [anxiety and vigilance] (in males) as well as glucocorticoid resistance and abnormal cortisol responses that persist into adulthood. The epigenetic change is essential to metabolically protect the organism from cortisol-induced fatigue while keeping him or her vigilant enough to the environmental risks.”
Let me share other recent examples of how we cannot bypass natural feedback.
Our Dulled Senses Are Nature’s Way to Protect us
It has been shown that when we are subjected to COVID-19 or certain other respiratory diseases, we can lose our senses of smell and taste. This is the good kind of temporary lockdown we need in times of being under viral attack. Shutting down our sensors (opening gates) in our mouth and nose is like building temporary barriers (walls) to invaders until our body overcomes the ongoing invasion.
And it’s not always viruses that change the way our body works. Even vaccines (scientific term: Artificial active immunizations) are shown to make significant changes in our body and even alter gene expressions in all major cell types, such as those involved in signaling pathways of immune system and cholesterol metabolism.
Since the industrial revolution, humans have relentlessly altered their ecosystem without caring for how it would impact them. Consider loud and persistent noise levels in urban soundscape. Yet for most of our evolutionary history, humans were exposed to natural sounds less than 60 decibels in strength1. So how does mother nature protect (adapt/alter) our body in response to us changing our soundscape? Let’s first learn a little more about sounds and our sense of hearing.
Understanding Sound and Hearing
Humans with normal hearing can hear sounds between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz. Frequencies above 20,000 Hz are known as ultrasound. When your dog tilts his head to listen to seemingly imaginary sounds, he is tuning in to ultrasonic frequencies, as high as 45,000 Hz. Bats can hear at among the highest frequencies of any mammal, up to 120,000 Hz. They use ultrasonic vocalizations as sonar, allowing them to pursue tiny insects in the dark without bumping into objects.
At the other end of the spectrum are very low-frequency sounds (below 20 Hz), known as infrasound. Elephants use infrasound for communication, making sounds too low for humans to hear. Because low frequency sounds travel farther than high frequency ones, infrasound is ideal for communicating over long distances2. Loud infrasounds are produced by thunderstorms, earthquakes, winds blowing over valleys, aurora borealis, and many other geophysical events of large physical dimensions. Infrasounds generated by winds passing over the Canadian Pacific Rocky Mountains and the Andes in Argentina can be detected by microphone arrays, and possibly migratory birds, in the United States.
The amplitude of sound waves is measured in decibels (dB), which refer to the sound pressure level or intensity. The lower threshold of human hearing is 0 dB at 1 kHz. Moderate levels of sound (a normal speaking voice, for example) are under 60 dB. Relatively loud sounds, like that of a vacuum cleaner, measure around 70 dB. Decibels work on a logarithmic scale; an increase of 10 dB causes a doubling of perceived loudness and represents a ten-fold increase in sound level. Thus an 80 dB motorcycle passing by on the street is perceived as 4 times louder than the conversational voice of a colleague or family member at 60 dB. The following are some natural and human-made sound (noise) levels measured in national parks.
But industrial noise levels are usually much higher. Studies in Germany and other industrialized countries have shown that 12-15% of people are employed in jobs that expose them to daily average noise levels in the 85-120 dB range.
As Humans Build Noisy Machines and Cities, They Are Harming Their Babies
In its effort to adapt us to loud noises, nature (partially) may disable our hearing sensors the same way it disables our smelling sensors when we are exposed to harmful pathogens and viruses. Globally up to 0.5% of neonates and infants are now hearing impaired. In China, for example, in 2016, the detection rate of hearing impairment across the country was 0.23% but it varied from 0.17% in western provinces to 0.22% in central provinces and 0.28% in eastern provinces, as seen in the map shown below.
Interestingly, this map closely resembles the grid maps of industrial output in China, indicating the industrialization impact on neonatal hearing losses.
In the United States, around 0.25% (2.5 out of 1000) of children are born with a detectable level of hearing loss in one or both ears, which reflects a shocking 500-600% increase in only two decades. In 1999 only 0.43 out of 1000 children were reported as haring impaired. The rates steadily increased to 1/1000 by 2007 and to 1.7/1000 by 2016. Remarkably, there was an unexpected sharp spike in 2001, which coincides with the September 11 attacks. It looks like nature worked extra hard in 2001 to protect our newborns from the noise and anxious hubbub of their parents and war-mongering media.
Although the medical/pharmaceutical industries link many cases of hearing loss to congenital viral infections (such as Human cytomegalovirus HCMV), they acknowledge most affected infants are asymptomatic and the hearing loss is mainly associated with inflammation induced by the reactive oxygen species (ROS). I believe even if viral infection/oxidative damage cause the neonatal hearing loss, epigenetic factors still play a major role in (dys)regulating body’s adaptive immune response to environmental stressors, the same way adverse childhood events epigenetically regulate the infant’s synaptic plasticity for the rest of his/her life (discussed above and quoted from my book).
The prevalence map in China, the explosive trend in the United States, and the fact that more than 90% of children born with hearing loss have parents with normal hearing, are strong indicators that the problem primarily epigenetic.
The problem is also age and activity-dependent. At age 50, some 11.2% of people suffer from hearing loss, and that number increases to 35% for people aged 65 or older. Certain professions like musicians and people working in loud nightclubs and concert halls are more likely to have a hearing loss and and tinnitus than the general public.
Messing with Nature is Costly
Tragically, for every dB decrease in hearing, there is a significant decrease in cognitive ability. The most common developmental disability to co-occur with hearing loss is intellectual disability (23%), followed by cerebral palsy (10%), autism spectrum disorder (7%), and/or vision impairment (5%). During the 1999 – 2000 school year, the total cost in the United States for special education programs for children who were deaf or hard of hearing was $652 million, or $11,006 per child. The lifetime educational cost (year 2007 value) of hearing loss (more than 40 dB permanent loss without other disabilities) has been estimated at $115,600 per child. It is expected that the lifetime costs for all people with hearing loss who were born in 2000 will total $2.1 billion (in 2003 dollars). This is expected to be much higher today. As discussed above, the numbers have increased by 500-600% since 2000.
I have dedicated a whole chapter of my book to explaining the fundamental forces of nature and how some denatured industrial products can do more damage than good in our lives.
I did not have the support of Big House publishers so as an independent scientist/author, I feel proud when I receive great reviews by independent readers like you. The following is an introduction to the book on Amazon, ranked as Hot New Release:
Why do humans walk a tightrope between depression and addiction (habituation), anxiety and recklessness? Why is it so hard to kick bad habits? Who do several countries now have Ministries of Loneliness to keep the social fabrics from falling apart? Why are humans so prone to self-delusion, self-deception, and forming mobs and cults?
Most of us know more about sports, politics, games, apps, and our jobs than about how our own brain and body work or get burned out together. For less than the cost of a family dinner, this is one of the few books in the market that can help us understand in simple language the complex nature of body-brain feedback loops as the common denominator of disorders and diseases (such as diabetes, depression, hypertension, weight gain, dementia, sleep disorders, constipation, infertility), and discords (fights, divorces, lawsuits, riots, wars). The author has spent two years to ingeniously draw from the latest discoveries in a wide range of disciplines: Neuroscience, evolution, biochemistry, psychology, economics, physics, philosophy, nutrition, and even mysticism to help us understand the cerebral root of fatigue and imbalance that plague human lives, rich and poor alike. This book is an essential simplified scientific “user manual” for our brain and body.
The world’s largest battles are fought inside human minds and today most of us suffer from abuse not by others but by our own brain. In this book, we learn about the neurochemical soup that makes our "economic" brain prone to "metabolic" imbalance and leads us to pursue unfettered growth. "The sky is the limit" thinking has constructed a world of winners, losers and barely anyone in between.
In my book and my blogs (here and on Homo economicus), I connect our biology to our psychology and brain’s neurochemistry to show why our denatured evolutionary path has led to widespread imbalances both at the individual and social levels, which we respectively call disease and injustice.
Although occasional natural sounds like the crack of thunder can exceed 100 decibels.
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/sound/understandingsound.htm