High Protein Consumption May Be the Culprit

Hi Everyone,

I posted a few weeks back about my newly developed tinnitus which started out of the blue in early December. My T ranges from a hissing white noise to a mid-volume teakettle. I have so many things going on with my health right now that it's been a bit of a puzzle to identify the cause.

Two weeks ago I went to an ENT and passed all tests. My hearing is fine, my ears are healthy, and everything checked out. She told me to keep a diary of the food I eat because she suspected TMJ and wanted to see if chewier foods set it off.

I started been logging my food meticulously - I want to lose some weight anyway - so I am logging every detail of what I put in my mouth down to the ounce. I'm using the samsung health app which is easy and provides a detailed tracking and simmary.

My T has been pretty bad for the last month, really consuming my life. But over the past 2 weeks I had couple of random days where the T volume was dramatically reduced, then blaring loud, and on one day completely silent.

So I started studying my food consumption to look for specific foods that could be a trigger. At first I thought it was shrimp or shellfish because on two occasions my T got VERY loud several hours after eating it. But then I went out to dinner and had a large steak, and the same thing happened. And all three times the T was loudest throughout the entire next day.

I studied my diet further and noticed that my T was the very worst on days when my protein consumption was highest - more than 120g in a day. And I had been eating higher protein as part of my weight loss strategy.

For the past two days I have been limiting my protein to about 25g per meal, and 80g per day... and guess what? SILENCE.

As I mentioned in my first post I had some recent abnormal blood tests, all related to Thyroid and Kidney function. I am awaiting doctors appointments to address both, but I do think there is a connection there. I just never imagined that protein levels could be the cause of my T.

I'll keep you posted if anything changes. Meanwhile I am very interested in knowing if anyone else has experienced anything similar.

Jill

 

Thanks to Cheza's new book, i'm now on an almost zero Sicylates diet and i think that's helped alot, for example, i wanted to try to get some more magnesium naturally via a large spinach salad with raisons and dressing, but my T went through the roof and turns out that spinach and raisons are very high in Sicylatic acid which is ototoxic for ear cells.
Cheza's new book:
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...free-on-amazon-today-monday-january-15.26125/

Reference in her book on Sicylates:
http://www.failsafediet.com/the-rpah-elimination-diet-failsafe/salicylate-content-of-foods/

 

Please keep us posted. I'm very interested in this. My diet is typically high in protein.

 

Sounds like you might have a sensitivity to salicylates... Check out this article, seems like you'd have to consume ungodly amounts of foods containing salicylic acid to have an ototoxic reaction.

http://hearinglosshelp.com/blog/ototoxic-foods/

 

I am going to keep an eye on Salicylates, but so far I cannot see a correlation in my diet. I am eating several of the foods that have high salicylates and my T still decreased or disappeared as long as my protein was down.
Having said that, I do have some oddball food allergies which I have been living with for years: All poultry, peanuts (not the peanut protein, but the aflatoxin that forms in the shell), tree nuts, lamb, and aspartame.

 

I wonder if protein intake could be tied to serotonin levels? I recently read an article (link below) that linked higher serotonin levels with hyperactive fusiform cells
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170822123836.htm

Maybe the higher protein diet is raising the serotonin level and that's somehow contributing??? I don't know, but it's very interesting. It's kind of annoying in that SSRI's could potentially help people with depression from tinnitus, yet instead of helping they often seem to make it worse. Maybe the high protein diet is similar.