by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
I received this interesting email,
I’ve had tinnitus for about two years caused by a combination of noise exposure and an over-zealous nurse giving an ear lavage. It can be a real problem at times, especially when I don’t watch the sugar intake in my diet. The only thing that I’ve found that provides relief within a short period of time when it gets going are dietary enzymes like Bromelain and Papain. My theory is that these enzymes help break down sugars and eliminate them efficiently from my system? If my system is overloaded with sugars, it leads to louder and more intense tinnitus.
You are perceptive in realizing that too much sugar is related to your increased tinnitus. Few people realize that sugar and tinnitus can go hand in hand. As you now know, your tinnitus is indeed sensitive to too much sugar in your system. The more sugar you have in your system, the louder your tinnitus. This happens to other people too.
As the American Tinnitus Association, in one of the Fact Sheets reported:
Some people find that foods with a high sugar content make their tinnitus louder. Monitor how you respond, and find a healthy balance where you do not eliminate all the foods that you love, but also where you do not unnecessarily exacerbate your tinnitus.
Too much sugar is bad for your body as a whole (think diabetes), not just your ears, so you should watch your sugar intake anyway. However, in your case, you are fortunate to have a built-in alarm system that alerts you when you ingest too much sugar. Now all you have to do is heed it.
I eat a lot of fruit which of course contain a lot of sugar.Is that also bad for Tinnitus I wonder?
Hi Tony:
Too much sugar is bad for you–whether it is from sugar added to processed foods or from natural fruits. If you keep your sugar from processed foods to a minimum, then eating fruit (in moderation) should not bother your tinnitus unless your tinnitus is extremely sensitive to sugar.
Have you ever noticed your tinnitus getting worse after eating a lot of sweet fruit? If so, that’s an indication you are getting too much sugar from the fruit you eat. If not, I wouldn’t worry about it.
Cordially,
Neil
Something is not right here. I’m having the complete opposite effects. I just started taking papain and noticed my tinnitus got worse each day that I’ve taken it. I’ve never noticed that sugar made the tinnitus worse. I am taking the papain for chronic shingles. The papain supplement does have amylase, protease, and papaya in it as well.
Hi Jennifer:
Are you sure it is the papain and not the shingles virus causing your tinnitus to get worse?
Have you tried stopping taking the papain for 2 or 3 days, to see if your tinnitus drops back to its old level. Then try taking it again–and if your tinnitus gets worse again, its got to be the papain or something in the formula. But like you said, it does seem to be acting backwards.
Cordially,
Neil
I have had a pretty calm and productive day until now. I just finished two See’s chocolates with caffeinated tea and my tinnitus is suddenly screaming at me – super loud!
Thanks for the tip to treat this as a “…built in alarm system…” I absolutely will.
Anything to say about sugar with caffeine? Does the tea make it even worse? I haven’t noticed much tinnitus with just tea…
Hi Jason:
Both caffeine and sugar cause tinnitus/make tinnitus worse in some people. Neither of these bothers other people’s tinnitus. And if you are sensitive to both caffeine and sugar, getting a lot of both just gives you a double whammy.
You’ll have to experiment with yourself to see which (or both) causes your tinnitus to get worse and then in the future, keep your intake below where it bothers your tinnitus.
Cordially,
Neil
I have hearing loss in one ear and unbearable tinnitus. After a recent stomach bug, I couldn’t eat my usual orange for the day, which was my only sugar. My tinnitus got bearable. I have resorted to only eating walnuts, plain oats, almonds, brown rice, and that’s all I’ve found that I can eat without setting it off. I’m losing weight faster than needed, as I wasn’t overweight. I’m at wits end. I had tried a hearing aid, but it didn’t help, because the tinnitus was louder than any masking it could provide.
Hi Beth:
Are you saying that sugar causes your tinnitus–even eating one orange a day makes it bad? Are you saying that eating raw vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, kale, arugula, etc causes your tinnitus to get louder? I’ve never heard of that.
Hearing aids and sound generators are not supposed to mask your tinnitus. That’s not the proper way to treat tinnitus. They are supposed to be set lower than your tinnitus at the point where they mix with your tinnitus. Then you learn to ignore the resultant sound and slowly your tinnitus reduces in volume. Then you reset the mixing point again to a softer sound and over time your tinnitus decreases to where it is not a problem anymore.
If you truly mask your tinnitus, it never helps your tinnitus go away. And as you found, sometimes the masking level would be much too loud for your ears or masking devices.
The idea of using sounds to treat tinnitus is for them to reduce the contrast between your tinnitus and silence to make it easier to bear, not to mask your tinnitus totally.
Cordially,
Neil