Depending on the area of the brain affected, people can have different symptoms. It also affects functions of brain cells directly and indirectly through different organ dysfunction from alcohol usage and vitamin deficiency. Alcohol is a neurotoxin that can disrupt communications of the brain. Does drinking alcohol kill brain cells?ДЄ. If you already have hearing loss, or want to get tested to find out if you do,В use our directory to find a hearing clinic near you.Q. If you want to seek treatment for your drinking, the National Institutes of Health has an in-depth page on solutions (as the NIH says, you might be surprised to learn there are far more options than just AA meetings or in-patient rehab).Д®ven if you don't abuse alcohol, cutting down can improve your health and help preserve the hearing you have. ThatвЂ™s why many treatment programs involve family. Health experts believe that for every person with a drinking or drug problem, at least four other peopleВ are affected. So, how much alcohol is too much? A person may be diagnosed with alcohol use disorder if they haveВ these symptoms.Д®xcessive drinking also affects more than just your own health. While this condition isnвЂ™t life-threatening and often dissipates in a few hours, it can be extremely annoying.

The tinnitus happens when alcohol causes blood vessels swell resulting in greater blood flow withinВ the inner ear. This is often why people experience 'the spins'В after a night of heavy drinking, and it can sometimesВ be enough for any fun-loving drinker to swear off alcohol forever.ДЄs if that's not enough, the dizziness you experience when you've had one too many can be accompanied by tinnitus, or ringing in the ears.

Because the inner ear monitors balance, this can cause vertigo along with spatial disorientation. Problems with dizziness and tinnitusДЄnyone who has had the experience of overindulging during a night of drinking knows firsthand that drinking can createВ problems with your balance and makeВ you feel dizzy and out of sorts.ДЄccording to the Vestibular Disorders Association, alcohol changes the volume and composition of fluid in the inner ear, which can cause dizziness and imbalance as well as hearing loss.ДЄlcohol is absorbed into the fluid of the inner ear and stays there, even after it is no longer present in the blood and the brain. Although hearing returned to normal among study participants once they stopped drinking, researchers theorize that frequent episodes of alcohol-induced hearing loss may lead to permanent damage. ThisВ condition is also known appropriately as 'cocktail deafness'. Because the damage is permanent, so too is the resulting hearing loss.ДЄ study of young adults in London revealed that alcohol use disorderВ leads to problems understanding lower frequency sounds. The toxicity created in the inner ear by excessive alcohol damages and destroys the hair cells, and they do not regenerate. The inner ear houses tiny hair cells responsible for translating the sounds your ears collect into electronic impulses the inner ear sends along the auditory nerve to the brain. Alcohol's effect on hearingД®xcessive drinking causes a toxic environment in the inner ear.

That means you might have trouble hearing people who speak quickly, or distinguishing one voice or sound from another in environments where there is a lot of background noise. So, even though the ears may be functioning properly, the brain may be unable to correctly process the sounds.ДЄ study by German researchers at the University of Ulm discovered that heavy drinking over a long period of time damages the central auditory cortex, increasing the time it takes to process sound. The auditory nerve is responsible for transferring the auditory informationВ from the sounds we hear in the cochlea of the inner earВ to the brain where they are translated. Excessive drinking damages the auditory cortex in the brain, affecting the way your brain processes sound.

Effects of alcohol on the brain