Do you recollect the old tale of Johnny Appleseed? When you were younger you most likely heard the story of how Johnny Appleseed traveled around bringing fresh apples to communities (you should eat apples because they are good for you and that’s the moral of the story).
Actually, that isn’t the whole truth. The real Johnny Appleseed (whose real name was John Chapman) did indeed bring apples to many states across the country around the end of the 19th century. But apples weren’t as delicious and sweet as they are now. Actually, they were mainly only utilized for one thing: producing hard cider.
That’s right. Johnny Appleseed was providing booze to every community he visited.
Alcohol and humans can have a complex relationship. It isn’t good for your health to start with (and not only in the long term, many of these health impacts can be felt immediately when you spend the early morning hours dizzy, vomiting, or passed out). Nevertheless, humans typically enjoy feeling inebriated.
This isn’t new. People have been imbibing since, well, the beginning of recorded history. But it may be possible that your hearing problems are being worsened by alcohol consumption.
Put simply, it’s not just the loud music at the bar that’s bad for your hearing. It’s the beer, also.
Tinnitus can be caused by alcohol
Most hearing specialists will agree that drinking causes tinnitus. That shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to accept. If you’ve ever partaken of a little too much, you may have experienced something called “the spins”. That’s where you get really, really dizzy and the room feels like it’s, well, spinning (particularly with your eyes closed).
When alcohol disturbs your inner ear, which is the part of your body responsible for balance, you may experience the”spins”.
And what other function does your inner ear play a part in? Naturally, your hearing. So if alcohol can trigger the spins, it isn’t hard to believe that it can also produce ringing or buzzing in your ears.
That’s because alcohol is an ototoxic substance
Now there’s a scary word: ototoxic. But it’s actually just a fancy term for something that harms the auditory system. This includes both the auditory nerves and the inner ear, essentially everything that connects your whole auditory system, from your ears to your brain.
There are several ways that this plays out in practice:
- Alcohol can degrade the stereocilia in your ears (these are little hairs that let you sense vibrations in the air, vibrations that your brain later converts into sound). Once those tiny hairs are damaged, there’s no repairing them.
- Alcohol can reduce blood flow to your inner ear. The deficiency of blood flow can itself be an origin of damage.
- Alcohol can affect the neurotransmitters in your brain that are in control of hearing. So your brain isn’t working properly when alcohol is in your system (obviously, decision-making centers are impacted; but so, too, are the parts of your brain responsible for hearing).
Drinking-related hearing loss & tinnitus aren’t always long-term
You might start to notice some symptoms when you’re out on the town having some drinks with friends.
These symptoms, luckily, are normally not permanent when caused by alcohol. As your body chemistry returns to normal, you’ll most likely begin to recover some of your hearing and your tinnitus will wane.
Naturally, the longer alcohol is in your system, the longer it will take your ears to go back to normal. And it may become permanent if this kind of damage keeps occurring repeatedly. In other words, it’s definitely possible (if not likely) that you can cause both permanent tinnitus and hearing loss by drinking too much and too frequently.
Some other things are happening too
Clearly, it’s more than simply the booze. There are a couple of other factors that make the bar scene a little inhospitable for your ears.
- Noise: The first is that bars are usually, well, loud. Some of their charm comes from…uh.. just this. But when you’re 40 or older it can be a little bit much. There’s plenty of laughing, people talking, and loud music. Your hearing can be damaged over time by this.
- Alcohol causes other issues: Drinking is also detrimental to other facets of your health. Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and high blood pressure can be the outcome of alcohol abuse. And all of these problems can inevitably be life threatening, as well as worsen more extreme tinnitus symptoms.
Simply put, the combination of the environment and the alcohol make those late night bar visits a powerful (and risky) mix for your hearing.
So should you stop drinking?
Of course, we’re not saying that drinking alone in a quiet room is the solution here. The underlying problem is the alcohol itself. So you may be doing substantial harm to your health and hearing if you’re having difficulty moderating your alcohol intake. You should speak with your physician about how you can get treatment, and start on the road to being healthy again.
If you’ve noticed a loud ringing in your ears after heavy drinking, schedule an appointment with us for a consultation.