Maybe you have a good opinion in this case...
@Cityjohn
I'm flattered that you'd appreciate my opinion
I've read the thread and I'll try to put it succinctly but I may fail slightly here. I've market the sections with titles to make it easier to read.
CNS/PNS growth theory
The central nervous system (CNS) unlike the peripheral one (PNS) does not have the ability to heal itself for reasons I am not yet completely familiar with but it is nevertheless the overwhelming consensus and that can not be disregarded. I pulled up a few studies but none specify a why because science is more concerned with how's. It stands to perfect reason that the CNS does not grow out of control because the neural net in our CNS regulates thought nowadays, so it may be an evolutionary advantage simply caused by the inhibition of the metabolism required to sprout connections as some suggest.
When we get the Join the Dots project started this is a question that will have to be answered with the help of the entire community. We can all learn how to search for relevant studies and recognize valuable data and add to the project.
Growth factor triggers
There are currently multiple, be it proposed or not, treatments that may or may not work for tinnitus all based on the idea that alive albeit damaged cells in the CNS can be made to sprout new dendritic and axonal connections. For example Neurotrophin-3 or LLLT. Both are meant to increase the concentration of growth factor significantly in the tissue. One by directly injecting growth signaling proteins and the other by providing the cytokinse c oxidase electron aspirating proteins with the electrons to start churning out ATP and signal for increases in growth factor.
Diet, tinnitus, and hearing loss
It is true that if your hearing improves you will likely lose some or all of the tinnitus if hearing loss was your problem in the first place. But he pathway from your ear to the brain is intertwined with many other pathways that all can cause tinnitus, or an increase thereof. Then again it may also help us find a decrease in our tinnitus.
An example is hormone levels, such as produced during stress. There is of course a connection between diet, the stomach, and the auditory nerves, the vagus nerve for example. To understand how all this exactly correlates to one another it seems that it would take a single genius 100 years of studying and ethically borderline experimentation.
I've found the body to be quite impossible to model but we're trying nevertheless in the Join the Dots project.
The paleo-tinnitus hypothesis vs. medical science
We can hypothesize that a paleo diet will promote CNS growth factor increases and could cause a decrease in tinnitus or increase in hearing. The logical next step is the design of an experiment.
It's not wise to dismiss science or medicine as malice when it can be so easily attributed to collective, not individual stupidity based around our individualism. Think of it like this, every researcher has his or her personal goals, none of which have anything to do with the general public. Then there is also the fact that scientific literature by definition lags behind on reality by about ten years. Good academic medical professionals are twice times as astute as I am, and far better educated.
Diet factor in tinnitus for me personally
Simply touting that the paleo diet is so much better than 'normal' is an easy thing especially with the crap some people eat today but I myself haven't eaten sugar or drunken soda pop for nearly 7 years, I cook fresh lean meats with potatoes and carrots, and ate a lot of fruit every day. I've even been a natural body builder eating as healthy as humanly possible, yet I developed tinnitus while eating one really bad dish on campus.
Paleo is not well defined
Whatever our opinions the scientific method is there for a reason, and we have to apply it to learn more. If benefits of the paleo diet have any truth in it than it would stand to reason that our genetic differences would appear in our diets. Therefor different people would have to eat different things, this has never been made clear in the paleo diet.
It's also worth mentioning that the Paleo diet is trademarked solely for profit, whereas general medicine is not. There are a few things in the paleo diet such as fish which is actually quite a bad idea to be eating so often given the current state of fish farming, and fish scams or coloring on the market. And too many nuts will raise levels of phytic acid, too many fruits will raise levels of fructose, so on.
Diet comes second to sound levels
A major factor I feel is left unmentioned here is that not only the diet but also the sound landscape has changed dramatically since the stone age. The entire world was as loud as people talking then, when you are near a busy street you are being subjected to a 100 times the load we are genetically made for. When you enter a stadium it's 1000 times. A concert 10.000 times. See where I'm going with this, let's not mention a construction site.
If anything can be taken away from the philosophy of treating our bodies to their intended use it's the sound exposure first, diet second.
Designing the experiment for the paleo-tinnitus hypothesis
Regardless,
@Eric S Would you be willing to capitalize on your hypothesis by making a few datasheets to design a trial study? One with everything allowed in the paleo diet, and one with many recipes for people doing the experiment so that they have more than enough variation for three weeks. We can ask people here to try the diet for three weeks and record their tinnitus and hearing daily for about 3 minutes. I will design the tests that people can do at home so that we can objectively and precisely track improvements and do the statistical analysis. If people are willing to participate of course.
We would need to have an equally large group that eats everything but the paleo diet, but I think it can be done eventually on tinnitustalk and it could yield an interesting study. It would help if there was a theoretical basis to presume that the paleo diet would help our bodies but there is none as of yet that I'm familiar with, perhaps you could shed some light on any anatomical theory behind it.
Good thread.