You go into the kitchen and you look for a snack. Do you want something salty… maybe some crackers? Potato chips sound good! There’s a leftover piece of cheesecake that would be delightful.
On second thought, maybe you should just have a banana. Of course, a banana is a much better health choice.
When it comes to the human body, everything is connected. So maybe it’s not a huge surprise that what you eat can impact your ears. If you consume a diet high in sodium, for instance, it can raise your blood pressure and that can escalate your tinnitus symptoms. Research is verifying this idea, suggesting that what you eat could have a direct influence on the manifestation of tinnitus symptoms.
Tinnitus and your diet
Research published in Ear and Hearing, the official publication of the American Auditory Society, sampled all kinds of people and took a close look at their diets. Your danger of certain inner ear conditions, including tinnitus, increases or diminishes depending on what you eat. And, based on the research, a deficiency of vitamin B12, particularly, could increase your potential for getting tinnitus.
Vitamin B12 wasn’t the only nutrient that was connected with tinnitus symptoms. Your risk of developing tinnitus also increases if your diet is too rich in fat, calcium, and iron.
That’s not all. This research also indicated that tinnitus symptoms can also be impacted by dietary patterns. For instance, your likelihood of developing tinnitus will be decreased by a diet high in protein. It also seemed that diets low in fat and high in fruits and veggies had a positive impact on your hearing.
So should you make a change to your diet?
You would need to have an extremely deficient diet in order for that to be the cause, so changing your diet alone likely won’t have a substantial impact. Your hearing is far more likely to be impacted by other things, like exposure to loud sound. Having said that, you should try to keep a healthy diet for your overall health.
There are a few substantive and practical insights that we can take from this research:
- Always get your hearing checked by a professional: If you’re suffering from hearing loss or tinnitus, get your hearing tested. We will help you determine what type and degree of hearing loss you’re coping with and how to best treat it.
- Quantities vary: Certainly, if you want to keep your ears healthy you need a certain amount of B12 in your diet. You will be more susceptible to tinnitus if you go below this level. But getting more vitamin B12 isn’t necessarily going to make your ears healthier. Getting too little or too much of these nutrients could be harmful to your hearing, so always talk with your doctor about any supplements you consume.
- Nutrients are important: Your diet is going to have an impact on the health of your hearing. It sure seems like an overall healthy diet will be good for your ears. So it’s not hard to see how problems such as tinnitus can be an outcome of poor nutrition. This can be especially important to note when individuals aren’t getting the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that they need.
- Protecting your ears takes many approaches: Based on this study, eating a healthy diet can help lower your susceptibility to tinnitus and other inner ear conditions. But that doesn’t mean the overall risk has disappeared. It simply means that your ears are a little more robust. So if you want to decrease the chance of tinnitus even more, you’ll have to take a comprehensive approach to safeguard your hearing. This will frequently mean protecting your hearing from loud noise by wearing earplugs or earmuffs
Research is one thing, real life is another
While this is exciting research, it’s significant to mention that there’s more to be said on the matter. More research must be carried out on this topic to confirm these findings, or to refine them, or challenge them. We’re not sure, for example, how much of this connection is causal or correlational.
So we’re not suggesting that tinnitus can be eliminated by a B12 shot alone. It could mean using a multi-faceted strategy in order to avoid tinnitus in the first place. Diet can be one of those facets, certainly (eat that banana). But it’s crucial that you don’t forget about tried and tested methods, and that you focus on protecting your hearing health as much as possible.
If you’re experiencing tinnitus, give us a call. 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