You walk into the kitchen to find a bite to eat. How about a salty treat… what about crackers? Oooo, chips! There’s a leftover slice of cheesecake that would be delicious.
Maybe you should just go with a banana on second thought. Of course, a banana is a much better health option.
When it comes to the human body, everything is connected. So the fact that what you eat can impact your ears shouldn’t be surprising. For instance, high sodium intake can raise blood pressure and could make tinnitus symptoms more pronounced. Recent research is suggesting that diet can have a strong influence on the development of tinnitus symptoms.
Your diet and tinnitus
The official journal of the American Auditory Society, called Ear and Hearing, published research that observed the diets of a wide variety of people. Your danger of specific inner ear conditions, including tinnitus, increases or diminishes depending on what you eat. And, according to the research, a lack of vitamin B12, particularly, could raise your potential for developing tinnitus.
Vitamin B12 wasn’t the only nutrient that was connected with tinnitus symptoms. Your risk of getting tinnitus also increases if your diet is too rich in fat, calcium, and iron.
And there’s more. The researchers also reported that dietary patterns may also trigger tinnitus symptoms. For example, your risk 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 beneficial effect on your hearing.
So should you make a change to 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 significant impact. Your hearing is much more likely to be impacted by other factors, like exposure to loud sound. Having said that, you should try to sustain a healthy diet for your overall health.
This research has uncovered some practical and meaningful insights:
- Get your hearing tested professionally: If you’re dealing with hearing loss or tinnitus, get your hearing checked. We will be able to help you determine (and correctly manage) any hearing loss.
- Nutrients are essential: Your general hearing health will be impacted by what you eat. It sure seems as if a generally 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 particularly important to take note of when individuals aren’t getting the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that they require.
- Quantities vary: Sure, you require a certain amount of vitamin B12 (for example) to keep your ears healthy. You will be more susceptible to tinnitus if you get less than this. But getting more vitamin B12 isn’t necessarily going to make your ears healthier. Getting too little or too much of these elements could be damaging to your hearing, so always speak with your doctor about any supplements you take.
- Protecting your ears takes many approaches: As reported by this study, eating a good diet can help reduce your susceptibility to tinnitus and other inner ear conditions. That doesn’t mean you’re not still at risk. It just means that your ears are a little more resilient. So if you want to decrease the risk of tinnitus even more, you’ll have to take an inclusive approach to safeguard your hearing. This will often mean safeguarding your hearing from loud noise by using earplugs or earmuffs
Real life doesn’t always echo the research
And, finally, it’s important to note that, while this research is exciting and fascinating, it’s not the final word on the topic. In order to verify and sharpen the scope of these conclusions, more research will still need to be carried out. We don’t know, for example, how much of this relationship is causal or correlational.
So we’re not implying that tinnitus can be eliminated by a B12 shot alone. Keeping that ringing in your ears from appearing from the start may mean taking a multi-faceted approach. Diet can be one of those prongs, sure (eat that banana). But it’s essential to take steps to safeguard your hearing and don’t forget about established strategies.
We can help, so if you’re suffering from hearing issues, call us.
References
https://journals.lww.com/ear-hearing/Fulltext/2020/03000/Relationship_Between_Diet,_Tinnitus,_and_Hearing.8.aspx
