It’s a known fact that eating healthier can improve your overall health and give you more energy. But did you know that what you eat can affect your tinnitus? That’s right the food you consume can either make your tinnitus better or worse depending on what you eat and how much. There are many foods that can both help to reduce those sounds you hear in your head or increase them.
The problem is that not every food has the same effect on everyone. While citrus fruits may trigger tinnitus in one person, it may have no effect on someone else. So it is important to know what foods in particular help or harm you personally. This may take a little bit of time and will be a trial and error process but, you may find it helpful if it helps reduce the loudness of those sounds you are hearing or helps reduce the number of occasions when you hear those sounds at all.
Keep A Food Diary
The best way to begin is by keeping a food diary and recording the foods you eat each day and when your tinnitus attacks increase and when they decrease. This diary should be kept over an extended period of time at least several weeks or a month to give you time to eat the greatest number of foods and record the results. That way you will be able to know if you eat certain foods over and over and if your tinnitus increases or decreases when you eat those foods.
Once you have a record to review it makes it easier to begin changing your diet. Here are a list of foods that are known to increase tinnitus in some people. Keeping this handy will help you to know which of these foods may increase your tinnitus.
Foods Known To Increase Tinnitus
These foods are known to increase tinnitus in some people. The foods made the list simply because when tinnitus sufferers ate these foods their tinnitus increased and when they eliminated them from their diet their tinnitus decreased. Some people found that only one food type may have increased their tinnitus while others found that almost all did. Most people however, found that eliminating two or three of these foods help to decrease their tinnitus symptoms.
Grain based foods. For many people grain based foods seemed to cause their tinnitus to increase. This means breads, cereals, rice, pasta anything that was made up of grains.
Alcohol also seemed to increase tinnitus in some people. Perhaps because a lot of alcohol is made from grains. Although wine was mentioned by several tinnitus sufferers as triggering their tinnitus.
Like with many other health issues caffeine for some people was found to trigger tinnitus. This included not only coffee, tea and those energy drinks but, chocolate as well.
Cheese or any mold foods seemed to set tinnitus off in some people. It is thought that perhaps the mold in cheese may create an almost unnoticeable allergic reaction in some people that may contribute to the ringing or buzzing in the head of some tinnitus sufferers.
Foods with sugar was also found to trigger a tinnitus attack and this included both honey and artificial sugars as well.
People who ingested large quantities of MSG or sodium also found that their tinnitus seemed to be worse on those days. Perhaps, this is because that sodium can increase the amount of fluid in your system causing an imbalance.
Certain fruits also seemed to trigger tinnitus in a few sufferers. Citrus fruits especially seemed to create increased problems but, over-ripe bananas caused problems, as well as avocados.
Certain Spices also seems to play a role in triggering tinnitus particularly in people who ate hot spices such as red peppers, jalapenos and chili powder.
Once you have kept your diary and have a list of foods that you suspect may be making your tinnitus worse you can begin eliminating them one by one from your diet or at least reducing the amounts of these foods you are eating.
The best way to go about eliminating them is one at a time. Remove one of the foods from your list and don’t eat it at all for several days or a week and see if your tinnitus still increases on certain days. If it does, then slowly eliminate the next food from your list. And so on until you have given all the foods the elimination test.
The next step is to add foods to your diet that are known to help decrease tinnitus in some people. Discussing these foods with your doctor or a nutritionist at this point is a good idea as they can help you develop a healthy diet plan that will include these foods while ensuring that you get proper nutrition overall.
Foods Known To Decrease Tinnitus
The foods known to help decrease tinnitus are foods that contain certain vitamins and minerals your body may be lacking these foods are:
* Foods high in vitamin A, B complex and E
* Magnesium enriched food
* Foods High in Zinc
Some specific foods that have been found especially helpful is Liver, nuts, clams and other seafood. However, there are many foods from which you can get these vitamins and minerals and a nutritionist or dietician can give you a list of such foods as well as help you to devise a diet plan.
Keep in mind that while changing your diet can help your tinnitus, diet alone is not the cause of your problem. Stress, medications and even the smells of certain perfumes can trigger tinnitus attacks as well, so be aware of these facts and discuss these things with your doctor to see if other changes in your medications or lifestyle can be made.
By taking a pro active approach in your own care and making the lifestyle and dietary changes that are necessary, you can help to make your tinnitus less troubling to you and achieve better overall health.