The Influence of Diet on Tinnitus Severity: Results of a Large-Scale, Online Survey

Abstract

Optimization of dietary intake is an essential component in the multidimensional effort to prevent and manage chronic disease. Recently, demand has increased for nutrition-focused management strategies for chronic tinnitus. The primary aim of this study was to evaluate 10 dietary items for their association with changes in subjective tinnitus severity. A secondary aim was to develop an algorithm to better identify those individuals who might benefit from dietary modification strategies. A total of 5017 anonymous users of the TinnitusTalk forum completed an online survey regarding how various dietary items affected the severity of their tinnitus. Results suggest that, while intake of caffeine [positive effect (PE): 0.4%; negative effect (NE): 16.2%], alcohol (PE: 2.7%; NE: 13.3%, and salt (PE: 0.1%; NE: 9.9%) was most likely to influence tinnitus severity, it did so only for a small proportion of participants and reported effects were most commonly mild. Further, though a classification algorithm was able to leverage participant demographic, comorbidity, and tinnitus characteristics to identify those individuals most likely to benefit from dietary modification above chance levels, further efforts are required to achieve significant clinical utility. Taken together, these results do not support dietary modification as a primary treatment strategy for chronic tinnitus in the general population, though clinically meaningful effects might be observable in certain individuals.