It's pretty obvious when you think about it. Whether you're Christian or Buddhist or a mindful yogi, spirituality of all kinds improves health, happiness, and even longevity. (And we've got the data to prove it.)
So, cultivate your spiritual side—take a yoga class, volunteer at a homeless shelter, or go on a silent retreat—and you'll begin to see your life change for the better.
If you take any fruit and injected it with aluminum, phenol, acetone, thimerosal (mercury) and billions of bacteria and viruses…WOULD YOU EAT IT? If you answered NO…how can they justify INJECTING it into a muscle, which gets into your blood and circulates around the body…exposing all major organs and tissues to everything in the vaccine? Then, why do we inject our kids with a vaccine?
In the early 1900s an astute Indiana physician, Dr. W.B. Clarke, stated “Cancer was practically unknown until compulsory vaccination with cowpox vaccine began to be introduced. I have had to deal with two hundred cases of cancer, and I never saw a case of cancer in an unvaccinated person.”
Formaldehyde in vaccines has been linked to several types of cancers, including Leukemia. Formaldehyde has been used in the Anthrax vaccine, DT, DTaP, Hib, HPV, Hep A, Hep B, Influenza, Meningitis, Polio, and more. This is classified as a known carcinogen. Both the Environmental Protection Agency and the International Agency for Research on Cancer admit this is so.
Vaccine makers don’t test vaccines for their potential to cause cancer.They are very clear about it. Every single vaccine package insert says it. Here’s what Merck says about its MMR vaccine:
M-M-R II has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential, or potential to impair fertility.
Various toxic elements within vaccines such as the SV40 virus, formaldehyde (formalin), mercury (thimerosal) and aluminum can become time bombs remaining dormant in the body for years until they suddenly activate, causing life threatening diseases.
Vaccines are enormously profitable for drug companies and recent legislation in the U.S. has exempted lawsuits against pharmaceutical firms in the event of adverse reactions to vaccines which are very common. In 1975 Germany stopped requiring pertussis (whooping cough) vaccination. Today less than 10 % of German children are vaccinated against pertussis. The number of cases of pertussis has steadily decreasedeven though far fewer children are receiving pertussis vaccine.
In the March 4, 1977 issue of Science Jonas and Darrell Salk warn, “Live virus vaccines against influenza or poliomyelitis may in each instance produce the disease it intended to prevent. The live virus against measles and mumps may produce such side effects as encephalitis (brain damage).
We’re often told to eat our greens, but why are they so important? One reason is they actually provide us with energy converted directly from the sun.
How Does It Work?
Plants, algae, and certain bacteria are able to convert sunlight into sugars they can use for energy through the process of photosynthesis. Chlorophyll is vital for photosynthesis because it’s the molecule that directly captures light energy.
That energy is converted into the compound adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is then transported and stored throughout the organism. The ATP is later broken down in a chemical reaction with carbon dioxide and water in order to create glucose for food.
Animals are not able to photosynthesize because we have no natural chlorophyll. We need to eat food to get the building blocks for our bodies to make ATP for energy.
But a 2014 study published in the Journal of Cell Science discovered this is not the whole story. When animals consume chlorophyll, it gets digested into a variety of metabolites that accumulate in our cells.
And researchers found the chlorophyll metabolites retain their ability to absorb light.
They also demonstrated that light can penetrate into animal tissues. The chlorophyll metabolites appeared able to capture this light and help create more ATP.
In addition, worms fed a chlorophyll-rich diet increased their life span by 17 percent.
How Coenzyme Q10 Fits into the Picture
Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is a vitamin-like substance found in every cell of the body. It’s produced by your body and it’s one of the building blocks your cells use to create ATP.
It is also a powerful antioxidant that can protect your body against cellular stress, as well as assisting with digestion and other bodily processes.
Your CoQ10 levels naturally start to drop after age 20. It’s thought that losing the protective effect of this coenzyme may be one reason why we age. Many people take CoQ10 supplements for its reported health benefits, such as reducing migraines, boosting energy, and fighting cancer.
A study from the Peking University discovered that chlorophyll metabolites also help your body produce more CoQ10.
Some of the CoQ10 will be used to create ATP, and the rest will be available to support your bodily functions and overall health.
Foods That Are High in Chlorophyll
There are many reasons to make sure you get enough chlorophyll in your diet. Chlorophyll has been linked to many health benefits, such as detoxification, improving liver function, and preventing chronic inflammation.
All green vegetables contain chlorophyll. Some examples include:
Any leafy greens, such as collards, arugula, parsley, lettuce, or kale
Asparagus
Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Green cabbage
Celery
Green beans and peas
Leeks
Green peppers
Green olives
Sea vegetables
Alfalfa is recognized as having one of the highest amounts of chlorophyll.
Keep in mind that chlorophyll can sometimes be destroyed by heat. For instance, one study found that 19 to 100 percent of chlorophyll was retained in food depending on the type of vegetable and the cooking method. Green peas seemed to retain chlorophyll the best when boiled, whereas leeks lost the most.
Cooking time also seems to matter. In general, the longer the cook time the more chlorophyll you’ll lose.
Although it’s been shown your absorption of chlorophyll may increase when you steam vegetables for a very short time.
Studies consistently find that people with more education tend to live longer. But scientists aren’t exactly sure why.
One explanation could be that they’re richer and thus have more money to invest in their health. Or maybe there’s just something intrinsically special about people who stay in school longer. Perhaps they’re smarter, more resilient. Those qualities could easily help them live longer, healthier lives.
But that isn’t a satisfying answer because we — mostly — can’t control our genes and the environments we’re born into.
There’s another hypothesis for why school may yield longer lives. It’s that education builds “human capital,” or a systematic way of thinking that benefits every decision. Those tiny good decisions add up to a protective factor that helps you live longer.
“Education is likely to provide general human capital that can be used to maintain and improve health in a wide range of circumstances,” David Cutler, Angus Deaton, and Adriana Lleras-Muney — Harvard and Princeton economists — write in a 2006 paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. This human capital, they say, will aid long-term survival “whenever there exists a mechanism or technology that more knowledgeable and educated people can use to improve their health.”
A new study from researchers in Sweden adds compelling evidence to the human capital argument. Its main conclusion: People with higher levels of schooling (more than 13 years) live around three years longer than people with less schooling (under 10 years), after controlling for biology and childhood environment.
Three years is a long time. It’s comparable to the average difference in longevity between men and women, the authors of the study, published recently in Demography, explain. It’s also the same as the gain in longevity from quitting smoking or getting a kidney transplant at age 60 or older.
What 50,000 Swedish twins can tell us about schooling and longevity
The researchers couldn’t run an experiment to determine if education matters for longevity. That would require taking identical groups of people, giving one group more years of schooling than the other, and then tracking outcomes for the rest of their lives.
Luckily, however, they weren’t completely helpless. Nature provides a natural experiment through which researchers can look for answers: twins. Studying identical twins allows researcher to more finely control for factors like IQ, personality, and home environment that can contribute to longevity. A big enough data set would allow the researchers to compare twin pairs and ask a simple question: If one twin gets more education than the other, does that twin live longer?
Doubly lucky was that in Sweden, there’s an absurdly dense treasure trove of twin data.
The Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm houses a registry of data on more than 85,000 twin pairs — the largest such repository in the world. The research team mined 50,000 of those twins (18,000 of which were identical) to help answer this question of school on education.
The study combined the twin data set with public records on mortality and educational attainment. The researchers even took extra steps to control for differences between the identical twins, adjusting for birth weight and height — which roughly correlate with childhood health and intelligence — in the analysis. (“By no means is this a perfect solution,” the authors note.)
Controlling as best they can for these variables, the researchers found a significant and persistent impact of education on longevity. This was true for both genders.
This sounds too good to be true. What’s the catch?
The data set used in this survey is huge and comprehensive, but it comes with a huge caveat.
The 50,000 twins were born a long, long time ago — between 1886 and 1958. Back in the early 20th century, schooling wasn’t as common as it is today, so it’s hard to know if the results can generalize into the modern world.
(That the data is so old contains an advantage too, as the researchers were able to track the impact of schooling over entire lifetimes. At the least, it’s interesting to learn that for the late 19th and early 20th centuries, schooling was important for lifelong wellbeing, at least in Sweden)
The researchers, however, suggest one tangible way the data can inform education policies today, particularly in the 136 countries whose residents get, on average, less than 10 years of schooling, according to the most recent data from the United Nations. (It’s a reminder most kids around the world don’t actually have a choice about how long they get to stay in school. They drop out because they have to work, or because there’s no affordable school nearby.)
But maybe the link between school and longevity can help persuade governments to invest more in education where it’s lacking.
“Our results therefore suggest that the longevity gains from extending levels of schooling in these countries may be substantial,” the study authors write. “Such gains and improved health may well constitute important mechanisms by which schooling also affects productivity and economic growth, which would further emphasize the crucial role of schooling in the development of human welfare.”
It’s also entirely possible that schooling matters more than ever for long-term well-being, as the authors note that the “socioeconomic gradient in mortality has grown stronger over time.”
These findings dovetail nicely with some other small but compelling evidence that finds school can increase a person’s IQ. Analyses have found evidence that each additional year in schooladds 3.7 IQ points. And great IQ is also associated with longevity.
The gap between the rich and poor in longevity continues to widen. If school is the ticket to a higher social class, it may still be the ticket to a longer life.
Linda B. suffered horribly from irritable bowel syndrome. It got to the point where she felt she didn't have a life; she was too wracked with pain and symptoms to leave her house. When she signed up for a medical study on the condition, she was shocked and dismayed to learn she'd be getting a placebo, not an experimental medication. What happened after she took the inert pills was even more surprising: She got better. Linda felt better, in fact, than she'd felt before she got IBS.
The strange effectiveness of "sugar pills" (or, as one medic discovered in World War II, saline injections once the morphine ran out) intrigues doctors, alternative medicine practitioners, and patients alike. In clinical trials, patients in the control group usually don't know they're getting a sugar pill—deception was thought to be key to the placebo effect, as it keeps expectations high. But in the last five years or so, researchers have shown that dispensing pills that people know are placebos canstill alleviate symptoms of IBS (as they did for Linda) and depression, as long as the researchers explain that dummy pills have worked for patients in the past.
And that's just one fun fact. Recent findings also illuminate how placebos work physiologically, finally lifting the veil on what the heck is happening, both biologically and environmentally, to make sham treatments work. The placebo effect, as it turns out, isn't just in our heads; it's in our genes, our chemistry, and even our culture.
Placebos don't normally cure diseases, but they can majorly alleviate subjective symptoms such as pain, discomfort, and mood. After all, says Ted Kaptchuk, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Harvard-wide Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter (PiPS), "These effects are at the core of the healing profession."
Kaptchuk wrote a classic textbook on Chinese medicine and has studied healing practices from around the world, so it's fitting that his perspective encompasses all aspects of wellness. "Our team measures the impact of the elements of health care that don't fall under the rubric of 'tricks of the trade'—in other words, the symbols, rituals, patient and provider mindsets, and therapeutic encounters," he says. "Drugs and procedures are important and often lifesaving. But in emphasizing them, we overlook or devalue things that still have great relevance in the practice of medicine."
Researchers at PiPS, led by microbiologist and molecular geneticist Kathryn T. Hall, Ph.D., were among the first to propose this. (Incidentally, PiPS is not a physical institution, but a consortium of researchers, plus at least one Rabbi, who meet monthly to discuss projects and ideas. "We're very placebo-like," Hall says. "We are everywhere and nowhere.") Her team combed extensively through the literature and identified "the placebome," a network of genes that influence the placebo response. (It's a portmanteau of "placebo" and "genome," or body of genes.) One of the first genes in the placebome that she pinpointed affects dopamine, a major player in the brain's reward system. Others impact the serotonin, opioid, and cannabinoid pathways.
"There are two levels to the placebo effect," Hall explains. "One is expectation and the other is a reduction of symptoms. We're not sure if these genes are modifying expectations or the experience of symptoms, but they are definitely modifying the levels of these various neurotransmitters."
That means the placebo effect was never "just in your head." "Well," counters Hall, "neurotransmitters are in your head! So it still starts there." While placebome research is in its infancy, Hall envisions that eventually, doctors could screen patients to see who's susceptible to placebo effects and adjust medication accordingly. "What we're trying to do is boost the placebo response to make drugs more powerful, or reduce the amount of medication someone might need because of their strong placebo response," she says. That approach, of course, fits in nicely with the trend toward "personalized medicine," which promises to optimize treatment based on our individual differences.
Peter D. Kramer, M.D., a psychiatrist and author of Ordinarily Well: The Case for Antidepressants, has publicly cautioned against too much enthusiasm for placebo effects because they're often dwarfed overall by the potency of medications and surgical procedures, and limited to illnesses with subjective symptoms. Plus, he warns, the mind-body connection is so complex that it will take a long time to sort out just what combo of placebos and pills would work best for a particular person and their various ailments. "It might be that there is not one genetics of placebo response but many, so that one person is responsive when it comes to pain, one when it comes to immune protection, and so on," he says. "On one or another axis, the person simply is less liable to being 'stuck.'"
While she hasn't looked at it yet, Hall believes it's possible that genetic variations could also explain why alternative treatments such as acupuncture or hypnotherapy work so well for some people.
The intricate placebo-drug dance
We know there are genetic underpinnings to the placebo effect. And we know those genes act on the same brain pathways as do many meds. Put that together and you've got a problem: Pharma trials assume that placebos act independently of medications, which is why sugar pills are pitted against drugs to measure how effective the drugs are. Now it's clear, though, that placebos work with medication, not in a separate realm from them.
If a drug increases levels of dopamine, say, and you have a gene that causes a chain reaction that leaves more dopamine swimming about in your brain, the drug is going to affect you differently than it would someone whose genes make dopamine less available to them. A drug could actually block a "good" placebo response, says Hall, or it could enhance a placebo response.
In another example of placebos and meds interacting in curious ways, one study found that when patients took a migraine drug that was labeled "placebo," it worked half as well as it did for patients who took the same drug, properly labeled. Here's another: Patients informed of the sexual side effect of a medication that treats a benign enlarged prostate gland reported sexual side effects at three times the rate of patients who weren't warned of potential problems in the bedroom. It's natural to think of pills as straightforward actors on our bodies, but our expectations about them, the way they're presented to us, and our genetic makeup are all ingredients in the efficacy mix.
Hall says that ideally, drug-testing trials will change in light of these results, though it could take many years to develop new protocols. "We have identified about 25 genes in the placebome," she says. "At a minimum, I would genotype people in each drug trial and then stratify the results to look at drug-placebo interactions."
The warm glow of TV...and caring practitioners
Here's a head-scratcher: The placebo effect has gotten stronger over the years in the U.S., but not in Asia or Europe. This tidbit comes from a McGill University meta-study that looked at clinical trials of chronic neuropathic pain treatments from 1990 to 2013. (By 2013, patients getting the placebos had, on average, a 30 percent decrease in their pain levels.)
It’s possible that the difference has to do with Americans' exposure to direct-to-consumer ads that tout the benefits of drugs, prompting us to believe they'll be super effective. (New Zealand is the only other country in the world where drug companies are allowed to bombard people with their aspirational, soft-focus commercials.) Another explanation: The size and length of the clinical trials in the U.S. were larger, factors associated with bigger placebo responses, though researchers don't know why. The more we unravel the mysteries of placebo, the more mysteries there are to unravel.
In a review published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year, Kaptchuk sets his sights beyond the sugar pill to define placebo effects as "any improvements in patients' symptoms that come out of the therapeutic encounter, [including] health care paraphernalia and settings, emotional and cognitive engagement with clinicians, empathic and intimate witnessing, and the laying on of hands." He suggests studying all of these components of patient-healer interactions to help "nudge patients toward shifts in their perceptions of their symptoms and illness, making them less disturbed or perturbed."
Kramer wonders if this definition stretches placebo all the way into the realm of talk therapy, the effects of which (just to add another layer of complexity) could also be moderated by genes. In a clinical trial of depression, for example, "if a person has no expectations based on pill-taking but improves in the context of enhanced attention from raters, testers, and caregivers, is that response a placebo effect or apsychotherapy effect?" Kramer says. "The two sources of improvement—hopeful expectancy and the healing alliance—might have different genetic underpinnings."
Even if it's not nearly as personal or in-depth as a typical talk-therapy session, a brief interaction with a skilled and caring health professional can be potent—just as saline and sugar pills can be. Hall recently had rotator cuff surgery, a procedure with a notoriously tough recovery period. "I tried so many things," she says. "Nothing really helped. Drugs just made me tired." After two weeks, she visited her surgeon for a checkup, arriving to his office in excruciating pain. "I wasn't aware of it at the time, but looking back, he hit upon all the ideal ways of dealing with a patient. He is very confident, very calm. He looked me in the eye. He expressed empathy for my situation. He patted my arm and responded with thoughtful reflections. Once we got to the part of the exam where I was supposed to identify my pain level, I realized it was gone. I couldn't believe it—it was totally gone."
A few hours later, though, it came roaring back. "I thought about looking up some of the YouTube videos of my doctor discussing surgery to see if listening to him would work again," Hall says with a laugh. What finally took the pain away for good was a factor we can all count on, even if we can't speed it up or manipulate it: the passage of time.
A new study provides clues about how omega-3 fatty acids can slow or even prevent damage from a heart attack
Many heart doctor will tell you that one of the best ways to keep your heart healthy is to include more healthy oils, such as omega-3 fatty acids found in fish, in your diet. Studies have shown that people in parts of the world who eat more fish have lower rates of heart disease, and fewer heart attacks
One thing that has been less clear is what role fish oil plays in people who have already had a heart attack. Can omega-3 fat provide similar benefit? Researchers led by Dr. Raymond Kwong at Brigham and Women’s Hospital wanted to find out, so they took advantage of more sophisticated imaging techniques that can provide detailed pictures of the heart and how it’s changing in the days and weeks after a heart attack.
For the study, published in the journal Circulation, they studied nearly 360 people who recently had a heart attack, who were randomly assigned to take 4g of omega-3 fatty acids or a placebo pill for six months. (That’s a high dose; a 3 oz. portion of salmon contains anywhere from half a gram to 1g of omega-3.) Every two months, the volunteers came in for an MRI of their heart to track how much the muscle was changing.
Normally after a heart attack, part of the heart is starved of oxygen, and that portion never recovers. The remaining healthy tissue starts to compensate for the compromised tissue, but has to work harder to maintain the heart’s normal pumping function. Over time, this overworking can lead to scar tissue and start to restrict even the healthy tissue’s ability to do its job.
Kwong and his team found that people taking the high dose of omega-3 fats showed 6% less of this decline in heart function than those taking placebo. What’s more, the people who showed the highest blood levels of the omega-3 fats (people absorb it at different rates) showed the greatest reduction in scarring — 13% — compared to those with the lowest levels. The effects remained strong even after the researchers accounted for the fact that all of the people were taking standard heart disease treatment drugs, including cholesterol-lowering statins and blood pressure medications.
“The omega-3 fatty acids seem to be preventing scarring of the otherwise healthy muscle that now has to overwork because of the heart attack,” says Kwong.
Based on analysis of their blood samples, the people taking omega-3 supplements also showed lower levels of inflammatory markers, which suggests that the fish oil may be working by reducing inflammation following a heart attack.
It’s the first encouraging strategy for protecting the heart after a heart attack; the more remaining healthy tissue that can be saved, the stronger the heart will be.
Kwong says that the findings are only the first step toward considering whether omega-3 fatty acid supplements should be part of every emergency heart attack response. The 4g is a high dose; previous studies in which people were given 1g of fish oil were more inconsistent. Most of the people also started taking the supplements two to four weeks after their heart attack. Might they have benefit more if they had started taking the supplements sooner? How much omega-3 is needed to start remodeling the heart in a beneficial way?
These are questions Kwong and others hope to answer with more studies. Kwong collected blood samples from the volunteers and will be studying them for hints about how omega-3 fatty acids are working in the body after a heart attack. “To say every [heart attack] patient should be taking omega-3 fatty acids right away is a bit premature,” he says. “But I do think it’s logical that our results hold promise, and may reduce bad outcomes in patients after a heart attack.”
Follow me into the past for a moment. Imagine a fisherman waiting for a bite on his line while sitting in his boat off the Japanese coast 500 years ago; a woman crocheting lace in the early morning light during the late 1600s; a child watching his family's herd of goats on mountainside 1,000 years ago; or a Bronze-era farmer planting potatoes, rice or beans in dark, loamy soil. What do you hear? Not much, probably. Except for the small sounds of their work and some human conversation or singing, much of human history was mostly silent. Loud events, like a group of musicians performing together or the boom of a thunderclap, were rare.
As soon as there were cities, people and their animals crowded together, and the result was, of course, noise (and plenty of it). But most people didn't live in cities until recently, and the ability to produce sound through a speaker is even newer. Edison didn't invent the first phonograph until 1877, and it took several decades for them to become common. Today, music or other sounds projected through speakers are ubiquitous.
Loud and louder
It's gotten really loud out there — and constant noise is no longer confined to cityscapes. On my last two visits to national parks, I had to ask people to turn off their blaring phones. Not in a parking lot, but miles out in the wilderness on hiking trails that stopped off at scenic viewpoints — where some people felt compelled to blast music as they Instagrammed the view. Both times I suggested pretty tersely that many people, including myself, visit American's national parks for some peace and quiet. In both cases I felt incredibly frustrated: Why must we have noise everywhere?
I'm not the only one desperate for some quiet. MNN blogger Robin Shreeves works at home, and like me, is driven to distraction by the ear-splitting drone of leaf-blowers and lawnmowers. On some days, the noise sounds like it's coming from every angle. Case in point: While I wrote the intro to this article, there was a leafblower on the property to my left; now there's one at the house on the right. And it's summer, so there aren't any leaves to blow. My neighbors would rather use a blower to sweep a deck than a broom.
And it's through those studies of noise pollution that we are also getting a handle on how important silence is to the brain and mental health.
In 2006 physician Luciano Bernardini and his son, who were both amateur musicians, wanted to better understand what happened in people's brains when they listened to different types of music. In the experiment, 24 people listened to six different tracks and measurements were taken, including blood circulation in the brain, CO2 levels and blood pressure. Bernadini noticed that these measurements spiked with faster-tempo music and decreased with relaxing music. "During almost all sorts of music, there was a physiological change compatible with a condition of arousal," he told Nautilus. But most relaxing of all were the intervals between songs: the silence.
In this TedxBeaconStreet video, anthropologist and Tufts University assistant professor Nick Seaver discusses the time he and his wife spent 18 months in silence:
Duke University biologist Imke Kirste's experiment was a look into noise and neurological reactions to it. She was testing different sounds on mice to determine which ones might lead to new brain cell growth. Her control session was a 2-hour silent period, but when she looked at her results, she found that new cells were made by the hippocampus (the part of the brain in mammals that processes memory) during the periods of silence, not sound. "We saw that silence is really helping the new generated cells to differentiate into neurons and integrate into the system," Kirste told Inc. magazine of her 2015 study. Since some types of mental illness, like depression, are linked to a lack of new brain cells in the hippocampus, research into the connections between silence and mental health seems a logical next step.
A 2010 study by Michael Wehr at the University of Oregon also looked at sound versus silence in mice, and he found that the brain doesn't go to sleep during silent episodes, so it's not a simple "on" with sound, "off" with silence effect. In fact, the part of the brain that processes sound has a whole section of neurons that go off when silence starts, and is just as much of an "event" as when sound is heard. It's just another kind of event that leads to other activity. Like, for example, building new brain cells, as Kirste's research found.
All of this research into silence's impact on health outcomes and neurophysiological effects point to the very real benefits of quiet time. It also speaks to why we feel tired after flying in a jet for a few hours (the constant noise is exhausting) and to why most spiritual retreats are quiet and why some are even completely silent or include long stretches of silence. I've never heard of a raucous monastery, have you? Even in a non-religious setting, the popularity of silent retreats grows year over year as more of us realize we need a break. Our brains do different kinds of work when we are surrounded by silence, work that we are probably missing out on if we are constantly surrounded by noisy situations.
And yet, these days, that quiet time is being marketed as a luxury good, as John Biguenut points out in an article in The Atlantic. Biguenut details how silence costs serious cash, from quieter cars to chill airport lounges and how the poor disproportionately suffer from noise pollution that they don't necessarily benefit from otherwise, including noise from highways, airports and factories.
Blocking it out
So I'm taking action. In addition to expensive noise-canceling headphones, like those made by Bose and other companies that can even block out the drone of a plane's engine, there are other tech tools you can employ to take your quiet back.
One is a new device called Muzo (disclaimer: I supported this Kickstarter), a device that promises to fight sound vibration with vibration to create much quieter indoor spaces in cities. In addition to dampening sound, you can also play relaxing music and soudscapes of various types and even keep others from hearing your intimate conversations, depending on the setting.
Ear plugs can be a simple, easy way to block sounds out so you can get some shut-eye or simply read in peace. And when you need to replace them, there are low-noise dishwashers, washing machines and vacuums to purchase. You could also work to soundproof spaces in your house. You can check out how loud a restaurant is on Yelp, and choose a quieter one, like this Berkeley eatery that spent serious cash for a quieter atmosphere.
Or, you can always take a long hike to the middle of the wilderness, and enjoy listening to the sound of silence. I give you my permission to tell off anyone who comes hiking along behind you blaring music from their phone. Remind them of John Muir's admonition in a letter to his wife in 1888: "Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness."
