You walk into the kitchen to look for a snack. Do you want something salty… what about crackers? Oooo, potato chips! There’s a leftover slice of cheesecake that would be delicious.
Maybe you should just opt for a banana on second thought. A banana is a healthier option after all.
With the human body, everything is connected. So it’s probably not a huge surprise that what you eat can affect your ears. For example, too much sodium can elevate blood pressure and could make tinnitus symptoms more noticeable. Recent research is indicating that diet can have a direct impact on the development of tinnitus.
Your diet and tinnitus
A study 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 specific inner ear disorders, including tinnitus, increases or diminishes based on what you eat. And your risk of getting tinnitus increases, especially when your diet is lacking vitamin B12.
There were other nutrients besides B12 that were connected with tinnitus symptoms. Your risk of developing tinnitus also increases if your diet is too high in fat, calcium, and iron.
And there’s more. The researchers also observed that dietary patterns could also cause tinnitus symptoms. For example, your risk of developing tinnitus will be decreased by a diet high in protein. It also appeared that diets low in fat and high in fruits and veggies had a positive effect on your hearing.
Does this mean you should change your diet?
You would have to have an extremely deficient diet in order for that to be the cause, so modifying your diet alone likely won’t have a substantial effect. Your hearing is much more likely to be impacted by other factors, such as exposure to loud noise. But your general health depends on a healthy diet.
There are a couple of meaningful and practical insights that we can get from this research:
- Get your hearing tested professionally: Come in and get your hearing evaluated if you’re experiencing tinnitus or hearing loss. We can help you figure out what type and level of hearing loss you’re dealing with and how to best treat it.
- Nutrients are essential: Your diet is going to have an effect on the health of your hearing. Clearly, your hearing will be helped by a healthy diet. But more than that, we can easily see how malnutrition could cause issues like tinnitus. This can be particularly important to take note of when people aren’t taking in the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that they require.
- Quantities vary: Certainly, if you want to keep your ears healthy you need a certain amount of B12 in your diet. Getting less than that could increase your susceptibility to tinnitus. But getting more vitamin B12 won’t necessarily make your ears healthier. Getting too little or too much of these elements could be detrimental to your hearing, so always talk with your doctor about any supplements you take.
- Protecting your ears takes many approaches: Based on this research, eating a healthy diet can help lower your susceptibility to tinnitus and other inner ear ailments. But that doesn’t mean the entire risk has disappeared. It simply gives you better odds of preventing ear conditions. You’ll need a more extensive approach if you really want to be protected from the chances of tinnitus. This might mean wearing earmuffs or earplugs to make sure volume levels stay safe.
Research is one thing, actual life is another
And, finally, it’s significant to note that, while this research is impressive and interesting, it isn’t the final word on the subject. More research needs to be carried out on this subject to verify these findings, or to improve them, or dispute them. We’re not sure, for example, how much of this connection is causal or correlational.
So we’re far from claiming that a vitamin B12 shot will prevent tinnitus. Keeping that ringing in your ears from surfacing from the start will probably mean taking a multi-faceted approach. One of those facets can certainly be diet. But it’s essential that you take steps to safeguard your hearing and don’t forget about proven methods.
We can help, so if you’re suffering from hearing issues, call us.
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
