Is Alcohol a Viable Tinnitus Treatment?
Some people say alcohol is good for people with tinnitus. Others say it is bad. They’re both right. If you would like to understand how this can be, just keep reading.
You may have heard that drinking a little alcohol reduces tinnitus symptoms in some people. Perhaps you were under the impression that drinking a little alcohol could worsen your tinnitus symptoms. Surprisingly, both those reports are correct.
In 1995, the Welsh Hearing Institure decided to find out the truth of the matter. The results of their study weren’t easy to interpret. Why? 22% of the people in the study found that drinking increased their tinnitus. 16% found that drinking reduced their tinnitus. The other 62% reported no effect. What does this tell us?
Actually, this tells us a lot. First, it tells us that for most of us, moderate alcohol consumption is unlikely to affect our tinnitus one way or the other. If moderate drinking does affect us, the effect is about as likely to be bad as good. We haven’t seen any definitive studies on the reasons for these effects, but here’s what seems to be happening. The people who benefited from a little alcohol were probably the most stressed out people in the study. Modest alcohol consumption can reduce your level of stress, which would likely reduce the amount of tinnitus.
We don’t have a good theory for why moderate alcohol consumption would increase tinnitus. One possibility is that alcohol does seem to act as a stimulant for some people. Stimulants frequently increase tinnitus symptoms.
Heavy drinking, on the other hand, will almost surely increase tinnitus. With all the bad, bad effects that a heavy drinking bout causes in your body, the results will almost surely be bad for your ears too.
Is Alcohol Good Or Bad For Your Ringing Ears?
It isn’t that hard to find out whether alcohol affects your tinnitus and if so whether the effect is good or bad. But before we go into that, I have to be absolutely clear on this: In no way am I suggesting that you start drinking as a way to treat your tinnitus! But if you already drink, we can do an experiment to discover whether your current drinking patterns are contributing to your problem or helping lessen it.
Finding out is easy. Just pay attention to the ringing in ears you hear and take some notes. The next several times you have alcoholic beverages, pay attention to the level of your tinnitus before and after you drink, and record whether it increases or decreases.
This next step is a little harder, but can be very rewarding. Stop drinking for say 2-3 weeks. Completely. Over this period, make notes about the general level of your tinnitus to see whether it improves when you avoid alcohol. These two simple experiments should tell you all you need to know about how alcohol affects your tinnitus.
To learn more about how food and drink can affect your tinnitus, and how both fit into a holistic plan that can cure your tinnitus at last, click here.
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Filed under: Health and Fitness