Noise cancelling headphones have surprising post-operation benefit: New study

Shockingly, the secret to post-surgery recovery isn’t solely attributed to painkillers.The best way to silence anesthesia side effects may be to turn up the tunes and tune out the noise.According to new data, noise-cancelling headphones can eliminate unpleasant symptoms after a procedure, including nausea and vomiting.The study — conducted by First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University in Suzhou, China — involved 192 people who received keyhole gynaecological surgery under general anaesthesic.

All the patients were on traditional anaesthesia and anti-nausea medication, and a randomized half wore headphones that blocked out noise.Within the 48 hours post-surgery, only 35% of those who wore the headphones suffered from nausea or vomiting, while 52% of those without ear defenders had the same symptoms.Although the exact relationship between noise and nausea/vomiting isn’t confirmed, the hypothesis is that sound triggers a stress response that activates the autonomic nervous system, which, in turn, helps to regulate heart rate and interact with certain brainstem pathways.“The biological plausibility is that general anaesthesia produces unconsciousness without necessarily eliminating all neural processing of sound,” Huayue Liu from the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University added.If you have a surgery coming up and are curious about this unique approach to managing symptoms, the Apple AirPods Max 2 are unquestionably the best choice to test the data.Even better: they’re currently $100 off at Amazon for a limited time.They block out up to 1.5 times more sound than the previous generation, making for a private, immersive audio experience.Adaptive Audio automatically adjusts noise cancellation levels according to how loud your surroundings are, while Conversation Awareness lowers the volume of your music so that you can talk to others.

And if you don’t want to completely block everyone and everything out? Transparency mode allows more outside ...