Dispelling Some Tinnitus Myths/Folklore

1. “Caffeine inflames the nervous system”

This one drives me crazy. Nothing “inflames” the nervous system unless you have an autoimmune disease (e.g., MS) where your body is actively attacking itself, and even then I don’t think “inflammation” is the correct verbiage.


2. “Caffeine is bad for tinnitus.”

Alright so this one can be half-true. If your tinnitus is idiopathic, it’s possible that ramping up sympathetic activity and increasing noradrenaline release will increase your perception of tinnitus. This is likely to be a transient increase, if any at all. That being said, listen to your own body and if your body says caffeine = bad, then cut it. For the record almost nothing dietarily affects my noise-induced tinnitus. Nicotine (vapor) and caffeine are two stimulants I use daily and they have no effect on my tinnitus.


3. “Tinnitus is in the brain/tinnitus ‘gets memorized’/my tinnitus sounds like it’s coming from inside my head.”

What this fallacy demonstrates is our poor ability to locate the source of sounds/frequency. Higher pitched tinnitus will certainly sound more centralized than lower pitched tinnitus. I can say this, because my lower pitched tinnitus is clearly coming from my left ear. In the morning, when my higher pitched tinnitus is at its quietest and at its highest frequency, it sounds internal. As the day progresses the high pitched tinnitus settles into its (first evolution lol) more recognizable ‘eeeeeee’ coming from my left ear.

A demonstration:
Listen to @R. David Case's Tinnitus Mix.
Note what happens at ~16:50.
Sounds like it’s coming from the center of your head, huh? Well, obviously, it is not. Because you’re wearing headphones.

Last, if the brain “memorizes it” then why for so many people does it “fade”? I am not imagining the fact that my tinnitus graduates from a lower volume electric hiss to an “eeee” at night. This may be a product of neural fatigue or something, but it doesn’t make sense that the brain just decides to remember something again, slowly, over a certain period of time.

 

There is actually a whole study debunking the myth of caffeine causing/worsening tinnitus.

See here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6213338/

"These results suggest a protective effect of coffee on hearing loss and tinnitus."

That being said, caffeine is also well-known to cause anxiety, so if someone is already anxious because of tinnitus, caffeine can aggravate their suffering. However this will of course be just a temporary thing until the caffeine is eliminated.

So drink those cups of joes with confidence, it won't be causing any permanent damage and it might even provide some protection.