You go into the kitchen to look for a bite to eat. Will it be something salty… maybe some crackers? Oooo, chips! Hold up. Maybe this leftover slice of cheesecake.
Actually, maybe you should just have a banana. A banana is a healthier option after all.
Everything is interrelated in the human body. So the fact that your diet can impact your ears shouldn’t come as a surprise. For example, too much sodium can elevate blood pressure and could make tinnitus symptoms more noticeable. Research is adding weight to this notion, indicating that your diet could have a strong influence on the development of tinnitus.
Tinnitus and your diet
Research published in Ear and Hearing, the official journal of the American Auditory Society, observed a wide variety of people and looked closely at their diets. Your risk of certain inner ear disorders, including tinnitus, increases or diminishes based on what you eat. And your chance of developing tinnitus increases, particularly when your diet is lacking vitamin B12.
There were other nutrients besides B12 that were linked to tinnitus symptoms. Consuming too much calcium, iron, or fat could raise your chances of getting tinnitus as well.
That isn’t all. This research also showed that tinnitus symptoms can also be affected by dietary patterns. In particular, diets high in protein seemed to decrease the risk of developing tinnitus. Needless to say, low-fat diets that were high in fruits, vegetables, and meats also seemed fairly good for your ears.
So should you make a change to your diet?
Diet alone isn’t likely to drastically change your hearing, and actually, you’d most likely have to have a fairly significant deficiency for this to be the cause. Your hearing is far more likely to be impacted by other factors, like exposure to loud noise. That said, you should attempt to sustain a healthy diet for your overall health.
There are some substantive and useful insights that we can take from this research:
- Nutrients are important: Your general hearing health is going to be impacted by what you eat. It sure seems like an overall healthy diet will be good for your ears. So it’s not difficult to see how issues such as tinnitus can be a result of poor nutrition. This can be particularly important to note when individuals aren’t getting the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that they require.
- Get your hearing tested professionally: Come in and get your hearing tested if you’re experiencing hearing loss or tinnitus. We will be able to help you figure out (and properly manage) any hearing loss.
- Protecting your ears takes many strategies: The risk of tinnitus and other inner ear conditions can be lowered by eating a healthy diet, according to this study. That doesn’t mean you’re no longer at risk. It simply gives you better odds of avoiding ear conditions. So if you want to decrease the chance of tinnitus even further, you’ll have to take a comprehensive approach to safeguard your hearing. This may mean wearing earmuffs or earplugs to guarantee noise levels stay safe.
- Quantities vary: Sure, you need a certain amount of vitamin B12 (for instance) to keep your hearing healthy. You will be more vulnerable to tinnitus if you get less than this. But your ears won’t necessarily be healthy just because you get enough B12. Always speak with your doctor about any supplements you use because getting too little or too much of these nutrients can be bad for you.
Research is one thing, real life is another
While this is inspiring research, it’s significant to mention that there’s more to be said on the subject. In order to validate and sharpen the scope of these results, more research will still need to be carried out. How much of this relationship is causal and how much is correlational is still something that needs to be determined, for example.
So we’re not implying that tinnitus can be prevented by a B12 shot alone. Keeping that ringing in your ears from surfacing from the start could mean taking a multi-faceted approach. Diet can be one of those prongs, sure (eat that banana). But it’s important that you don’t forget about tried and tested methods, and that you pay attention to protecting your hearing health as much as possible.
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