Noise Pollution, Misophonia + Chewing Rage

No, really, no, really, Hello everybody, Welcome back to another episode of Really Know Really, the podcast with your host Jason Alexander.

And I got my name. I got tired of doing it. And this is the show where Peter and I explore things that make us say really no, really, yeah.

Like our relationship.

Know why we even bother to get together, why we have these conversations, why we tolerate each other? Really no, really, this is a This is an interesting episode. And I know this is going to speak very much when you say that.

When you say that, it does imply all the others were rather not interesting.

Just pointing that out. Just a little note.

You don't draw on my pages, always drawing on my pages. I read a little Tidman and the Charlotte Observer that there was a school student, I believe, junior higher high schools student in Tennessee, who is suing the Board of ed because they refuse to pass a law that would ban gum chewing in school. Now, it is not that she doesn't like, you know, gum, or that she is

So this is something that pardon the interruption, but listener note, Jason, unbeknownst to Peter, has begun rhythmically clicking on a ballpoint pen to test how sensitive Peter's mesophonia is.

You brought that up, and I said, I have that. I didn't realize that I had misophonia. And everybody I mention it too, that we're going to do an episode starts wondering if they have it, because over twenty percent of the population has it. As a matter of fact, one of our producers mentioned, we talked about what episode one.

I think we talked the episode.

He's been getting push notice find out since that episode, right, me, so funny, and we only mentioned he only mentioned it once. I heard it mentioned once, and it's been coming out forever, right.

And you claim you claim sir, to suffer from it.

So I didn't realize what it was until a couple of years ago. But yeah, you're doing with the clicking the pet. It's making me crazy. I can't it's so distracting to me that it's.

Not just so this actually does I didn't think you would notice because you went at a moment and it looked like it. I really I was only doing it to see if you would pick up on it. So you really did, right.

But the weird thing, and if you're listening, and we're going to talk about the world getting which is incredible, how much noisier the world has gotten, and why okay, and how many people are afflicted with things now because how much noisier the world is and how dangerous that's becoming, above and beyond me so phonny, But I think people listening.

And I was the one who yelled out at the pool look at him because of me. I just wanted to say again it now, listen.

I used to think you were crazy. You had mentioned that you wanted to explore this, and I thought it's not a thing. And then you and I were flying home the other day. We were flying home from Las Vegas, sorry from Saint Louis, so it was a four hour flight and you had a lollipop in your mouth on a plane, and I have headphones on, but I'm sitting next to you, and every five to eight seconds I would hear, and I thought, I have to see. This is going to be a contest with myself. Now, how

There's no way.

And after thirty I timed it. After thirty two minutes, lost it And he turns to me out of nowhere and said, I'm either gonna shove that down in your throat or yank it out of your mouth.

Goddamn lollipop. Did you ever feel that about anything else with the sound? Did sound to ever make you creative? I'm not sure that I suffer quite from this, but I feel that within seconds of and and the other thing that's really weird that I didn't notice until we were talking about this episode, Like leaf Blower, to me, it was all noises and cadence. But we have an elderly dog who's fifteen and a half and he's on medication and he's doing okay, but at night he licks

You need a team of psychologists and psychiatrists. No, we're not working around the clock. Twenty four second This was a line on Seinfeld that was said from Jerry to George. It was, you need a team of therapist working around the clock to help you.

I have one of them.

We found out yes, over twenty that we know of. Yes, over twenty percent of the population deals with this. But like me, didn't know to bring it up, because what do you say to your wife. I want to stronger you and put a pillow over your face and kill you if you eat another pistachial.

That's nice, that's a nice way, But you're just being honest.

It's like it's like to somebody else, if you're at home right now, pick the worst sound you could ever think of that makes you crazy, like talkboard. You know how you feel. That's how I feel when she's feeling this.

That's how I feel walking with you constantly. Let's talk to someone who might be able to help you. We are happy to welcome doctor Jane Gregory, who is a clinical psychologist and a mesophonia researcher. Peter and I founded the first two mesophonia clinics, one in London and one in Oxford, and at the end of this episode, I'm

That's almost a comedy titles sound like right, And.

I'm actually delighted to introduce her, but then I feel like I should shut up because I'm worried that every sound I'm making is driving her up the wall. Welcome, Welcome to you, doctor Gregory.

Nice to have you here on really, no, really, thanks for having me, and thanks for starting with the sound that drives me mad. Yeah, flashbacks to exams in high school with people just clicking it.

You know.

It was our it was our producer David Guggenheim that said you should try and figure out what's going to get Peter and get him going on. I went, yeah, but what if the doctor and.

He didn't care.

He was callous to your needs and concern.

May I just say, but I actually I was.

I was testing to see because when Peter was focused on starting the show, I wanted to see specifically if it's something that you have to be focused on, is it Is it happening only when you know you're not focused or where any stimulation could get to you, or or you know, is it something that could cut through even when he was focused on something else? What do

I think there are some sounds that will probably cut through, Like eating sounds are the biggest ones, and it's just it's almost like their brains are waiting for it to happen,

Just what are the sounds? Do you have a list? Give me your list of stuff that really sets you?

Well, my biggest one, so those sort of like clicky, ticky sounds, the classic eating sounds, really heavy breathing sounds, which I mean that's obviously a bit creepy anyway, But and then the weirdest one for me is the sound of pigeons, that repetitive kind of we're not quite cooling sound that pigeons make.

Oh, that's sort of almost like throat thing.

Well, I get woodpeckers kill me.

If a woodpecker's really going at it, I really it's your okay, also owls, owls, the whot it makes me nuts, the neighbor's alarm as it goes off, be backup when trucks are backing up.

Yeah, alarms and reverse sounds. They're actually designed for you not to ignore them, so they're meant to not be ignored, whereas with misophonia it sounds that most people would be able to eventually tune them out, but people with misphonia can't.

For instance, going back to eating sounds, is it equally disturbing to you or other people if you are the person making the sound.

No, it doesn't affect me.

Why would that be.

There's something to do with control, Like if I'm in control of the sound, I know I can stop it at any time. Like if I could pause the person

Have you ever lost it?

Because by the pool we went to a we had kids and we wanted to go somewhere where there are no kids, not because we don't like kids, but it just we wanted to get away young kids. And we're in Palm Springs at the swimming pool and there were a couple of kids and there was one like I said, that's eight, and he's in the pool, and he was going, Dad, look at me, Look me, Dad, look at me, Look at me, Look at me. By the fifth look at me, I'm now almost in a rage. No one else cares,

Not since I was a kid, in that way most of the time. Now, I would just remove myself from the situation or try and deal with it if I can. But also I've done a lot of work to try and not get to that point where it drives me that insane, and I can tolerate these sounds now. If

That couldn't cure a lessons that it was stop trying to I hated it. I wanted to stop at please just stop it.

So you know what's interesting, because I just thought of a sound that I do think drives just about anyone into a state of at least stress, of not distress, and yet I think the natural reason for the sound was not to do that, and that is the sound of a baby crying. You know, we like on a plane. We know why they're crying, their ears are stuff. They

I am.

I am sympathetic to having the notion of sounds that create emotional response.

Yes, and that's a really good example of like a really conflicting emotional experience because you are feeling compassion for this poor baby. But I think most people are probably getting angry at the parents. It's like the parents should be doing something to make this stop and make my experience more comfortable. And as Peter said, you can't escape that.

Yeah.

So, because because everybody and before you came on you mentioned when wherever you go, when you start talking about this, there's always somebody who goes, wait a minute, sent me the Queen Queen Elizabeth ready for this would demand that she had you probably.

Know this about the ice ice.

That she had rounded ice cubes. She had me round it riding ice cubes because square ice cubes may clink and they make noise, and she could not take it. She only had rounded ice cubes. How about that, and rounded ice cubes don't make the different sound. Well, son of a good she have discovered that.

Well, you're queen, and.

There's there's also some people who react to the sound of hot water being poured, but not cold water because there's also a de slightly.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

Franz Kafka lined his this is this is such a great story if it's true, lined his bedroom walls with cork for sound, and then developed an allergy to cork, which I just love that you go to that trouble because you're out of your mind with the sounds and then you get sick from the cork. Yeah, oh j This thing is really affects a lot of people. Doctor is it?

Is it only repetitive sounds or could it be as like, for instance, has anyone ever had this reaction to music other than just a certain note just music playing with that.

Some people have it to certain types of music, so sometimes it's music that is repetitive, like a really heavy bass or something like that. But also quite a few people have said with jazz because it feels so unpredictable and it doesn't follow.

Music With Peter at show tunes, I love you know minus and I'm embarrassed to say it.

But if you're going to cruise and they decide to play every song you've ever loved on steel drum, I want to kill myself. I'm gonna kill myself. Sunshine of your love on a steel drum should be banned? Shouldn't be.

Why? Why is that the only instrument on they can't buy it.

I'll pitch in for a guitar, I'll pitch in for a flu but steel drum?

Really yesterday?

Are you doing it as any?

So generally, when.

Now that it is determined to be a condition, when do people find they get diagnosed?

Right when you know.

There's still no confirmed diagnostic criteria for it. We see patients in the NHS, in the National Health Service in England, and for us to consider something a disorder and inverted commas, it needs to cause significant distress and have some kind of ongoing impact or interference in late life.

How dare you.

And so does has it not qualified yet under that term?

It's still very newly recognized. Like there was this paper that came out It was just last year, the Consensus Definition, which was a panel of experts who came together to say, this is how we define it based on what we know currently that there's been more research on this in the last two years than there ever was in total before. So we're still very much at the beginning of understanding this. So we don't know is it an audiological problem, is

How do am I understanding that this questionnaire is something that you helped to develop that helps to diagnose it.

Basically that's mainly used a for research purposes. So we can look at the severity of the symptoms and we can use that to compare it to other items on other questionnaires, so we can see, well, how does it relate to depression symptoms? For example, or anxiety or something like that, or we can see how it changes over time, and we also use it in therapy to monitor change as a result of therapy. There is now a cutoff score for that to say over that cut off score,

Often wonder when I see an act of violence, like a neighbor loses it and you hear about it that there was a bark in the dog drove the crazy, or someone would cut somebody off and hanked at them in traffic or did I always wonder if that's an outcropping of this because the person just couldn't take it anymore. Because you're living next door to a neighbor. We're in

Or a mesaphonia defense. I'm serious.

Someone There has been a few newspaper articles where it says or they had misophonia and they exploded. If someone's also like that, disregulated, that they can't control themselves and they're harming people, then that it's not just misophonia. There's something else going on there, and it wouldn't be helpful to make that direct connection because that then stops people from getting help. Bor mezophonia, because I think gets associated with violence and extreme behavior.

The bigger issue to this is this doesn't feel like twenty percent of the public, this feels much bigger. And an article, a lot of articles I've read said most Americans have grown more sensitive to noise since the pandemic. So if that's the case, more than foreign town have become more sensitive to loud music. I mean it's increasing. Yeah, what is that about? And how does that affect this?

And is that sensitivity the same as mean as if funny or is it just the normal only there's more noise.

Two fantastic questions. So the first one, and we've actually collected data from before the pandemic, and we can now collect more data to compare because we ask We've go people a long list of sounds and ask them, do you have a negative reaction to this? How does it make you feel? And how intense is that feeling? So we will we go back to those people now we'd be able to compare whether there are more people now

That's hard when you say it. It's hard to explain to some when you say discussed. It's against you. It's not something that you're consciously doing. It's like the pat it's crept.

In there, man.

And I was like, uh oh, which is why I left when you said the lollipop thing, because if you were doing that, I probably would have straggled. You understand, I couldn't have taken it as long as you did, especially if there's a cadence to it. Oh my god, do you have any of that, Laurie, any that you do? So this is feeling starting to feel a little bit familiar to you. Yeah, and David, let's say google him, jump on. He usually didn't come on this early.

But it's funny.

It was such a reaction when I'm preparing it and talking to people, David goes, wait, oh, and he's never done this before. Hold on, I think my daughter may have it. So why don't you ask we have the expert here, why don't you ask you a question about your daughter with behavior, because that's fascinating, Davy.

I believe that the doctor actually addressed it because it's this dinner time thing and she's thirteen, and then my other kids are eight, and the chewing with your mouth open, she gets angry and.

That's the visual, not talking about the smacking sound right, Oh oh yeah.

Yeah, not the visual at all. They know they're little cute mouths. But yeah, she gets very very angry.

And their kids and they're not able to necessarily do it, and sometimes she just sort of almost storms out out of the dinner table because people aren't listening and she's being driven so crazy.

That's amazing, unbelieve.

So is that a lot of families who you have to eat separately because someone in the in the house can't stand the sound of eating at the table.

Does it ever get so bad that, I mean, are we like putting noise canceling headphones on people so they can be in the same company.

With absolutely or having music at the dinner table. Like for me, we just sort of take it in turns to pick a song from siies just so that there's a bit of ambient background.

Wait a minute, you and your husband, who we should say as does comedies a writer. Correct, you have to put the side on. You don't talk during dinner. You have Siri for music.

We also talk, we have.

About your relationship.

We're doing fine.

What are what are the therapies? What are the things that you are recommending for people to try and.

Deal with this.

It's hard to recommend because nothing has been really rigorously studied yet. We don't really understand what the sort of key mechanisms are that make this what it is, and we don't know if it can be cured. We don't know if we can just help people with the distress or help people with strategies. In our clinic, we do cognitive pavia therapy, but it's very much focused on helping people to create new associations with the sound. So it's based on this theory that you might not ever be

Can you give any kind of a specific example of altering a sound you know in your head in order to tolerately associate you.

Yeah, so, well, sometimes it's doing something like playing and recording and then playing around with it's like software to distort the sound and drag it out and then speed it up and just listen to it in different ways. And doing that when you're in control of it, when you could stop it at any time, and hearing it in different ways can help your brain just get used to that sound being something that is not dangerous.

So literally taking a recording of what I was doing with the pen and giving Peter the ability to alter that sound could do it and form a different relationship with it.

Is it one of the biggest theories because I'd seen that that science thought or thinks that it is an association that, just like a fetish, is just like anything else. At some point at your age, you had an event that triggered that and you didn't realize it and associated that sound to some negative and then years later it has embedded and now it's like a fight flight syndrome without you even knowing why.

I think it's probably part of the problem, not the only explanation. There are some people who go through a really clearly traumatic event and then develop a sensitivity to certain sounds, and that could be directly related to the trauma, and that's a really normal thing for the brain to do to try and protect you from that raumatic event. So say you had a car accident and the indicator was on, then that ticking sound of the indicator would be something that is trying to protect you from danger.

And what about you know, so many kids use ADHD and add medications for focus. They found that it doesn't necessarily work, but there are documentaries on this where parents are putting their kids on so they can get better grades, et cetera.

It's about focus.

Do you think this enters into that that part of THED or ADHD problem could be the mesophony issue.

It's really interesting. There's a master's student that I was working with was looking at that exact question, and so she looked at traits of ADHD and traits of misophonia and whether they were associated or as your score or goes up on ADHD, does your score go up in mesophonia? And it did, but once you accounted for general sensory sensitivity, which is a feature of both misophonia and ADHD, the

Has there been any connection that you found between musophonia and I think what it's called is an auditory hallucination where people are either hearing things that most people can't detect at all, or are creating a sound somehow internally that they are experiencing as an external sound.

As far as I know, that hasn't been studied and certainly hasn't been something that people have reported to me. But I do have some people who have said that when they're once the sound has stopped, they feel like they can still hear it, and so that's sort of more like an echo of the sound.

Like a phantom limb or something exactly, And.

So that might just last for a little while afterwards, but it's not exactly the same as auditory hallucination.

Well, well, you know what, since you're here, what we usually do is after the guest we do what we call a second act. We illuminate some other stuff. But since you're here anyway, I would love to do it with you here.

Why not? Right?

So the interesting thing that I found about the world getting louder. Started looking and saw how much more disruptive kids are in school cognitive behavior. And one of the things is they found out that city birds are singing louder. Frogs that live near highways have marked vocal variations. And what that has done is altered their mating ability, are their mating habits. So it's affecting nature. And the Park Service says that even outdoors, the sound of outdoors doubles

And then you add to it the Internet and the.

Fact that Ericsmith is a great quote in twenty ten he said, every two days, we now create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until two thousand and three. So our bodies are being exposed to so much noise.

And I hate to make that calculation.

How did he make it? I'll I'll call him answer.

I'll call him that seems a pretty answer. Know what, what people were coming up with in the year of eleven ninety four. That's a you know, I don't want to undercut. Are undercut, Eric Schmidt?

Or you and your Google? Anyway?

Oh, that was an annoying sent by the way, that triggered me.

But there's more, As my brother would say, there's money. I don't love the phrase. But we only have so much bandwidth. So the noise does I mean right? The noise is impacting us in ways that.

We're not aware.

And and by the way, diabetes increase, hypertension increase that they attribute to the noise that we're not even aware that we're getting. Plus, there's a hum. There is a hum that they say a worldwide home. Anybody here raise your hand. Four percent of the public, even when you're lying about and quiet, nothing's on whatever, can hear this kind of hum that the earth puts out. Do you ever hear that?

I know about the hum? Yeah, And it's stronger in certain places near certain sort of manufacturing plants and things like that. There's a greater hum. But we still don't know exactly what it is and why. Some people can hear it, and some people can.

My wife, she has a very heightened she hears stuff that I don't here, And she said, and by the way, all her senses she tastes with an acute sense, her sense of smells.

And yet extreme one. I guess.

I'm so busy using your senses, she didn't use your sense.

The stress around that, like you were saying about the environmental sound and the stress that that causes. And then they impact the knock on effect that has on health. And most people when they're going to move someone noisy, but you're getting I don't even I don't even hear it anymore. But if the sound is there and you are not hearing it, your body is having to process. So it creates a lot of stress in the body.

And that's why I wanted to do this topic because it really it affects everybody listening. It is like they know, attribute everything, the inflammation in the body. Your body is fighting this constantly.

You know, the military is developing sound as weapon. There was a whole bunch of controversy for a while that when people were getting sick down in Cuba. I believe right, they thought it was some sort of auditory you know, or sonic weapon. You know. We did, for instance, my grandson My little grandson has a thing that he falls asleep to. It's essentially a white noise machine, but it also has a heartbeat on it. And we have no idea of this little kid. You know, he can't communicate

So I'm doing morning drive radio when younger, way way back, and the kids are young, and I'm trying to sleep during the day. And two things my wife does which I love so much. When I'm trying to sleep, say the kids.

Hey, DoD's trying to which are by the way, not helpful.

But the other thing he came through the walls, Bert and friggin Ernie. Those voices I wanted to kill a muppet, strangle a muppet was okay, none of them, none of none of none.

Of they would come through the wall. I would just like, it didn't matter.

If I almost think you like puppets, I think that's the issue, and we're getting your anti puppet. You're an anti anti puppet. My head got triggered. We we did the Seinfeld reference about your an anti dentite but anti puppet, but we did a whole episode. Actually directed the one

There you go.

By the way My dad used to do so I just thought of this too. I'd be sitting at home trying to study and and he would whistle. Whistling is another one to get.

You, especially bad whistling nobody whistling.

There's only a couple good whistlers in the world.

Okay, everybody else's can you whistle? Go whistle? She's already unhappy she's here. I already did the pen clicking.

I want to I want to see how much if he bothers her more than me?

God, oh my god.

And by the way, yell out a number from one to ten. He's in a whistle. You yell out of number that bothers you. Here we go ahead, five, five, going to six, y seven seven, seven, yeah, seven, yeah, wow.

Yeah, And not just the whistling itself, but the whistling coming. I can hear it both through the air and through the headphones, so I can kind of hear two different whistles.

And you know what else, there's anything to do with tunes selection and also what bothers me if I had down how earnestly you were doing it.

It's the fact that you were zipping it along. I also wanted to give you. It's like that person who's zipp and you do not you go?

You did?

You did? So go go home? What do you? I was likely to trust your daughter's issue. That was kind of cool.

Yeah, yes, thank you. Thank you for that.

You're very welcome, and she charges by the hours. Yeah you'll get a bill.

Well, yeah, you want, you want your Google.

Actually I sort of decided to go a little bit opposite because we've been talking about noises today, so I wanted to go to the quietest places unearned.

Look at you deciding to do something that we don't what you do to do on your own?

Yes, exactly what I thought. Maybe you'll give you some no There is a.

Place in Maui, Hawaii called the quietest place on Earth. Lourie actually has been there. It's a let's see Holley Akla.

Actually it's a climb.

You have to go down into the crater, the dormant crater, and that is one of the quietest, if not.

The quietest places naturally occurring on Earth.

Apparently it's quite a hike.

It's it's like they say, there's like four climate don't you hear when you're there?

People from New York one? So this is supposed to be the quietest.

But you're hearing that all the tourists talking.

Which where I've been to the to the rim of the volcanic because you can go up there and watch the sunrise and then bicycle down. And I've done that with my children on a number of occasions. And I will tell you, even with groups of tourist standing there at the rim, not in there is when you speak, there is a sort of compression on it, a damper on it. I have noticed that.

Come on, So wait, so why did you?

I'm curious because we go to Maui and I don't want to work that hard by climbing up and going down whatever.

But you did it because.

Well we all went to the top and then you ride the bikes down right, Okay, So.

I became hysterical and I did it for.

The cerical cry.

Well, I said, I'm going to do it, and then I got on the bike and I started going down, and I realized, this is what they tell.

You, And maybe they told you this. People die on the way down.

When did they tell you that as you're going?

As you're going, and a woman had a bee come into her helmet and then she crashed and died.

And they have a lot of people who died. They don't tell you that.

You know what, no one take the rock. They're not sign the waiver.

Yeah, But so I started and then I was like, this is too much, so I there's a van that follows you.

So I just popped into the van because it's terrifying.

It's not the quiet.

But you didn't go into the crater, did you?

No? No?

Did you just ride the bike you went into the crater.

No, he's talking about.

You don't go into the crater.

You can go into the crater. You can go into the crater.

That's where the.

Like like the Dad in Freaks and Geeks. It's like, do you know what happens to people who go to quiet places?

They died.

If they had that understand where you sign up. Don't think a lot of people be going to go.

No.

I have to tell you something about David though.

While the guys in there were hysterical, he was practicing saying holliokola while you were there, and he was like, Holly law.

Did and we're going to play we do that again.

Five breath.

Actually has a now I have a horrible voice, you do.

Have you heard about the rooms that are designed to be completely silent, and they're like trying to mimic that the quiet place on earth that people who go into those rooms they don't last because they're driven mad by the sound of their own like internal probyn.

If you speak in those rooms, you can't hear your own it's dead.

But you can hear your own heartbeat. You can hear your.

Digestive inside of me because I know stuff's going right.

That's the sound again sometimes when I lie, if your arm is under your head, when you're lying on the pillar, and you hear the blood moving through your veins.

Oh, I don't like that.

I'm still left under Laurie Bale that got into the van because the people went to the quiets on Earth. You're hearing a van and Lurie going, I can't, I can't.

Now.

All right, on that note, have you in here, professor who studies something just major and we've now we reduced it.

Ladies and gentlemen.

If you'd like to know more about doctor Jane Gregory and her work, please go to her website. Sounds like mesophonia. That's m I s O P h O N I A sounds like mesophonia dot com. You can also find her at at sounds like meso on Instagram and Twitter. So much you're joining us.

And you're just sport of course, because you're married.

To a comedian, So what does he do you off?

He's a really loud breath.

Let's comedians are their mouth breathing when you're sleeping.

You want to put the pillow for sid and kill.

Were sleeping separate rooms now because it's too loud.

I'm sorry, that's fine, but.

Yeah, it's really by the way you keep just as a doctor, I'm just honestly just saying, you keep saying we're doing fine, old lot.

Really, you can learn more about us and communicate with us on really noreally dot com. If you have a really no really of your very own that you'd like to share with us or maybe have us explore, leave us a suggestion there. If we do it on the show, we'll mention you and we might even send you a hat or a clown head or.

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My wife says that all the time. No, no, we're good. No, we're good, just like you. It's a plea for help.

I'm not touching that.

My wife says that f