Is My Diet Affecting My Meniere's?

Over the past few days, I've been wondering if there was a link between MSG and my dizziness.  I had gone a good while without problem when I consumed a meal with MSG in it and within 24 hours, I had some vertigo problems.  However, at the same time, we were experiencing a lot of rain and I know weather can be a factor too.  I've been dizzier today as well and it's been raining all day.  But I've also been thinking back to what I ate yesterday and wondering if there was a connection.

So just out of curiousity and after doing some reading on www.menieres.org/forum, I've decided to cut out all aspartame drinks for a while and to make an effort not to eat anything with MSG in it.  The problem with MSG is that it is hidden under other so many other names like hydrolyzed vegetable protein or yeast extract.  I am already a vegetarian and have been for 18 years now so giving up preserved meats is no big deal at all.  Don't like Chinese food either so no loss there.  We just went grocery shopping and did our best to read labels and avoid anything that had those ingredients.  Overall, I think we did pretty well.  Of course, stress is a major factor and I definitely have a ton of that right now.  Tomorrow especially guarantees to filled with stress-have to argue with supplemental disability insurance company, go to work and grade papers, go to follow-up with my Gyn, and all of this with my kids in tow.  Yikes.

The smart thing for me to do would be to prepare some kind of spreadsheet of my diet, the weather, stress levels, and my symptoms so that I could perhaps determine some kind of correlation.   I am partially inspired to do this by some of the stories I've read of people who cut out gluten or dairy, etc and had a massive reduction in their symptoms.  Some even had a decrease in tinnitus and a dramatic improvement in their hearing.  Many of these people have MAV but not all of them so I figure it's worth a few weeks or so of avoiding certain foods to see what happens.  This will not be a pure elimination diet but it's a good place to start!