This HIDDEN culprit could be making a RACKET… inside your head!
There’s a ringing… buzzing… hissing… or even clicking that’s INTERFERING with your ability to hear conversations…
Or CONCENTRATE on much of anything.
It could even be SABOTAGING your sleep!
Even worse, NO ONE else can hear them.
Living with the “phantom sounds” of tinnitus can be MADDENING.
And when this condition strikes, you could feel DESPERATE to turn down all those sounds… or even SILENCE them altogether.
But what you need to know is what’s CAUSING the tinnitus…
And it might not be one of the “usual suspects” you might’ve heard about.
We all know someone whose ears took a beating while in service to our country… making an honest living… or just rocking and rolling all night.
In those cases, tinnitus is a part of noise-induced hearing loss… which occurs after exposure to loud environments.
But for some folks, tinnitus seems to come OUT OF NOWHERE!
Turns out, there’s a HIDDEN culprit behind those “ringing ears”…
And according to a recent NIH-funded study out of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, the answer could be in your medicine cabinet.
The study found that women who took certain pain medications frequently were at a 20% higher risk of developing tinnitus, compared to those who took them less than once a week.
I’m NOT talking about super-strong, controlled substances like opioids…
But incredibly common and widely-available pain meds, like…
- NSAIDs
- acetaminophen, and
- COX-2 inhibitors.
Here’s the scary part…
The study authors consider “frequent” use of COX-2 inhibitors to be just TWICE a week!
Considering the fact that those drugs are often used to treat CHRONIC types of pain… like arthritis and low back pain…
I’m guessing that a lot of folks are taking them even MORE frequently than that.
The story is a LITTLE better with moderate-dose aspirin… but not much. Taking those pills every day (or nearly every day) was associated in the study with a 16% increased risk of tinnitus among gals under 60.
The good news was that low-dose aspirin WASN’T linked to a heightened risk in any age group…
But of course we already know about the OTHER risks associated with a daily baby aspirin habit…
Like stroke and other bleeds… worsening UTIs … asthma… and more.
Now, this was an observational study – so it didn’t PROVE that taking these pain meds I just mentioned actually CAUSED the tinnitus.
But the link between the two factors was undeniable… especially considering the large number of participants (nearly 70,000 women) and the long follow-up period (20 years).
The next step?
According to the authors of that study, it’s to test and see whether STOPPING the meds will help EASE the tinnitus.
Friend, you don’t have to wait for a study like that to get funded… conducted… and then published.
You can do something about it right now.
Talk with your doc about switching to an alternate pain management approach that WON’T jack up your risk for hearing issues.
And if you’re looking for a more IMMEDIATE way to DAMPEN the racket going on inside your ears…
Try magnesium and melatonin.
