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Old Fri, Aug-03-18, 07:39
JEY100's Avatar
JEY100 JEY100 is online now
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Plan: P:E/DDF
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Default Tinnitus and Balance aka Cochleovestibular disorders

I am deaf in one ear from a virus (though now question that!) with severe tinnitus since 1990. Don't know how I managed to miss this Amy Berger post about Cochleovestibular Disorders from three years ago, but it resurfaced recently when I was looking for info for friend with balance disorder. If you have any interest in hearing/balance, take the time to listen to two interviews with Dr. Ken Brookler. He was practicing at the time I had the sudden hearing loss in NYC, where I worked. I wish I had known about him then.

http://www.tuitnutrition.com/2015/0...-insulin-2.html (Great links there to published studies you can share with doctors)

Quote:
Cochleovestibular disorders
(affecting inner ear & balance)


After learning all this fascinating stuff about diabetes in-situ and hyperinsulinemia, I wrote a post about it for my freelance gig. I specifically looked at cochleovestibular disorders. (A handful of the many conditions that fall under this category are vertigo, tinnitus, Ménière's disease, and mal de debarquement syndrome.) In fact, medical doctors in the ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialty were among the first people to note the connection between these seemingly “idiopathic” conditions and elevated insulin. (“Idiopathic” means no one knows what the hell causes it.)

Now, the thing is, I don’t know the mechanism at work here. But I’m sure there is one. (I’m not well-versed in inner ear anatomy & physiology, nor the mechanisms that underlie postural balance.) And unfortunately, I have recently lost easy access to the full-text of most articles on PubMed, so I will simply hypothesize here. (If anyone out there is well-informed on this stuff, and can explain this better, please email me privately, or chime in in the comments!)

Okay. We know insulin affects renal sodium retention, and, therefore, fluid dynamics throughout the whole body. Might there be a role for insulin in influencing fluid balance in the inner ear? Some healthcare practitioners have made the case that, for some individuals who are sensitive to gluten, the ONLY manifestations of the sensitivity will be outside the GI tract (i.e., non-celiac gluten sensitivity). For example, there’s “gluten ataxia” – a (supposedly) gluten-induced state of general clumsiness. And there seem to be other neurological, dermatological, and other systemic effects from gluten, wherein the affected parts of the body are the only indications that there’s a gluten sensitivity. So, what if some of these cochleovestibular conditions are the only manifestation of someone’s hyperinsulinemia? Because, remember, we are talking about individuals who have normal fasting blood glucose, normal A1c, and a normal response to an OGTT. (All of which look only at glucose.) But if they are hyperinsulinemic, you’ve got to think the glut of insulin is wreaking havoc somewhere in the body, no? And maybe, just maybe, the only place it’s doing so is the inner ear. On the same theme, for individuals with normal BG and normal A1c, maybe hypertension, or infertility, or BPH, or reduced GFR [glomerular filtration rate -- an indicator of kidney function], is the only manifestation of insulin resistance.

This is an area supremely ripe for research employing low-carb or ketogenic diets as therapy, for the same reason they are so desperately warranted for Alzheimer’s: these are conditions for which pharmaceutical drugs are either nonexistent or woefully ineffective. Millions of people have their quality of life crushed because of these weird, freakish-seeming conditions of “unknown origin.” It’s like Robb Wolf says every time someone asks him if a Paleo diet works for “x” rare autoimmune condition they have, and he says, “Couldn’t hurt to try!” For goodness' sake, people, TRY low-carb/keto!

To their credit, as I mentioned, some physicians in the ENT specialty were among the first to realize that Dr. Kraft might be onto something, and they started investigating hyperinsulinemia among their patients. And lookie, lookie, at what they found:

Hyperinsulinemia: The Common Denominator of Subjective Idiopathic Tinnitus and Other Idiopathic Central and Peripheral Neurootologic Disorders. (By Dr. Kraft!)

Glucose and insulin profiles and their correlations in Ménière’s disease: This study’s authors went so far as to call hyperinsulinemia “the metabolic change most often involved in the pathogenesis of cochleovestibular disorders.” It’s involved in the pathogenesis. This means it is a causative factor, and isn’t just “associated” with these issues.

Glucose, insulin and inner ear pathology: “Hyperinsulinemia was the most frequent abnormality and was found to constitute the determining factor of the inner ear disorders.” Again, the authors are saying hyperinsulinemia is the determining factor. Meaning, this is causation, NOT just “association.”

Metabolic disorders in vertigo, tinnitus, and hearing loss: “such disturbances of glucose metabolism as diabetes mellitus and hyperinsulinemia may be responsible for inner ear diseases.”

Blood levels of glucose and insulin in Meniere’s disease.


HOLY COW, right? Why have none of us ever heard of this before? (BTW: Dr. Naiman has mentioned that a patient of his was cured of tinnitus after adopting a LCHF diet. Just sayin’.)

Bottom line: Hyperinsulinemia is BAD inner-ear and balance juju.

I mentioned a Dr. Kenneth Brookler in part 1, and I said we’d come back to him. Well, here he is. He’s an otolaryngologist, and was one of the first physicians to understand the importance of Kraft’s work. He made a lot of headway in uncovering the link between hyperinsulinemia and these “idiopathic” inner-ear disorders. Again, big thanks to Ivor Cummins, the Fat Emperor, for interviewing Dr. Brookler and making the video available to all of us:


Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-5gohctcJE
Second interview next to it. Brilliant guy in his 80s!


There were some previous threads on Tinnitus here, but this has more about balance (treated by the group he calls the Dizzy Doctors )

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=287103

Last edited by JEY100 : Fri, Aug-03-18 at 11:10.
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