Have you done blood testing for food sensitivities, where they test 120+ things?
Not that one - it never seemed top priority (given that I had a very limited budget due to being ill and unable to derive a good income, until recently). I just learned what foods/chemicals should be avoided. For me it's really just dust/dustmite, mould, some household chemicals, but that's about it. At certain points through the healing journey I've felt better when I've avoided things like grains, gluten, dairy, sugar, caffeine, but all those things are becoming less of an issue these days.
do you remember having any ear infections as a child?
Not really (I did have asthma from about 9) but I've had tinnitus (ringing ears) since about 13, which is sometimes said to be linked to inflammation/oxidation/chronic infections. That's one thing that hasn't resolved yet but I'm hopeful that it will eventually, and if/when it does, it will be interesting to observe any correlations with blood indicators of inflammation/oxidation.
I had been doing an elimination diet for a long time to figure out a lot of sensitivities. Potato may have been the most difficult for me to figure out as potato itself wouldn't bother me, but it would inflame my whole GI tract and was accumulative - so when I ate other food, no matter the food, it would irritate me.
It was an audiologist who first told me to stop eating wheat, which helped with a lot of things - prior that I didn't even realize I was allergic to egg whites because the wheat numbed me so much (there's an opiate in it that greatly affects some people).
The food sensitivity blood work I only did less than 2 years ago was quite revealing as well. Some foods that showed up I knew were an issue, other ones I didn't realize. When I cut them all out I felt much better. Now when I eat a small amount of any of those foods I can notice how it makes me feel bad quite easily; I was conditioned to feeling a certain way (now that I would describe as shitty) and reducing that agitation load long enough has let me feel the difference between a healthy baseline and a more agitated one. I would highly recommend you go to a naturopath who can send the test in for you. They just prick your finger and fill 5 little circles on a business card-sized card with your blood.
Re: Tinnitus - Auditory Integration Training (http://www.aitinstitute.org) can help with that as well as many other things. How AIT helps is with a similar system not well-understood or acknowledged like with what you posted about the complex relationship between deep hidden emotions (emotional wounds) and other symptoms or labels such as CFS.
I wrote a reply where I suggested people look into Auditory Integration Training for either themselves or their children who they said had certain autistic characteristics. Here's the thread for that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13657725 - and in particular someone asked to hear about my own experience with it, to which I replied here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13657973
Magnesium might help improve the tinnitus. It probably won't entirely stop it, but anecdotal reports suggest it may help. If you are magnesium deficient, you are probably also calcium deficient. You may also need vitamins D and K to help properly absorb the calcium.
Not that one - it never seemed top priority (given that I had a very limited budget due to being ill and unable to derive a good income, until recently). I just learned what foods/chemicals should be avoided. For me it's really just dust/dustmite, mould, some household chemicals, but that's about it. At certain points through the healing journey I've felt better when I've avoided things like grains, gluten, dairy, sugar, caffeine, but all those things are becoming less of an issue these days.
do you remember having any ear infections as a child?
Not really (I did have asthma from about 9) but I've had tinnitus (ringing ears) since about 13, which is sometimes said to be linked to inflammation/oxidation/chronic infections. That's one thing that hasn't resolved yet but I'm hopeful that it will eventually, and if/when it does, it will be interesting to observe any correlations with blood indicators of inflammation/oxidation.