Anechoic chambers, iStock
We have all been in spaces where noise was almost killing us and we hoped to reach home, be in silence, and relax. Well, there is, in fact a space like that. It is located in Minneapolis, it is the quietest room on the planet. This is located on East 25th Street, was once known as Sound 80, a studio where Bob Dylan recorded part of his Blood On The Tracks album. However, in the turn of events, the building went from a place of music to the quietest rooms on the planet.
This was bought by Steve Orfield, who is the president of Orfield Laboratories. He had realized that the building is capable of absorbing sounds. This is what makes it an "anechoic chamber".
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Orfield says, as CBS News also reports, that the chamber is so quiet that you can hear your joints scratching against each other. Not only this, but you can hear your heartbeat, your internal organs working and "if your hearing is very sensitive, you can hear your lungs flowing."
Why does it happens? Thanks to the airplane cables, each of which hold 1,500 pounds of weight, help keep things quite, while putting a bounce in your step, notes CBS News.
The place is so quiet that many visitors have used it as a challenge to see how long can they stand hearing the sound of their own bodies. As per Caity Weaver of the New York Times Magazine, you can also hear the sound of your eyelids shutting upon blinking.
While we think that silence has a calming impact, too much silence could actually be unsettling. As per a neuroscientist at Northwestern University who studies human auditory system, Kevin Sitek, people inside an anechoic chamber could also become disoriented. This is because "we have trained out whole lives to hear in natural conditions. Echoes help us orient ourselves very literally in the world...when those are gone, there are no cues beyond the sound itself," he explains.
Sound also help us with stimulation, which is important for our brain. However, Sitek points out that "we do not have a good handle on what happens when there is no stimulation." This is why some people may find silence unsettling.
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Another reason why silence could haunt you is also due to sedatephobia, or the fear of silence. People with this phobia need constant stimulation or human contact to fill the void. Too much silence can also cause panic attacks.
Many of us are also uncomfortable with silence because this is something that we have developed over the years. We are used to constant stimulation, and thus too much silence could feel eerie.
Furthermore, many experts also point out that quiet forces us to face our reality and silence can compel us to think things we do not want to think about.
While several studies have proved that too much noise can lead to health issues including heart disease, depression, and anxiety, even triggering body's stress response, there are studies that also show that too much silence could put us in uncomfortable situations.
A 2014 study, titled Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind, noted that many people would rather receive an electric shock than to continue to sit in silence. Another 2020 study, titled Waiting, thinking, and feeling: variations in the perception of time during silence, published in Frontiers in Psychology noted that silence can make one become more pronounced with their own thoughts. This for many could become unsettling.
The way out is to draw a balance, while you could enjoy silence, but too much of it could make you struggle. However, noise is also something you don't like. Try putting a soothing music to relax you. This balance will help you stay focused, enjoy the silence, but not too much that you hear your own body and get haunted by it.
Credit: Canva
One child in India dies every nine minutes from an infection caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, as it becomes one of the top 10 global public health threats, experts warn.
Dr HB Veena Kumari of the Department of Neuromicrobiology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, claims: "The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly contributed to rising antimicrobial resistance. The World Health Organisation projects that 10 million deaths will occur annually by 2025."
According to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria in the body learns to withstand and remain unaffected by the medicines (antibiotics) meant to kill them.
In such cases, doctors have to switch to different antibiotics, but these backup medicines might not work as well or might cause more side effects. Additionally, infections may also worsen over time as bacteria can become resistant to all available drugs.
Alarmingly is that these tough, drug-resistant bacteria can spread from one person to another, both in hospitals and at home.
According to Dr TS Balganesh, Gangagen Biotechnologies, nearly 36 percent of haemodialysis patients die from fatal infections, which is second only to cardiovascular diseases as a cause of death.
He tells Deccan Herald: "The risk for infective endocarditis in haemodialysis patients is approximately 18 times higher than in the general population and up to 58 percent of these episodes are caused by a bacteria named 'S aureus', with an in-hospital mortality of more than 50 percent."
One out of every six serious infections confirmed in labs worldwide last year could not be killed by the antibiotics meant to treat them.
Between 2018 and 2023, the problem of antibiotics failing (called resistance) got much worse. For many common types of germs, resistance went up by 5% to 15% every year. The growing inability of these essential medicines to work is a huge threat to people everywhere.
The WHO's latest report is the most detailed look yet at this issue. It reports on how much resistance exists across 22 different antibiotics, which include common drugs used to treat everyday illnesses. The report focused on eight common types of bacteria that cause things like:
Additionally, Dr Obaidur Rahman of Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital has also warned that the country’s casual use of Azithromycin, sold under brand names such as Zithromax, Azee and Zmax, has worsened its effectiveness and pushed India closer to a major public health challenge.
A drug often prescribed for sore throats and upper respiratory tract infections, Dr Rahman noted that Azithromycin was once effective against Mycoplasma Pneumonia, a bacterium responsible for pneumonia in adults and children.
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However, this is no longer the case as India now shows an alarming 80 to 90 percent resistance to the drug when treating infections caused by this bacterium. A medicine that once addressed a wide range of respiratory problems is no longer reliable for many patients.
The surgeon has since urged people to avoid taking antibiotics without proper medical advice. Most seasonal respiratory infections resolve on their own, and unnecessary drugs only add to the resistance problem.
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Supreme Court on Friday declared the right to menstrual health as part of the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution. The court issued a slew of directions to ensure that every school provides biodegradable sanitary napkins free of cost to adolescent girls. The guidelines also ensured that schools must be equipped with functional and hygienic gender-segregated toilets. The Court directed the pan-India implementation of the Union's national policy, 'Menstrual Hygiene Policy for School-going Girls' in schools for adolescent girl children from Classes 6-12.
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A bench comprising Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice R Mahadevan passed the following directions:
The court also issued directions for the disposal of sanitary waste. Justice Pardiwala said, "This pronouncement is not just for stakeholders of the legal system. It is also meant for classrooms where girls hesitate to ask for help. It is for teachers who want to help but are restrained due to a lack of resources. And it is for parents who may not realise the impact of their silence and for society to establish its progress as a measure in how we protect the most vulnerable. We wish to communicate to every girlchild who may have become a victim of absenteeism because her body was perceived as a burden when the fault is not hers."
Read: Menstrual Cups To Replace Sanitary Napkins In Karnataka Government Schools
In India, menstruation is still seen as taboo. In fact, there is a lot of shame around it. Menstrual shame is the deeply internalized stigma, embarrassment, and negative perception surrounding menstruation, which causes individuals to feel unclean, or "less than" for a natural biological process. This judgment thus is an effort to do away with the shame rooted in cultural, social, and religious taboos, which is often the reason why many girls drop out, or due to lack of awareness, develop health adversities.
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Most health videos on YouTube, even those made by doctors are also not reliable medical information, found a new study, published in JAMA Network Open. The researchers reviewed 309 popular YouTube videos on cancer and diabetes and found that fewer than 1 in 5 were supported by high quality scientific evidence. About two-thirds of the view had low, very low or no evidence at all to back up their health claims.
What was more concerning is that weaker evidence often attracted more viewer than those backed with strong science. The study looked at videos which had at least 10,000 views. The lead author of the study Dr EunKyo Kang of South Korea's National Cancer Center, said, "This reveals a substantial credibility-evidence gap in medical content videos, where physician authority frequently legitimizes claims lacking robust empirical support."
"Our findings underscore the necessity for evidence-based content-creation guidelines, enhanced science communication training for health care professionals, and algorithmic reforms prioritizing scientific rigor alongside engagement metrics," Kang added in a news release.
The researchers reviewed videos from June 20 and 21, 2025, focusing on cancer and diabetes content. 75 per cent of them were made by physicians. The videos had a median count of 164,000 views and a median length of 19 minutes.
Researchers also developed a scoring system, called E-GRADE to rate the strength of science backed evidence in each video's claim.
The study also found that videos with the weakest evidence were 35% more likely to get higher views than videos with strong scientific evidence.
Richard Saver, a professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill noted that this issue is not just limited to YouTube. "Physician-spread misinformation is a long-standing problem, dating back well before the internet era," he wrote in an accompanying editorial.
Saver said some doctors continue to lean on personal experience rather than solid data, despite evidence-based medicine being regarded as the gold standard. He noted that EBM can feel like it downplays individual clinical judgment. Still, Saver stressed that more research is needed, adding that the study underscores the importance of examining the evidence behind health professionals’ claims on social media.
Health and Me has always stayed a step ahead from medical misinformation and ensured that its readers too consume correct information. Health and Me's Fact Check series have consistently ran checks on bizarre medical claims, whether it is about a magical potion for weight loss, fake health news, or un-scientific remedies.
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