Tinnitus: A Common Incurable COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Event, Doctors Share Ways to Help
COVID Vaccines

Tinnitus: A Common Incurable COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Event, Doctors Share Ways to Help

Mary’s tinnitus started an hour after she received her first Pfizer COVID-19 dose in the summer of 2021.
Overlooked COVID Vaccine Adverse Events
Part 3
Tinnitus. (BLACKDAY/Shutterstock)
April 18, 2023
Updated:
January 15, 2024
0:00
This is part 3 in Overlooked COVID Vaccine Adverse Events

We evaluate some of the lesser-known yet common adverse events occurring after COVID vaccination, and more importantly, doctors offer advice on how to address them.

“I can’t be stuck with this forever. I’m gonna lose my mind,” Mary thought, distressed.

Despite her thoughts, the dull ringing in her ears persisted like an alarm clock that couldn’t be silenced, mowing down her concentration.

Mary’s tinnitus started an hour after she received her first Pfizer COVID-19 dose in the summer of 2021. She immediately contacted the pharmacy where she was vaccinated, and they told her that tinnitus wasn’t a side effect of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Yet a search on Google showed that many people were discussing this condition in forums. Some were severely crippled by the condition. A close physician relative told Mary to go on steroid therapy immediately to reverse tinnitus, but her symptoms didn’t improve.

“I complained about it so much in the beginning,” Mary, who declined to disclose her last name, told The Epoch Times over the phone, “especially in the first couple of weeks.

“I cried. I broke down.”

Apart from the grim reality that her tinnitus would likely be permanent, another worry Mary had was whether she should get her second primary dose so that she would be fully vaccinated. She was worried that the additional dose would make it worse, and she also feared that she would be forced into it.

Despite her distress, Mary found that she couldn’t openly discuss her concerns with her health providers, friends, and family.

“I felt comfortable saying that I had tinnitus, but I was afraid to tell people that it started an hour after the vaccine. ... I didn’t want people to think that I’m an anti-vaxxer,” she said.

“But it’s my own experience, and the fact that I was afraid to say that is really sad.”

Do COVID-19 Vaccines Cause Tinnitus?

Tinnitus is the presence of ringing sounds in the absence of sound. Recent research suggests that tinnitus is mostly neurological, although how and why it occurs is still a mystery.

Factors such as old age, exposure to loud sounds, nutrition deficiencies, autoimmune diseases, infections, and ear diseases are all commonly related to it.

Symptoms related to tinnitus include hearing loss, as well as hyperacusis where sounds in the environment may seem excessively loud or unbearable.

Mary Kelley, a nurse, developed hearing loss and then tinnitus after the second and third doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. She was part of the first wave of vaccinations among health care workers and had taken her second primary dose by January 2021.

Within the next several months, Kelley had trouble hearing people at various times. She recalled how her coworkers and family joked, “Mary, you are deaf!”

When boosters were mandated, Kelley took the third dose in February 2022, and within hours, tinnitus that sounded like fire alarms manifested in her right ear.

Kelley said she was able to block the tinnitus from her thoughts, saying that hearing loss has a greater effect on her work than the tinnitus. But some people find the noise to be very debilitating as they lose concentration and sleep.

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have been linked to tinnitus, although it’s still undetermined whether the association is causal or coincidental. The Epoch Times’ exclusive reporting revealed that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has already detected tinnitus as a safety signal among hundreds of safety signals following mRNA vaccination.
A study published in the journal Laryngoscope analyzed nearly 2.6 million individuals through electronic health record data and found that for people who were never diagnosed with tinnitus previously, 0.038 percent of them would develop tinnitus following administration of a single COVID-19 mRNA vaccine dose. Compared to the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccines, other vaccines for influenza and DTaP, as well as the pneumococcal vaccine, had a higher risk of tinnitus.
Infections with COVID-19 have also been linked to tinnitus, with one study finding that more than 20 percent of individuals develop tinnitus.
Tinnitus researcher and University of Arizona associate professor of neuroscience and physiology Shaowen Bao told ABC15 that post-vaccine tinnitus may be related to inflammation due to the immune response triggered by the mRNA vaccines. Nevertheless, other mechanisms may also be involved.
The vaccines trigger autoimmune reactions by forcing healthy cells to produce viral proteins, prompting the immune system to attack these cells.
Tinnitus has been linked to autoimmune diseases that damage the nerves, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, as well as diseases that don’t affect the nerves, such as lupus and Crohn’s disease.
Similarly, the spike proteins in the COVID-19 vaccines are prone to causing microclotting. Microclots can make the blood more viscous, slowing down blood flow, thereby reducing oxygen exchange in the blood and leading to stress on the nerves and cells in the ears.
More than 17,000 cases of tinnitus have been reported on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in relation to COVID-19 vaccines, making up more than 80 percent of all tinnitus reports in the entire VAERS system.

However, the real numbers may be even higher, not only because reports to the VAERS system are significantly underreported but also because tinnitus tends to be underreported in the general population.

Postvaccine tinnitus “most definitely has been underreported,” Jackie Clark, audiologist and professor at the University of Texas, told The Epoch Times. Outside of vaccinations, “there are a lot of people that just say, ‘Oh, I thought that that was just normal.’”

Some people are less observant of the changes in their bodies and wouldn’t even take notice of their tinnitus.

Clark noted that among her audiology students and patients at the Callier Center for Communication Disorders, she has seen fewer cases of tinnitus in people experiencing symptoms postvaccination compared to post-COVID infection.

No Promised Recovery for Tinnitus

Clark warns that there’s no known cure for tinnitus and that many people are best served by finding a way to comfortably live with it.

Since tinnitus becomes the most prominent in a quiet setting, some people have found that if they play soft music or introduce light noises into their environment, their mind moves off tinnitus. Wearing hearing aids can help those with both hearing loss and tinnitus by increasing sounds in the background to cancel out the tinnitus.

These tips have helped some people whose tinnitus isn’t that severe.

“Tinnitus has been the bane of medicine forever between otolaryngologists and neurologists,” neurologist Dr. Robert Lowry, an expert in brain concussions, told The Epoch Times. “Nobody ever knows what to do with it.”

Nevertheless, some studies suggest that the intervention of therapies that correct underlying health problems may also resolve tinnitus.

Some studies found that correcting B-group vitamin deficiencies reduced tinnitus severity for some people. Oxytocin nasal sprays, which allow immediate nerve stimulation, have been shown to help with tinnitus. This therapy isn’t suitable for pregnant women.
Neurologist Dr. Diane Counce said another treatment she’s currently looking into is noninvasive brain stimulation, which has also been shown to improve tinnitus. However, this therapy is very expensive, and since it isn’t approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating tinnitus, insurance may not cover it.
Similarly, surgery and antidepressants have also shown limited benefits.

Treatments Target Underlying Mechanisms

Given that postvaccine tinnitus may be due to various causes, Counce looks at the symptoms that accompany tinnitus to determine the root cause of the condition.

For example, tinnitus associated with shortness of breath and exercise intolerance may be an indication that the person’s oxygen levels are low due to microclotting. Therefore, blood thinners such as aspirin, with nattokinase and serrapeptase supplements, would be recommended for that patient’s treatment.

For patients who have signs of autoimmunity such as nerve damage, an intravenous infusion of antibodies may be the prescribed treatment.

Board-certified internist Dr. Syed Haider said he generally starts his patients on ivermectin. He recounted that he originally had a patient whose tinnitus was so severe that he contemplated suicide. However, after Haider put him on ivermectin, his tinnitus disappeared.

Haider also created his own supplement protocol that he recommends for both long-haul and postvaccine patients, which includes various natural herb extracts, vitamins, minerals, and other supplements. Each of these helps correct various health problems, including tinnitus.

Haider said some patients respond to the first supplement they try, while others try several supplements to find the one that works best for them. Some only respond when the therapeutic is given in a high dose.

Ganglion blocks, which are usually injections that block pain, have also resulted in a complete reversal of tinnitus in some patients, Haider said. This may be because the therapy blocks off the sympathetic nervous system and therefore enables the body to rest and recover.

Nevertheless, Clark cautioned against treatment therapies that “promise” a definite cure, noting that treatments that guarantee the highest chances of success have been behavioral modification therapies that involve a person simply getting used to tinnitus.

Vaccinated People ‘Suffering Alone’

Mary has since joined an online tinnitus support group for those who are vaccine-injured.

Finding people who have been suffering for the same reason has allowed Mary to accept her vaccine injury and move forward with her life.

After reading stories shared by other people who are far more debilitated by tinnitus, Mary said she’s very thankful that her tinnitus has been bearable.

She’s also in another support group for both long-haul and vaccine-injured people.

Mary expressed that while long-COVID patients are also suffering from their condition and the lack of research, their experiences are validated and acknowledged, while adverse events due to the vaccines may be dismissed as being rare.

“The people suffering with vaccine injury, they’re suffering alone in a lot of cases,” Mary said. “Even if a vaccine adverse event is really rare, that doesn’t mean that we need to dismiss it. It still warrants acknowledgment, validation, research, support, and help.”

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