Chocolate/Cacao and Tinnitus

Ok, I ate have a bar of chocolate yesterday and had a massive spike in tinnitus, like it was 50% louder and you could hear the hyperactivity of it...I woke up today and now it's quieter, like 50% lower...Is this normal?

 

how long between the chocolate eating and the spike?

 

And hour or two..I did have a lot of sugar yesterday too! It was scary! It was loud enough for me to want to die, had to take a sleeping tablet to sleep...But woke up and it's ok again...I keep getting higher and lower tinnitus all the time?

 

Yes sugar is known to be a trigger, along with salt, MSG.

 

It's so not fair that you have to cope with this noise and even stop enjoying the things you liked before tinnitus.

 

@Danny Boy
Sorry but i dont think that chocolate has got anything to do with it at all.
I think that what is happening is that it is simply going up and down.
If you took a sleeping pill then maybe you had a good sleep and this is what has caused the reduction.
Mine seems to have no reason at all.
I get stress and it goes up, I get stress and it goes down.
I get sleep and it goes down, I get sleep and it goes up.
ENT told me to take ATARAX to sleep and it would help it cos i would get more sleep and therey reduce the brain fatigue....
Who knows but i dont think chocolate is the reason so enjoy your choco and you may find that if you are happier then it may go down....
Mine was practically non existant yesterday and this morning after a good sleep, it is higher than ever.
Yesterday it moved fm my right ear to my left.
And was not in right ear.
Today it is back only in right ear and not in left ear...
So.....

 

Luckily for me, diet seems to not affect my tinnitus. On the flip side, that also means there's nothing I can do to make it better.

And was that the very first time you've had chocolate since tinnitus? If not and this never happened before, then it sounds like it's just coincidence. It's natural to try to determine a cause when there might not be one. My tinnitus changes constantly too and sometimes it randomly gets loud.

 

Chocolate does have an affect on tinnitus, it's a stimulant thus can cause a spike in volume due to increased hyperactivity of the neurones.

 

@DannyBoy

@DannyBoy

Please dont take what I say about chocolate the wrong way.
So say some people re chocolate. Other people have had it for ages and have ascertained that it makes no difference to their T whatsoever. It is not solid proven evidential. It may make a difference. It may not. Salt may make a difference. Cheese can make a difference. I have read so many things about diet on line and practically every piece of food can affect good or bad. The only thing that I can see would be real bad for it evidentially is Aspartame and Monosodium Glutamate. Otherwise it may just be cyclical T or a sign that it is beginning to change and indeed get better.

By the way, a russian friend of mine had it for 2 months. He took a smart drug (troopics or something - i can find out) and it went away and stayed away permananatly. According to him the thing to do was take this drug. So is he right? Well in that case how come it is not known round the world as a cure. Cos it worked for him - same with the idea of chocolate.....

Hope you are feeling good today Danny and that it is low for you.

 

I'm not taking it in the wrong way...Just every time I have chocolate of caffeine my tinnitus spikes...

 

I have Endolymphatic hydrops (inner ear fluid) which causes my T. For me, salt, caffeine (chocolate has caffeine), alcohol have an effect on my condition.

 

Why would you have to stop enjoying the things you liked before tinnitus?

Dr. Stephen Nagler

 

Because for him it makes the sound louder and I have a guess that he does not like the sound becoming louder

Your question to him is kind of easy to say when the person in question is still in panic-mode and you are fully habitated. If you do not know how to cope yet and think that even a raindrop can make it worse for you, you will have second thoughts to go out into the rain.

My T spikes when it does...sometimes no clear reason. So I wait for it to settledown on its own. My reaction last year would be that I should stop drinking cola or sprite and go in state of emergency for the time it lasts.

If you have bad T ...you WILL stop things you enjoyed ....even if it is for a period of time until you find your way. And even if you not stop doing things you enjoy, you experience them in a different way.

And if you still do the things you enjoy and it does not bother you....why are you on this forum and not live life as normal as ever?

 

@RicoS , I think Dr.Nagler must have forgotten what it's like, after all it was 20 years ago.

 

If you are a doctor you should know better instead of asking this stupid question

 

@RicoS , maybe it has nothing to do with being a doctor, maybe its a question to provoke people into a heated debate and watch the thread crash and burn
I'm sure if Dr.Nagler wanted to, he could explain to Danny Boy (the way you did quite nicely) why people try to avoid things at first.
Maybe, I don't know.

 

Well...I can't eat chocolate, go to the cinema...I have to avoid loud places...No more green/white tea and I have to watch my sugar/salt levels...Otherwise tinnitus spikes by 50%...That's far too much to handle.

 

Well maybe you could put in earplugs when you know its gonna be loud ?

 

@DannyBoy

Are you certain that when you remove tea from your daily diet it reduces your T by 50%?
I ask genuinely cos I drink tea (p g tips one cup) and wondered if I stop will it reduce mine by 50% then.
Please let me know thanks

 

It's worth a try. I had a cup of tea and afterwards tinnitus got much louder.

 

@amandine , some people's tinnitus is sensitive to caffeine, salt, sugar, msg, etc. especialy in the first months of tinnitus. I suggest you keep experimenting what works for you and what things make your T spike.

 

Does it fluctuate a lot in the first few months?

 

@Danny Boy posted:

"It's so not fair that you have to cope with this noise and even stop enjoying the things you liked before tinnitus."

I responded:

"Why would you have to stop enjoying the things you liked before tinnitus?"

@RicoS responed:

"Because for him it makes the sound louder and I have a guess that he does not like the sound becoming louder."

................

Then he's making a decision to give up the things he enjoys in life because of how they might affect his tinnitus. That would be his choice. But it is not his only choice.

My point here is that until somebody comes up with a cure for tinnitus, there are two ways to go about solving this problem.

One is to let the sound in your head dictate how you live and what you do.

And the other is to take meaningful purposeful steps to resume control of your life in spite of the sound in your head.

One is to let tinnitus drive your bus.

And the other is for you to drive your own bus and relegate your tinnitus to the back seat - or better still, kick it off your bus entirely.

Dr. Stephen Nagler

 

He makes it sound so easy .

 

My medical doctor suggested I start eating a small portion of dark chocolate daily. I really do not like dark chocolate but thought I would give it a try. My T. went thru the roof. I do not ever remember have a spike when eating just milk chocolate. Needless to say I have stopped the high percent chocolate bars.

 

The reason I post on this board - the only reason I post on this board - is that even after 20 years I remember all too well what it was like. It was beyond awful. It was so bad I could taste it. The nightmare of all nightmares, except in the morning you didn't wake up from it. It just kept going on ... and on ... and on.

And I'm here to tell folks that they can overcome it, just like I did.

I never said it was easy. All I said was that it can be done.

Dr. Stephen Nagler

 

Haha you sound just like me....ah fuck

 

The issue is, what if the volume is far too loud? What if it's so loud, that you can hear it over everything, quite clearly, even trains?

 

It's horrible isn't it? I'm trying notched music at the moment, to help with the tinnitus...It's meant to reduce it.