Tinnitus and Success with Fasting

Hello,

I just wanted to share how I got much much better from my noise induced tinnitus.
The one thing that has helped me a lot is fasting. It turns out that many great things happen to your body when you fast. I recommend you watch the following video about the effects of fasting and give it a try. I has helped me a lot, I presume it will help you as well.

What Really Happens When We Fast?

If you find fasting hard, try intermittent fasting for a few months, then do a full few days long fast.

 

Hi @Ilia -- Congratulations! and thank you for sharing your success. I totally agree with your tip about intermittent fasting. I average about 18/6 these days, and wish I would started this years ago.

 

How many times did you fast (and how long was each fast) before you began experiencing your tinnitus fading?

 

I love food too much..

 

@LukeYoung -- Once I regularly got to 16-18 hrs per day of not eating, I realized that when I did finally eat, I enjoyed food more than ever. Interestingly, I discovered I enjoyed not eating more than ever as well, which I'd never really thought about before. I've now come to believe that eating all day long is hardly more than a habit, and one that for most people, doesn't serve us particularly well.

 

I'd love to do it, but i'm trying to gain weight, so eating often is something i must do.

 

Liam Boehm recommends dry fasting. He said a lot of people have cured themselves. Dry means no food or drink.

 

Ilia can you give us more detail about your onset, time frame, what kind of improvements and how long you've done the fasting?

I lost weight at first, I couldn't eat I was so devastated, but in recent months I eat a lot and I've gained a lot. I hate missing a meal... it's almost as if it's one thing I CAN control so I use food for a bit of comfort... plus being hungry/headaches and lack of energy make tinnitus especially suck when you're working.

 

I don’t doubt OP got better but it’s most likely he got better due to the passage of time rather than by fasting. Intermittent fasting is not a topic that has been objectively validated through scientific study. Autophagy is extremely controversial and I doubt its existence even when concerning 72+hr intervals of fasting.

 

I started with intermittent fasting for a couple of months, then I did a 72 h fast.
Now I'm doing 16 to 24h fasts regularly.
I saw the benefits pretty much from the beginning, but each body is unique, therefore it reacts differently.

For those who doubt the effects, I found this video which covers a very large scientific study on the benefits of fasting:

World’s largest Fasting Study (2020) |...

At 7:55 Dr. Françoise Wilhelmi de Toledo explains the effects of fasting on emotional well being.
I believe this is the key to why fasting improves tinnitus so much.

Other things that I have found to impact tinnitus:

- Sports help (for me, lifting weights in the gym helped a lot)
- Changing the way you think about your tinnitus helps (there are a lot of resources about this here)
- Ginkgo Biloba helps
- With time tinnitus tends to get less annoying

- Coffee makes tinnitus worse
- Alcohol makes tinnitus worse
- Needless to say, loud noises make tinnitus worse

So for me getting much better was a combination of the things above, now I can hear my tinnitus very rarely, mostly when I have had coffee during the day, or have had some drinks, and it's only when I go to bed I things get very quiet that I hear it.

And lastly, I just want to say this: I know what you are going through. My tinnitus used to very very bad. For the first year I was devastated and totally depressed. But not anymore. So if I can do it, you can as well! Try the things above and you will see improvement, see what works best for you and stick with it.

 

I haven't eaten anything all day due to a lab I had to fast for plus I didn't eat anything after 10:00 pm last night. My tinnitus seems lower that it was while I was trying to sleep. Could be a coincidence, could be due to something else, I'm not sure. I do however believe that it could help some people with tinnitus.

 

@JasonP -- I read a testimonial a couple years ago by a man who claimed to always experience a complete cessation of tinnitus after fasting for 2-3 days. I don't recall all the details, but he said it always came back after he began eating again. Makes a lot of sense to me for many reasons, based on what I've learned about the many benefits of fasting.

 

Thanks for telling me that. That is very interesting.

 

@JasonP -- In case you're interested, THIS POST describes how a man from London got rid of his tinnitus after 14 years by using Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). I think there's clues in his story about why tinnitus can improve from fasting.

 

Thanks Lane!