Coffee consumption leads to reduced ringing or buzzing sound in the ear, a new research shows. The condition is called tinnitus.
Researchers found that young and middle-aged women benefit most from this remedy against tinnitus. The study was conducted on at least 65,000 women. All the women were aged between 30 and 44 years and did not have tinnitus in 1991. The participants were asked to report about their lifestyle and medical history and also when they started suffering from the problem.
The team tracked the participants till 18 years and the researchers noted 5,289 cases of tinnitus.
"We observed a significant inverse association between caffeine intake and the incidence of tinnitus among these women," Gary Curhan, a physician-researcher at the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston, Massachusetts, said in a press release.
The researchers found the incidence of tinnitus was lesser by 15 percent among women who consumed 450 to 599 mg/day of caffeine compared with those who took less than 150 milligrams/day (one and a half 8-ounce cups of coffee).
The majority of caffeine consumed among the women was from coffee and the results did not differ with age. "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," Curhan said.
Researchers, however, cautioned that more research is required to find out whether the addition of caffeine improves tinnitus symptoms.
The research was documented in the journal American Journal of Medicine.
