You’re starving so you go to your fridge for a little bite to eat. Are you craving a salty treat… maybe some crackers? Chips sound good! Hold up. Maybe this leftover piece of cheesecake.
Perhaps you should just go with a banana on second thought. Of course, a banana is a much healthier choice.
Everything is interconnected in the human body. So maybe it’s not a big surprise that your diet can affect your ears. If you eat a high sodium diet, for example, it can raise your blood pressure which can escalate your tinnitus symptoms. Research is adding weight to this notion, indicating that your diet could have a strong impact on the manifestation of tinnitus symptoms.
Tinnitus and your diet
Research published in Ear and Hearing, the official journal of the American Auditory Society, observed all kinds of people and took a close look at their diets. Your danger of specific inner ear conditions, including tinnitus, increases or diminishes depending on what you eat. And, according to the research, a deficiency of vitamin B12, particularly, could raise your potential for getting tinnitus.
There were nutrients other than B12 that were connected with tinnitus symptoms. Your risk of getting tinnitus also increases if your diet is too high in fat, calcium, and iron.
That’s not all. The researchers also noted that dietary patterns may also trigger tinnitus symptoms. Particularly, diets high in protein seemed to reduce the risk of developing tinnitus. Needless to say, low-fat diets that were high in fruits, vegetables, and meats also seemed pretty good for your ears.
Does this suggest you should change your diet?
Diet alone isn’t likely to significantly change your hearing, and actually, you’d probably have to have a pretty significant deficiency for this to be the cause. Your hearing is far more likely to be impacted by other factors, such as exposure to loud noise. That said, you should try to maintain a healthy diet for your general health.
There are a couple of meaningful and useful insights that we can take from this research:
- Protecting your ears takes many strategies: Based on this research, eating a healthy diet can help reduce your susceptibility to tinnitus and other inner ear ailments. That doesn’t mean you’re no longer at risk. It just means that your ears are a little more robust. You’ll need a more comprehensive approach if you really want to be protected from the risk of tinnitus. This will often mean safeguarding your ears from loud noise by wearing earplugs or earmuffs
- Always get your hearing checked by a professional: If you’re suffering from hearing loss or tinnitus, get your hearing checked. We can help you determine what type and level of hearing loss you’re dealing with and how to best manage it.
- Quantities vary: Sure, you need a certain amount of vitamin B12 (for example) to keep your ears healthy. Going below that could increase your vulnerability to tinnitus. But your ears won’t necessarily be healthy simply because you get enough B12. Getting too little or too much of these nutrients could be detrimental to your hearing, so always talk with your doctor about any supplements you consume.
- Nutrients are important: Your general hearing health is going to be effected by what you eat. Naturally, your hearing will be helped by a healthy diet. But beyond that, we can easily see how malnutrition can cause issues such as tinnitus. And with individuals who are lacking the essential vitamins, minerals, and nutrients they need, this is particularly true.
Real life doesn’t always echo the research
While this is inspiring research, it’s important to note that there’s more to be said on the subject. More research needs to be carried out on this subject to confirm these results, or to refine them, or challenge them. How much of this connection is causal and how much is correlational is still something that needs to be determined, for instance.
So we’re not suggesting that tinnitus can be eliminated by a B12 shot alone. It might mean using a multi-faceted approach in order to avoid tinnitus from the start. One of those facets can definitely be diet. But it’s essential that you take steps to safeguard your hearing and don’t forget about established strategies.
If you’re experiencing tinnitus, contact us. We can help.
References
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tinnitus/symptoms-causes
https://journals.lww.com/ear-hearing/Fulltext/2020/03000/Relationship_Between_Diet,_Tinnitus,_and_Hearing.8.aspx
