Learn about Tinnitus and COVID 19 Vaccine

Everyone, today I’ve got Joey Remini. She’s a  vestibular audiologist and neuroplasticity   specialist. And I’ve got her here today to talk  about how some people are experiencing tinnitus   symptoms that have come on after having  having had COVID or having gotten a vaccine.

This video is sponsored by Noom, a health and  wellness program that focuses on teaching you the   psychology behind building healthy habits. Now what  I love about Noom is that unlike diets that focus   on good and bad foods and counting calories, Noom  instead focuses on teaching you the why behind   your behaviors and then how to create new healthy  sustainable habits that stick.

Noom teaches you   how to listen to your body’s hunger and fullness  cues, how to change your mindset, and how to work   through stress without emotional eating. Now this  is really important, because a diet is a setup for   failure; they just don’t work in the long run.

So  instead, Noom focuses on helping you change your   relationship with food so that you can find peace  and lasting change. And it’s research backed. The   University of Sydney’s medical center ranked Noom  number one out of 800 programs evaluated as being   the most effective program.

Noom is offering a one  week trial for you today if you sign up using the   link in the description. It only takes five to ten  minutes to see lasting results. So go ahead, give   it a try. Click out the link below to take your  health survey and start your custom program today.

Tinnitus Symptoms

Some people are experiencing tinnitus  symptoms that have come on after having um   having had COVID or having gotten a vaccine. Is that something you’re seeing a lot of?  Yeah, I’m hearing, I’m getting people calling in,  they’re distressed, they’re freaking out, they’re   like no one can explain this and I have these  distressing tinnitus sounds in my ears, in my body,   and it’s after getting COVID or after getting  the COVID vaccine.

So yes, we are seeing this and   it’s it’s, I mean, the moral of this video is to say  it’s nothing to be distressed about. It is a change   to your body, and when we experience any virus or  any vaccine our immune system is responding.

There   are changes within our biological system, and  any change within our biology changes the way   our body produces sound. And these are healthy  sounds, healthy body sounds, which usually we just   phase out and filter out and tune out because  they’re not important to us.

And the number one way   tinnitus starts – so tinnitus is the sounds in the  ears or the head that nobody else can hear. They’re   internal sounds. They’re private. It usually starts  with a head cold, you know, a nasal cold or an,   you know, some kind of sinus infection, or people  get their ears syringed out by the doctor and   there’s there’s, you know, changing uncomfortable  sensations and sounds around the ears.

And then   they kind of focus there, and then they check  in there, and then they monitor there, and then   for the next week they’re like, Is it still there?  Is it still there? So there’s um even some people   get tinnitus just when a friend talks about it.

I’ve never noticed sounds?

 They’re like, oh, okay, I’ve never noticed sounds   in my ear. And then they start going, Do I have it?  So it’s like this shift in awareness of background   sound that’s actually always been there, and  it’s healthy, that can then shift from being in   no man’s land in the back of our brain where we  don’t notice it – so it essentially doesn’t exist –  and then it shifts through our attention  filters, and suddenly it’s like right there.

   So it could be pinging, it could be popping,  it could be clicking, it could be squishing,   it could be static roaring, like there’s it’s all  normal. Whatever you hear is your inner body sound.

   And so for people who have experienced COVID, they’ve had these huge changes to their biology,   their immune system’s working overtime, their vital  organs are working more strongly. And if you think   about any mechanical system, whether it’s a car,  a dishwasher, a washing machine, anything, there’s   sound that is produced through that mechanical  process through moving parts.

And the biological   mechanisms also have lots of moving parts, lots of  fluid moving, you know, there’s joints and bones and –   but at a micro level there’s lots of neurological  movements, and our immune system is sending immune   messages up and down the body, working really hard  to keep us safe, to help us heal.

A byproduct of   that is an increased amount of sound. Then if you  add on to that just regular normal immune response,   an intense attention to the sound, a distrust  of the sound, a dislike of the sound, a confusion   of the sound, and a feeling of I’m abnormal.

I  shouldn’t hear this, nobody can explain it to me,   I didn’t hear this last week, why am I suddenly  hearing it now? I didn’t have this when I was a   little girl; why am I hearing it now? This must be  a sign COVID’s getting worse.

I’m sick or something

This must be a sign   I’m a weak person or I’m sick or something. So all of these questions are (a) unhelpful   and (b) inaccurate. Your body sound is normal.  It’s okay to hear tinnitus after COVID.

It’s okay to hear tinnitus after a COVID vaccine. So the best thing to do about it   would be (a) get educational montana to citizen. I  would probably say read, read my book I just wrote   for that very reason.

There’s not many reliable  resources out there for tinnitus, and that’s why   I wrote this book Rock Steady. You can learn about  your anatomy, you can learn about your brain, you   can learn about how the neurons communicate  to the brain, and what you can do to actually   rewire the mapping of your neurons, change what  your body’s hearing and sensing, change what your   body’s feeling, and you can adapt to a completely  new normal.

What does that mean? It’s reversible.   You might have tinnitus today; that doesn’t mean  you’ll have it for a week or a year or a month.   You can change your brain and you can change the  way those sounds manifest and the way those sounds   perpetuate.

The worst thing we can do is worry  about it, talk about it, focus on it, try and get rid   of it, right, so start with education. Learn about it.  Learn to not be afraid of it. And if you feel like   you want to use neuroplasticity to develop a new  normal and go back to a new sense of peace, calm,   confidence, and ease in your body, you can simply do  that by having a daily practice that teaches how   to remap your body, how to remap your brain.

You’re  in control of the process. And neuroplasticity   is like any skill that you can learn. So a lot of  people, for a lot of people this is the first time   they’re really noticing their tinnitus, or the  first time they’re really experiencing it, and   it makes them wonder, What’s the matter with me? And  then the more they focus on it, the worse it feels.

   And they get stuck in this cycle of it just  getting, maybe perhaps feeling worse or not going   away, and then feeling more upset about it. So most  people have been given zero education about what   to do about tinnitus.

Heal from tinnitus?

They just don’t know that  there are practical skills they can use to learn   to heal from tinnitus. And and to be honest, that  includes doctors and even audiologists. A lot of   health professionals have not chosen  to specialize in tinnitus and what it   is and what to do about it.

So because that  hasn’t been their kind of educational choice,   they’re like, Oh, well, you know, there’s nothing you  can do; live with it. Because that’s, for them that’s   their reality but – that’s the only skills they know;  that’s the only skills they’re aware of.

Correct.   Well, I was going to say, in order to overwrite – so  surrender and acceptance is kind of like one step.   That may not, that may not be everything to  completely overcome the tinnitus, right, but it’s   super important.

The next step would be saying,  Well, what I, I don’t want to feel and hear the   tinnitus all day long. I need something else  to focus on. Are you – I I say to people with   obsessive-compulsive disorder, use that as a,  as a skill that benefits you.

Get obsessive   about feeling calm; get obsessive about feeling  at ease and connected and peace in your body.   And focus on that every day and every moment  of the day, and obsess over that. So that’s   what your brain actually puts more energy and  more neural patterning and neural firing into.

   Yeah. Because otherwise we can become obsessive  over our symptoms and things we hate and things   we don’t like, and we end up perpetuating what  we don’t want, right. So we want to shift our   focus obsessively into how can I get into my  body this feeling of calm and confidence and ease.

   Right. So we shift out of the head, into the body,  and then the neuroplasticity, um, therapy really   begins to take place, and we automate a new normal. And before you know it, you’ll forget you ever had   tinnitus.

You won’t ever think about it again,  and you’ll create a completely new normal and   you’ll feel back in your body and you’ll feel good  again. So we can change the brain by using these   um neuroplasticity techniques which actually  you design, so it’s a very personal process.

Experiencing a new symptom

Yeah, and that’s such an uplifting message  because we – like each person has an innate   ability to heal, and experiencing a new symptom  or a new um sensation like tinnitus can be really   alarming.

But what you’re describing is basically  this experience of a new sensation of tinnitus   can be a pathway to learn a bunch of new skills  that can heal your relationship with yourself and   with your other sensations as well.

And yeah,  and there are some really practical skills   that, you know, you have free resources for in  your website and in your book. Simple things   that can, people could even practice in probably,  what if they did 15 minutes a day of a body scan;   would that be helpful? That would be plenty.

 Ii often recommend start with, so, five minutes   of your chosen neuroplasticity exercises three  times a day is like a nice kind of beginner’s   way to just dive into the process if you’re really  new to this.

But I’ve had, I’ve had chronic tinnitus,   obviously a lot of my clients have that come  and see me, and they not only overcome and heal   the tinnitus; they they get better knowledge of  themselves and more loving kindness and respect   towards themselves.

Their entire relationship to  life changes. And so I feel like neuroplasticity   forces us into non-judgment, self-compassion,  self-kindness, acceptance, surrender, and   really allowing life to flow in the direction  that we choose.

Letting go

We take back so much control   by letting go. It’s like, it is paradoxical. Well  that’s, that’s awesome. And I think that gives a lot   of hope to people who are experiencing these these  sensations um maybe for the first time or noticing   them for the first time though.

Some really  practical steps are things like get, you know, educated   from a good source where um, like your book or  other resources that offer some hope, that don’t   just tell you, you know, this is uh there’s nothing  you can do about it, because they don’t know what   there is to do about it.

And then learn to practice  some practical skills. They sound impossible,   but skills of acceptance and surrender, learning  to uh get into your body with the body scan,   practicing loving kindness, and then some of these  other neuroplasticity exercises, these can all help   with this process of resolving those uh, you know,  the discomfort around tinnitus.

Yeah, and I know   on Emma’s channel and on my YouTube channel there  are more free discussions about tinnitus: what to   do about it, how to overcome it. So just immerse  yourself in some of this proactive conversation   so that you don’t feel powerless, helpless, hopeless.

  It doesn’t matter if you got tinnitus from COVID  or from the vaccine. The cause doesn’t matter;  the process of healing is exactly the same as   anybody else with tinnitus. And i have seen time  and time again, regardless of diagnosis, people   overcome it by changing their brains and  changing their relationship to themselves.

Neural signal

It’s   always coming back to that neural signal that  needs to be changed, that we’re in control of.   This is the exciting piece: we’re in control  of how we relate to the sound we’re hearing.

 And that’s how we change the long-term  firing patterns of the sound signal. We   can diminish them. Just like having a remote  control and turning the volume down, we can   learn how to do that on the inside using  our neural patterning and neural maps.

So it’s very practical, it’s very methodical. It’s  not a miracle. And anybody can do it from home.   Awesome. That is so great, so helpful for us. Thank  you so much for sharing those resources.

I will   definitely put the link in the description  to your book and to the uh other resources   you have on your website. So thank you so much,  Joey. Thanks for being here. It’s my absolute   pleasure.