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.
Perhaps you were under the impression that a moderate amount of alcohol could help reduce tinnitus symptoms. 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. But if it does, the effect could be good or bad. While I haven’t seen any definitive research into why the results came out this way, I can speculate based on what I know about tinnitus in general. 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.
It is less clear why modest consumption of alcohol would increase tinnitus effects. But at least on possibility does present itself. It is the fact that alcohol actually acts as a stimulant for some people. And some people find that stimulants increase the ringing in their ears (perhaps because of the constricted blood vessels and higher blood pressure that stimulants trigger).
Heavy drinking, on the other hand, will almost surely increase tinnitus. The dehydration, headaches, and overall physiological damage caused by heavy drinking are almost guaranteed to worsen tinnitus.
Will Drinking Modest Amounts of Alcohol Hurt or Help Your Ringing Ears?
It is relatively easy to figure out whether alcohol increases or decreases your tinnitus symptoms. But first, let me make this clear: I do not advocate you starting to drink in an attempt to cure your tinnitus! The goal here is simply to help you discover whether your current drinking patterns are contributing to your problem or helping lessen it.
To find out how your current drinking patterns affect your tinnitus, you simply need to take some notes. The next several times you have alcoholic beverages, be alert to how intense your tinnitus is after you drink. Make some notes of how it seems.
Next, if you’re feeling up to it, stop drinking altogether for a couple of weeks and make note of your general level of tinnitus. These two simple experiments should tell you all you need to know about how alcohol affects your tinnitus.
If you want to learn more about how what you put into your body affects your tinnitus, and about a holistic plan that addresses all the issues on the way to a tinnitus cure, click here.
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