High Caffeine Intake may Lower Ear Ringing Sensation in Women: Study

Are you a sufferer of tinnitus? Then you should increase the intake of tea or coffee, say experts. Tinnitus is defined as the perception of ringing or buzzing sound within the human ear when no external sound is present. According to a new research by Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), women with a higher intake of caffeine had a lower incidence of unexplained ear ringing.

For the study, the researchers followed more than 65,000 women. They tracked self-reported results regarding lifestyle and medical history from these women, aged 30 to 44 years and without tinnitus in 1991. After 18 years of follow up, researchers found 5,289 cases of reported incident tinnitus.

Gary Curhan, a physician-researcher at the Channing Division of Network Medicine at BWH in Boston, Massachusetts, said that they observed a significant inverse relation between caffeine intake and the incidence of tinnitus among those women.

Significantly, researchers discovered that when compared with women with caffeine intake less than 150 milligrams/day (one and a half 8-ounce cups of coffee), the incidence of reported tinnitus was 15 percent lower among those women who consumed 450 to 599 mg/day of caffeine.

Researchers noted that the majority of caffeine consumed among the women was from coffee and the results did not vary by age. “We know that caffeine fuels 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,” Curhan said.

Researchers said that further proof is needed to make any recommendations about whether the addition of caffeine would improve tinnitus symptoms.

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The research was published in the journal American Journal of Medicine.

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Source-Medindia