Women who consume high levels of caffeine experience fewer incidences of tinnitus, according to a new study.
The study was conducted by researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital. The researchers analyzed data of more than 65,000 women that were part of the Nurses' Health Study II. The data included details related to the women's lifestyle and medical history. All participants were aged between 30 and 44 years and none of them had tinnitus at the start of the study in 1991. The participants were asked to self-report any incidences of tinnitus and their onset in 2009. After 18 years, 5,289 cases of tinnitus were reported.
"We observed a significant inverse association between caffeine intake and the incidence of tinnitus among these women," said Gary Curhan, senior author of the paper and a physician-researcher in the Channing Division of Network Medicine at BWH and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, in a press statement. "The reason behind this observed association is unclear. We know that caffeine stimulates the central nervous system, and previous research has demonstrated that caffeine has a direct effect on the inner ear in both bench science and animal studies."
From the data gathered in 2009, researchers found that for women whose intake was 450 to 599 mg of caffeine daily , the incidence of reported tinnitus was 15 percent lower than compared to women who consumed less than 150 milligrams of coffee a day.
Tinnitus is a physical condition, experienced as noises or ringing in the ears or head when no such external physical noise is present. Tinnitus is usually caused by a fault in the hearing system; it is a symptom, not a disease in itself. According to statistics, tinnitus is the number one war wound and 90 percent of such cases occur with hearing loss. Moreover, about 25 million to 50 million people in the United States experience tinnitus to some degree. Astonishingly, only 16 million among these people seek medical help for the condition.
There is currently no cure for most types of acquired hearing loss, which is usually due to damage of sensory and supporting inner ear cells. However, in 2011, Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) launched the Hearing Restoration Project (HRP), a consortium of senior hearing researchers, funded by HHF, with a goal of delivering a biologic cure for hearing loss and tinnitus. HHF is the largest private funder of hearing research in the United States, and has been funding hearing research since 1958.
The current study was published online in the August issue of the American Journal of Medicine. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
