Scientists who were apparently in desperate need of a research topic have a tip for concert-goers: Don't drink coffee for a while afterward. Based on their new study, it could hurt your hearing.
How does one go about studying such a thing? Well, scientists at the McGill University Auditory Sciences Laboratory who suspected certain substances hurt the ear's ability to recover exposed a group of female albino guinea pigs to 110-dB "pure tone sound" (the equivalent of a rock concert) for a full hour on two occasions, reports the McGill Reporter.
Half were given 25mg/kg of caffeine for 15 days, while the other half went without. A day after listening to the sound, both groups showed similar hearing impairment.
But after eight days, the caffeine-free group's hearing had recovered almost completely, whereas the caffeine group still had difficulty. "Our research confirmed that exposure to loud auditory stimuli coupled with daily consumption of 25mg/kg of caffeine had a clear negative impact on hearing recovery," researcher Faisal Zawawi says.
While the Consequence of Sound notes you can always avoid coffee or soda temporarily after a concert or other noisy encounter, those working in industries like aviation, mining, construction, and manufacturing could be doing a lot of damage to their ears without even knowing it.
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