[tptacek]

As I understand it, diet has not all that much to do with glutamate levels. Your body very rapidly metabolizes it (they do studies where they stuff people full of glutamate while repeatedly checking their blood, and it takes a nauseating amount to see a plasma glutamate spike), and the blood-brain barrier is impermeable to glutamate.

[The_rationalist]

intermitent fasting can reduce base metabolic rate which can in theory downregulate glut. moreover diet alter many signaling pathways, including reduced oxidative stress, which are beneficial to some extent for tinnitus.

[tptacek]

I've been IF for several years now (for whatever good it's done me!), sometimes very strictly and sometimes casually, and I've noticed no correlation whatsoever to my tinnitus. I do buy that anything that really reduces inflammation or anything like that could help, because my tinnitus is definitely correlated to ear congestion and sinus inflammation (but it's always there at some level no matter what).

Basically, my understanding is that the human body is, for basic evolutionary reasons, really efficient at dealing with glutamate.

[FollowingTheDao]

Not al tinnitus is caused by the same process, and some nerve damage might be permanent.

My tinnitus was not caused by loud sounds and I have had it since I was a kid. My body is not "efficient" in dealing with glutamate, which is why I need klonopin and also why some people have seizures.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7970002/

I wish people will finally understand that we are not all the same genetically and it is a big deal.

Intermittent fasting will lower glutamate levels, as will getting calories from fats. This is why they give this diet to children withs seizures.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jnr.20831

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S05315...

[tptacek]

The first article is a rat study.

The second makes no mention of glutamates; rather, it's about ketogenic diets (a well-known strategy for managing epilepsy), which tend to be higher in glutamates (cheese, nuts, meats, &c). There's evidence that ketogenic diets alter brain metabolism of glutamate, but that's not the same thing as evidence that dietary intake of glutamates has an impact.

[FollowingTheDao]

intermittent fasting lowers glutamate because it changes where the TCA cycle gets its energy, not because it reduces the metabolic rate.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1940242/figure/...