Caffeine Slows Down Hearing Recovery After Loud Noise Exposure

Caffeine does not cause hearing loss but after being exposed to loud noise IE going to a rock concert, caffeine is shown to slow down the recovery process and possibly turn a temporary hearing threshold into a permanent one.

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/07/07/drinking-caffeine-hearing-loss/
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaotolaryngology/fullarticle/2498969

Conclusion don't drink caffeine if you are going to listening to loud music, this is what probably screwed me over considering I drank a lot of caffeine following my acoustical trauma.

 

Guinea pigs were probably not regular coffee drinkers. Yes, they controlled that the coffee only didn't cause threshold shift, but it seemed that guinea pigs received the first brews on the same day as they were exposed to noise. Caffeine might have altered guinea pig behaviour as it's a stimulant. It might have caused dehydration (which I think wasn't measured) as guinea pigs were probably not used to have caffeine or other stimulants in their system, and so on... Just a thought... Interesting finding however.

 

Albino guinea pigs are usually deaf and blind so wouldn't put too much credit into this finding

Article doesn't state whether the albinos were lethal whites or not.

 

Im daily caffe drinker, but at day in and after trauma i've drank much more caffeine than usually. But maybe it's just coincidence, i have seen somewhere on this forum other studies suggesting that caffeine can protect hearing during noise exposure.

 

Yes, there was atleast this study, that stated the quite the opposite of this one. It was a survey based study, and the realiability of the results are also well discussed in the thread.

 

well, shit.

 

Just came across this study myself. Always the question of how applicable to humans (plenty of potential other explanations, as have been mentioned), but it would be pretty crushing to have to give up coffee because of T/H (although I realize caffeine in excess is also probably not helping those things from a stress point of view).

 

I'm not an expert, so I'm just wondering if hearing loss and tinnitus are exactly the same thing in this context. Could the guinea pigs hearing loss be related to eardrum damage, for instance, rather than inner ear damage.

At any rate, I think most doctors are just arrogant control freaks so they find ways to blame the patient, like picking something that practically everyone does (drink coffee) and use that as a diversion instead of admitting that there is a medical problem that they have no control over.