Mother nature may be a great setting for exercise, but if you typically run along busy roads, consider taking your training indoors or to a more remote location. A study conducted by scientists at Karolinska Institute in Sweden finds that traffic noise appears to increase your risk of a heart attack.
When the researchers compared more than 1,500 Stockholm residents who had suffered heart attacks to a control group of residents, they discovered a 40 percent higher risk of heart attacks in those who were more exposed to traffic noise exceeding 50 decibels. And that’s a relatively quiet level of noise; heavy traffic is usually measured between 80 and 90 decibels.
“More research will be needed to establish a definitive correlation between road traffic noise and heart attacks, but our results are supported by other studies showing the cardiovascular effects of noise,” the study's authors note.