I'm Here, on a Mission, and Furious.

It's been over three months, since my partner and I were poisoned with an Asian dish in our university's restaurant. A young chef completely oblivious to the dangers supplied my sauce with what he thought was a reasonable dose of MSG for five hundred people, forgot to stir, and then served it all to me.

Those few bites just before we couldn't walk and see anymore were really good. And every day since has been hell, if I’m unlucky, I’ll remain on the edge of passing out all night with oxazepam and melatonine, fully able to hear my pretty 13.5kHz, 60dB tone till morning.
I've a hundred kinds of massive headaches every day. I can't go out for much more than four hours because the headache and dizziness will get much worse, if I push it and try to study or work all day, and maybe go to a birthday party in the evening my eyes roll back in my head and the lights go out.
I'll be eternally grateful that I did not let the lady order first, that I only gave her one bite of my food, and that apart from tinnitus and slight headaches she's fine.

So I quit my useless courses and research, and started studying up on my former interest, neurology. After having absorbed the most crucial theory and research I was pissed... If we had the same level of reasoning and competence in physics as I see in other fields we would still be mining iron with out bare hands. Science apparently loses more of its meaning each year after Aristotle first came up with it.

First I wanted to put my past and my current abilities to use, buy a cold war MIRV warhead in Belgrade, fashion the detonator, and nuke my campus at night. Then I thought I'd just snipe the knee caps off the people involved from the boot of a parked car. After that I only wanted to eat a bullet myself, and I still do, but I haven't the luxury since I have a partner.

The only thing remaining is further examining the damage done in my body and then modeling and testing how ingested, and then systemic MSG passes the cochlear and brain barriers to demolish neurons. For those curious it has been perfectly understood for half a century how free glutamate damages the brain, ears, and eyes, but nobody has been capable enough to model how it would could get there after ingestion. Which is no surprise since the skill of modeling and reasoning seems to have been completely left out in medicine, and have been replaced by the statistical significance of singular assumptions. Thus it has been considered as appearing 'safe'-ish.
Iron with our bare hands, if we did that in physics.

I am here to find out if there are others whom have been afflicted with tinnitus due to MSG poisoning, either knowingly or unknowingly. I don't expect to find anybody, my dose was so big I am not able to regulate my body temperature properly and suffer from the slight loss of fine motor skills.
I'd also like to discuss research and methods of execution of neurogenesis (the repair of neurons, not hairs, in the ear after excitotoxic apotosis), and also targeted neuroinhibition as relief for other causes. And to determine what the different kinds of causes and solutions are for tinnitus with a basis in neuroanatomy so that it may be better understood. Perhaps I'll even push a professor to publish a paper or two with simple poll information.

Thank you, so much, for being here.

 

Welcome to the forum and sorry for what you went through with the careless chef on MSG. This stuff is known to aggravate or trigger T and the dosage you took accidentally must be very bad. Perhaps check with a specialist to see how allergic you are to MSG and see if there is a way to detox the body for that. Hope your body will recover over time from this unfortunate incidence. Perhaps a distinguished senior member who knows more than us on scientific researches, @attheedgeofscience, can help you more on the technical stuffs about researches in the field of tinnitus. Take care & God bless.

 

If I was you, I'd be more into researching methods of execution of moronic university restaurant chefs.

 

Maaaan, i feel for you. I didn't even know that msg can cause or exacerbate t!
If it's any consolation, my T and that of quite a few other members was also caused by third party stupidity. We all took a bite from the shit sandwich of life it seems.
Have you tried any sort of detox? Multivitamins, magnesium, omega 3 fish oil, lots of green smoothies and little to no sodium and daily cardio workouts for balance and blood circulation may help you get back on your feet in the long run.

 

holy shit! I didnt know MSG could cause T and that big damage :/ where do you live?

I am so sorry. Its really hard, knowing that your T was caused by the unattention and incompetence of someone else! :/
I hope theses issues with your body will resolve :/ It is hard to deal with T, But its even harder to deal with T and also other body problems.
I know that because I have foot pain since 1 year and the docs cant help me.

How loud is your T?

Also may I ask if you plan to take and law-action?
just curious....

maybe detox could help your body?

 

So it was an accident, don't blame the chef? How can you be sure MSG caused your symptoms? Once it's off your system shouldn't you feel normal again?

 

Holy shit!Im literally here about to eat a Chinese containing MSG,it's sitting right in front of me but I haven't touched it yet.To the bin it goes

 

There is no allergy to MSG, glutamate naturally occurs and is the primary neurotransmitter in the body. When the axon terminals in your synapses are stimulated with it they release their own supply causing what is called a glutamate storm, killing all cell similarly as in a stroke. There is no way to detox the body for that and I checked to see if I had a stroke as a result of the massive bloodpressure from the MSG, I didn't.
@attheedgeofscience already contacted me and I'm very glad he did, he's work is amazing.
Thank you for your best wishes.

Just before smuggling my rifle over the border I realized MSG does not have a quantitative warning label because the European Food Safety Administration does not require it. I am building up my medical file and doing a meta analysis of pre-available research. If they don't change their mind I'll submit a human rights violation against the EFSA, under the article of torture.

Yeah... I didn't know either. In fact, I can still hardly believe it but we're taught not to refute absolute certainty. It took me three months to analyse the research on it.
What I found is an overwhelming body of 3 stage peer reviewed Elsevier and Nature published work absolutely proving that free glutamate is harmful and dangerous. And a ton of privately funded, self published, poorly designed bull%$^# that dismisses the possibility of danger by feeding small amounts of it to people and then not being able to record any damage because the people are still alive, and as such unavailable for autopsy.
MSG is not reasonably safe enough for consumption to omit quantitative warnings, and few people other than nutrition websites and non, or badly peer reviewed groups have ever claimed that it ‘appears’ to be. Either using lack of evident damage as evidence of safety, and/or using another neuroexciter, sometimes also something with MSG in it *Facepalm*, as a placebo, and/or designing the trials to never break significance levels. Amusingly everyone that claims safety always seems to point to the same 1960’s research into the dangers of MSG as if there’s no other research around.

I'm afraid its not just my feet that are cold hehe. Sometimes I wake up with hypothermia (34.0 C), which means the hypothalamus was damaged. The hypothalamus is a circumventricular organ (CVO) and is not protected by a blood brain barrier. It also regulates thirst which I am no longer bothered by... my lady lets me know when I forgot to drink all day.
I'm not that old yet so I'm hoping that I can research and find that I still have progenitor cells in my damaged CVO so that it may heal naturally, or be stimulated to. But I don't want to go too much off topic since this is a tinnitus forum

If I can just get the headache and tinnitus to go I'll be so happy. Thanks for your response.

 

Nor did I, I live in the Netherlands. My T is about 60 dB. I do expect a University to be well insured for accidents like this but I have to tell you it's not much consolation to me.
As it stand the chefs action will fall under criminal law because MSG was against company policy.

Accident or no I'm still screwed and he added MSG without approval of his company, for obvious reasons.

I spent three months researching and examining the problem with my doctors and have been trying to find any other cause which might explain this, including endogenous glutamate release as happens in a regular stroke. As it stands there is still a completely improbable less than 1% possibility that something else toxic was in the food next to at least 30 grams of MSG, something like obscure cattle medication or mercury. Since my T is obviously ototoxic in nature, MSG is best at destroying inner ear synapses, and the acute symptoms only fit idiotic amounts of it, few other known options remain. My national food safety administration is looking into it further, and I will be discussing organ biopsy examination with my internist at the academic hospital.
MSG is absorbed by your system in a matter of hours, the damage remains. But as we know the brain is quite malleable, people recover from strokes... sort of.

Haha, don't throw it out man. I didn't mean to scare you. Listen, added MSG is fine when it occurs in small quantities. In fact, it's the most abundant naturally occurring neurotransmitter. Asians know how to use it safely.
If you're unsure a simple big dose of vitamin C has been shown to enable the body to safely deal with even excessive amounts of MSG. Just take 1 gram of vitamin C.
MSG does not become toxic unless you rapidly reach concentrations of 1 mg/liter inside the brain. If you ever find yourself unable to walk straight and your forehead trying to strangle your skull call an ambulance and find some vitamin C quickly.

There is absolutely no proof that small quantities of MSG can harm the body. In fact quite the opposite, when the neurons are subjected to small amounts they brace themselves for more.
My problem was caused by an empty stomach and a load of MSG intended for hundreds of people.

It's my intention to create a good website on the subject that explains in a simple yet extremely field accurate way what really is the deal with MSG using leading research on the subject and decent modeling.

 

Since there is such interest in the subject I should state this clearly so there is no confusion about it. But it's not my intention to make this an MSG fear thread, I'll keep it to the relevance for tinnitus.

Glutamate has never been shown to cause any damage after being eaten in small quantities. I have yet to find long term studies after subjecting people to it, to see if tinnitus remained or hearing damage tolerances decreased.
It has been shown to cause damage in amounts above 100 grams ingested. And there is absolute consensus that it damages the brain if it should get there, but nobody has as of yet attempted to model how it would get to the parts of the body it can damage.

One claim is that it does not cross both the brain and cochlear barriers but this has been shown to be untrue. Once it crosses both barriers it has to get there in large amounts suddenly to cause permanent damage. The damage is very specific as it destroys the synapses through excitotoxic induced apoptosis.
As a physic major I deal in absolute certainties such as the following. If you experience tinnitus, or increased tinnitus after eating MSG it absolutely means that glutamate has crossed the cochlear barrier and is helping to excite your synapses, when this happens very excessively the damage is permanent. That damage has been named excitotoxicity.
To give a relatively reasonable comparison my tinnitus was acutely 65-70 dB after eating, we couldn't walk or see, or think clearly. It has since settled to under 60 dB for me.

Since our (my partner and I) symptoms, both acute and chronic, are medically only attributable to exogenous systemic glutamate damage, we are left to both examine and research how exactly it happened.
The current situation seems to point to the fact that an empty stomach and a dose 5 times that as has been tested seems to be enough.
But as it stands there is still a tiny chance that something unknown or ridiculously unbelievable was also included next to the excessive MSG which has caused chronic symptoms previously only attributable to excitotoxicity.
Since there has been research into synaptic repair and targeted excitory inhibition I'll focus on research concerning cochlear synaptic damage and repair here. And excitory inhibition should also be useful for all types of tinnitus. I'll be contacting some research groups.

As I've looked around here it seems I have very little to contribute it both warms my heart and chills my spine to see that under pain of torture such good work can be done by people. Perhaps I can lend a hand in interpreting scientific papers, like the equations for neuromodulation.

Not quite the frontier of science I wanted to be on but I am very glad to share it with good people.

 

@Cityjohn SO sorry for your predicament! And very impressed by your thought processes and well-articulated posts. Can you maybe check out the thread below (sorry - couldn't make a link to it, but if you enter it in search, it'll come up!) and place some of your contributions there, as they occur? We're trying to get our researching into a collected place! Thanks! I sure do hope that with your youth and dedication, you can come to a better place for yourself!


Awareness Idea for Patient Research: Join the Dots

 

Thank you for your understanding, compliments, and support.

I've seen the thread and think it's definitely a must. I'll await or discuss the format of Join the dots, and contribute to it.

 

@Cityjohn haha sorry man but that story sent a shitstorm of fear through me and I binned it.My girlfriend was just about to take a bite and I jumped across the table and slapped it out of her hand like something from a movie lol
As you can imagine she was not one bit impressed

But on a serious note I am sorry to hear what has happened to you and your partner and I really do hope things improve for you.

 

@bill 112 Oh wow - I was eating Chinese food AS I WAS READING Cityjohn's post! And telling myself it was my last ...

But your story is way more dramatic!

 

I just panicked
The whole thing mirrored the events leading up to his problems and I just freaked out

 

This is tinnitus. Freaking out is part of the definition.

 

Haha. This is so funny. Guys, take it easy. The OP already clarifies small amount of MSG not going to harm us. Think of the billions of Chinese, Koreans, Japanese and the amount of MSG foods they eat and yet tinnitus there is not known to be worst off than us living in the west, or even less of a problem there than the rest of the world. Eat, drink and be merry. For tomorrow T is going to ring whether we eat MSG or not. LOL. Just need to have moderation in all things and we will be alright.

 

I do however still believe free MSG should be avoided when refined and then added on top of other food.

When it is contained inside a tomato or some cheese it does not release until it is well within your intestinal tract where it is used by the intestines. When refined MSG is added to a sauce on your piece of meat, or noodles, it will be absorbed in your mouth and stomach seeping into your system directly long before you start digesting the meat or noodles. This is something that has ridiculously escaped all nutritionists for some reason I can't comprehend, but then again they're nutritionists.

A rapid increase to the threshold* of 1 mg/liter** seems to be enough to cause 25% neuronal cell death. About 10% of systemic (in the blood) glutamate can make it through the blood brain barrier (BBB), with the assumption that the cochlear barrier has the same permeability or less. Not even taking into account the part of the brain which is not protecting by a BBB like the circumventricular organs (CVO), this means that only 10mg of systemic glutamate can start causing damage to protected areas. Most parts of the brain can function perfectly fine with up to 90% neuron death, so how MSG safety has ever been confirmed without an autopsy escapes me for the moment.
I have not yet found a study or understood the theory on how much of something like MSG in your mouth and stomach ends up as systemic, and this is why it is considered safe. To my knowledge Asian restaurants that use MSG put a maximum of 10mg *** of it in the sauce, but it's definitely worth calling a lot of them up and asking them for their policy.
To summarize, whether you ingest all of it at once will depend completely on the dose, proper stirring, and slow eating. I would write a theoretical paper based on meta-analysis and have it there for experimenters but I'm not in neurology... I might find a way to anyway.

It's also worth noting that I've just downloaded the 5000 man survey from tinnitustalk and I have only skimmed it but it looked like 100% of people aware of MSG ingestion claim it makes the T worse, 50% say it is a lot worse, the other 50%, that it makes it a little worse. This is across the entire spectrum of cause and frequency, which to me suggests absolute definite neuroexcitation caused by ingested MSG, as predicted by neuro anatomy.
Simple excitation won't cause permanent damage but it you want to avoid spiking your T then I'd recommend learning the twenty names MSG is marketed under and reading food labels. And then avoid things that are made to be tasty and thus contain high amounts such as bullion, canned soups, ready made sauces, etc.
In the EU it has to be labeled E621, avoid that.

I'll probably condense my findings into a proper website suited for the general public and open to scientific rebuttal.

* it's actually 0.51mg but we round up where I'm from.
** 3 microMolars using 170 g/mol (for chemists)
*** the tip of a sharp knife.

Nobody has confirmed my calculations as of yet.

A relevant paper for this came out in 2009 on www.ijcem.com and is simply named Deciphering the MSG controversy, J.S.Xiong, D. Branigan, M. Li. It might be best to just google scholar it.

 

Agree! Agree! Agree!

Avoid "foods" with free glutamates at all costs. They DO cause neuroexcitation, and tinnitus doesn't need one more speck of excitation. The glutamate can be "hidden" in all sorts of terms: "natural" flavoring; "protein" (when listed as an ingredient, not protein itself as found in whole foods); the "gums" - guar, xanthan, etc.; carageenan; citric acid, and on and on.

If you begin to read your labels, it will drive you nearly crazy to try to find foods in the market that are free of these. Even many organic companies use these ingredients. Example: I enjoy organic canned coconut cream (I'm dairy-free, so I use a small scoop with a cup of water to make a "milk" when cooking my hot cereal). When I found out about free glutamates, I checked all the labels and my organic coconut cream can said: organic coconut, organic guar gum. So I had to search around till I found a brand that was JUST organic coconut. And it's delicious.

Such a lot of stuff gets UNNECESSARILY added to FOOD. Tinnitus sure can make you eat better!

My approach is to eat foods as close to nature as possible. Simple whole foods, and organic as much as possible. I'm going to discover and develop a whole new set of recipes for home cooking, and to prepare and freeze many meals so that the convenience factor is still there, but not the dangerous additives found in commercially prepared foods.

Did I lapse by ordering Chinese a few days ago? You bet! I'm human!

But having a plan and process in place to prepare food safely at home is going to be the new way here. Because everything @Cityjohn is saying is right on target.

Cityjohn, you are a welcome and important addition to this site!

 

It would be interesting to try out a completely natural diet with no artificial ingredients or additives.

 

@Aussie Lea I guarantee you, if ANYONE tries that, for a month or so, they will be gifted with all SORTS of pleasant health and well-being surprises. Energy. Glow. Overall better alertness. Joy. Health issues clearing. Give it a whirl, just for you!

 

Sorry you are going through this.
When I first got T back in February 2015 I remember eating Chinese food when I got home the noise just exploded in my head. I don't think it was just a coincidence. I hope your tonight is will calm down for you and time I know mine has and it was hell at first.

 

Thank you

Thanks mate, I hope so too.

I went to the audiologist yesterday and that trip was a little too much for me. I got a massive headache and just woke up with the worst headache of my life. I don't think I'll want to leave the hospital tomorrow, I definitely don't think I should.
I was surprised the audiologists did absolutely everything they could to understand and help me, I did all tests available. We concluded with no measurable hearing damage to within a margin of 20dB... which is big but ok... Even though clearly after 11kHz my hearing starts dipping 18dB. And funnily enough the T is louder in the right ear which also is structurally below my left. The level of accuracy of these tests is so bad that my own hearing seems ten times more accurate.
I'm really annoyed by not being able to hear music the same way...

 

I did that for a short while. Unfortunately it pushed my T volume up. Having always been an advocate of 'natural' rather than 'synthetic' I was amazed that a meal of organic, home made, pea and mint soup gave me a T spike that went crazy - almost immediately... until I realised that mint was very high in salicylates. Bonjela (which was 50% practically pure salicylate) did the same thing - as did mustard.

T has made me look for salicylate free products & low salicylate foods and so chemically 'derived' is no longer off my menu. There hasn't been sufficient testing of foods to be sure of accuracy of salicylate levels though - so it's hard. Tried low sal a while ago and thought it wasn't working - what I didn't realise then was that it depends where the food was grown, how long it has been stored for, how ripe it was when picked etc. etc. & that the sals build up and the T volume can increase 2 or 3 days later rather than immediately.

(MSG made my T go crazy too - when I tried a chinese meal with it in - over 3 years ago now).

Despite being a confusing path, staying low in sals is one way of giving me some control - perhaps it's the control I like because T coming and going has driven me crazy? If they use salicylates to induce tinnitus in animals and they know that aspirin (aka salicylate) can give people T, then going low sal makes sense to me.

 

Maybe it's worth putting this here. I'm working on a format to publish the survey data in and combine it with a meta-analysis right now.

 

HI CityJohn ..i'm a dutchman also ( dutch ancestory ) ( look at my last name )

Julien87 ( a member here ) told me about your Thread / Post here

What a terrible experience

For me, MSG makes my mild T. ....a lot Worse !


https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/msg-—-monosodium-glutamate.15442/


Please click on that above, to read my recent experience

I'll write more later, time for dinner ( made at home !

 

Important update:

Fast forward quite some time I have finally figured some things out.

It turns out MSG can not severely damage your brain as I experienced in one go. I had mailed the neurotransporter group in Oslo and they mentioned Kainic acid. Kainic acid is a name for anything that can act on the Kainate receptors. Specifically Domoic acid can accumulate in fish as they eat seaweed and then when people eat it they have severe problems.
the only difference between MSG or Glutamate, and Kainic acid is the fact that MSG can be transported away by transporter proteins, Domoic acid does not. Meaning that it will stay inside the brain until it is used up to damage it or diffuses away.

This is not to say that MSG does not need to be better researched, as we have already found in people with tinnitus it obviously influences the CNS. All studies with MSG have currently been done with healthy individuals when they should have really been done with people sensitive to CNS excitation such as tinnitus sufferers. It would be worth a lot if we could organize an MSG experiment with a hand full if people to gather data beyond the survey we have done here on TT. But in general MSG, no matter how much you eat can not leave you with permanent brain injury, I make no claims about chronic illness but I still think eating refined unbound MSG is stupid beyond belief.

I am currently in the proces of finding experimental diagnostic tools to determine and objectively show the extent of the damage. In the beginning of next week I'll be at the school lab again to test out ABR and see if we can develop a multispectral ABR test.
Next friday I'll be participating in a 7 Tesla high resolution MRI at the Spinoza Centre in Amsterdam, and I'll probably talk with the researchers about some other techniques. This stuff is pretty much all physics so I can understand it.
I've also finished my LT device and am using it every day at the moment. Since I'm free from my courses now I'll be able to pay more attention to tinnitustalk.

 

Have you had any improvement from your LT device?...lots of love glynis

 

@Cityjohn did you have hearing loss too?
Dom

 

Not yet but I only started treatment fully today. I'll do a full three weeks of treatment and record results.

Yes, a dip of 30dB exactly centered on my Tinnitus which is now around 30dB above my hearing threshold.