Diet for tinnitus
To create a diet for tinnitus, keep track of everything you eat for a few days, and at the same time make note about the condition of your tinnitus. As you continue with your diet for tinnitus, rate the loudness, pitch and irritability to feel after each meal or snack. It is possible to make note of some surprising connections and associations that might gone unnoticed previously. For example, certain people will notice their tinnitus will increase after eating canned soup, or fish, or spicy food.
There are many reasons that certain foods are eliminated in a diet for tinnitus, but often the exact scientific explanation remains unknown. A person eventually avoids the food simply because the connection is there between it and the tinnitus problem. For example, it has long been known that certain drugs such as aspirin may cause tinnitus, especially when taken for a long time or in high dosage. In addition to the obvious salicylate intake from aspirin, many common foods contain salicylates and aspirin-like substances. For this reason, it would be good for chronic tinnitus sufferers to avoid these common food sources that have a high salicylate content:
- Almonds
- Apples
- Apricots
- Berries
- Cherries
- Cucumbers
- Grapes
- Nectarines
-
Oranges
- Peaches
- Pickles
- Plums
- Prunes
- Raisins
- Tomatoes
- Wine
On the other side of the diet for tinnitus food issue, there are other foods that are thought to be good for tinnitus because they contain a higher than average amount of zinc, a mineral often found in tinnitus supplements. Therefore, try including more of these good foods into your diet to keep the volume down on your tinnitus:
- Asparagus
- Brussels sprouts
- Collard greens
- Cow peas (chick peas, garbanzo beans)
- Cucumbers
- Endive
- Papaya
- Spinach
- String beans
Another aspect to consider about your diet for tinnitus is caffeine. As much as possible, ease off caffeine (coffee, tea chocolate and cola drinks). The exact mechanism that caffeine affects tinnitus is unknown, but for many people it is a strong contributing factor.
Alcohol will often temporarily aggravate tinnitus for many people. So it is a simple matter to group beer, wine, and other spirit drinks in your diet diary to look for associations that trigger tinnitus in yet another way.
Avoid all foods high in sugar and refined carbohydrates (white flour and processed food products. Nearly 90% of people who live with tinnitus have a sugar metabolism problem. Follow a diet suitable for a diabetic to determine how much improvement you can gain from limiting your refined carbohydrate and sugar intake. Our research has shown that 76% of tinnitus sufferers who restrict their food to a diabetic diet experience an improvement in their tinnitus.
Lastly, there is ample evidence there is a connection between increased tinnitus and salt intake in the diet; the more salt in foods the worse the tinnitus. It might have to do with greater blood pressure, greater fluid volume, or increased intercellular pressure, or all of these reasons, or others that have not been discovered yet. But, for whatever reason it seems to make tinnitus worse, just learn to enjoy your food with less and less salt to keep your tinnitus under control.
TTI strongly recommends that anyone suffering from tinnitus begins active Alternative Medicine treatment using the therapy guidelines suggested throughout this website. The results are great and therapy will probably improve other aspects of your health while you are at it.
A diet for tinnitus is a personal thing; what helps one person might not make any difference to another. So keep your mind and options open when creating your diet for tinnitus, be vigilant and stay focused to learn what triggers your problem through your diet.