Tinnitus After 2nd Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine — Now Getting Better

I'm a 30-something healthy male. Prior to this, I've never had tinnitus in my life.

On June 14th I had my second Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine dose. 4 days later I developed tinnitus in both ears (more in my left). It was 24/7 and I had spikes where it became a lot worse. This situation made me panic and I had severe anxiety. I couldn't sleep well at night, so I had to play tinnitus masking white noise sounds while I slept.

I visited my family doctor and he mentioned that I had no earwax buildup or infection in my ears. He just prescribed a nasal spray.

However, now 2 weeks after the onset, I feel the tinnitus is lessening everyday. I still have occasional spikes, but today I had many moments where I could hear silence. It's not cured, but I feel it's heading in the right direction.

Tinnitus Talk really helped me during my difficult times as I could read about others that were having a similar experience to me. I just want to say if you have tinnitus due to the COVID-19 vaccine, there is a chance it's temporary and it will get better.

Experiencing tinnitus first hand, I now really have deep sympathy to those people that live with chronic tinnitus. I really hope you'll have relief soon.

 

I don't think the vaccine had anything to do it, there are a million and a half things that can trigger tinnitus. Vaccines are the least of your worries.

 

Is there a remote possibility that the COVID-19 vaccine played a part in tinnitus? Sure. Personally, I don’t think it did.

 

Why do you think it's unrelated in this case? Many members have reported tinnitus after receiving the 1st or 2nd dose of the: Pfizer, Moderna, J&J or AstraZeneca vaccines.

Receiving the 2nd Pfizer dose has been the only change to my recent lifestyle. So personally I can't think of another trigger for tinnitus.

 

I myself received the 2nd dose of the Pfizer vaccine on the 24th of March. My tinnitus kicked in 2 months later. It's possible that my tinnitus is a delayed response to the vaccine, but how can we know for sure? I'm almost 68 years old, so I know that my age carries a risk of hearing loss and tinnitus. If our tinnitus is vaccine related, maybe we can hope that it's a transient side effect and not permanent.

 

You can’t discount a lot of these folks getting and reporting tinnitus out of the blue after getting the COVID-19 vaccine. I mean medical doctors and scientists are even acknowledging it. Dr. Poland, a vaccinologist, got it and acknowledges it. Someday you will too lol.

 

Yep. I'm actually coming around to thinking there's a connection to the vaccine. The same Dr. Poland, I've read, believes the tinnitus in this case is an "off-target inflammatory response" based on the vaccines' high "reactogenicity." His hunch is that over time this effect will dissipate or lessen. Fingers crossed!

 

In his case, it happened immediately after vaccination. It would be more difficult to connect it in cases where it happened months later. Previous audiograms, lifestyle and age would also be determining factors when looking for causation versus correlation.

 

Because so many people are taking this vaccine at roughly the same time, you simply can't say it's the vaccine or not. The only way you can know is to have a double-blind trial. Which I think the drugs have already gone through. So without any evidence, anecdotal evidence is just that, anecdotal, you have to prove causation.

 

I mean yeah it’s anecdotal evidence, but the evidence is still clear. A ton of people are getting vaccine side effects, mainly tinnitus, and it needs to be addressed. More will come forward and hopefully they can fix that. There needs to be awareness because I would’ve rejected it if I knew.

 

You would have rejected it for a side effect risk that is less than zero percent (based on the total vaccinated versus the number of VAERS reports)? Do you avoid everything that has a rare chance of impacting tinnitus? That’s everything from vitamins and pain medications to some foods.

I tend to do more risk analysis, like consider which carries a greater likelihood of impact. Did those impacted have other circumstances that could have influenced the outcome? Correlation versus causation? I feel like that is what needs to be analyzed, because otherwise everyone should avoid everything because there is always some level of risk.

Oh, and the J&J vaccine was shown to have a potential tinnitus impact in the trial. That information was available. I know people who avoided it based on thinking that suggested a possible higher risk.

 

I still don't think you understand, correlation doesn't equal causation. Even if there is a higher correlation of folks getting tinnitus after getting the shots, it is still a longshot to say it CAUSED it.

 

It is absolutely because of the vaccine. I am a 25+ year sufferer of pulsatile tinnitus, and have managed to keep it down to a soft hiss for over 20 years. The day after my J and J vaccine on April 6th I woke up to loud, hissing, pulsing in my left ear and crickets. It had suddenly gone thru the roof. I was and still an experiencing bad earaches especially when driving.

The short story is, it appears to be an over response to the vaccination and the mechanisms of building antibodies. People with pre-existing conditions of any sort are vulnerable to being hit in those areas, be in asthma or allergies, etc. My ENT has given me a few rounds of steroids and I have been taking Magnesium and Lipoflavonoid. It's almost at the three month mark with no real change. It is miserable, and absolutely because of the vaccine, the ENT had seen several people with the same compliant. Apparently other vaccines can do it as well. It's not what is in the vaccine, it is how your body responds to it. My auditory nerves became inflamed.

At least 6 months seems to be the key with it lessening, if it does. Really nothing but time will do it.

 

Vaccines are the least of your worries? ‍♂️

 

Ok man, if you want to use technicalities, you really can’t have a controlled study to prove it was the vaccine but if I had to bet my life on it I would say MOST of these people presenting themselves with tinnitus after the shot, got it from the shot.

 

Well, it’s about 2% reported so it’s low but still. Not to mention the “anecdotal” reports from Facebook who didn’t even know there was a link to onset of tinnitus and the vaccine. Most don’t even report to VAERS, I mean I didn’t.

Not to mention after the onset of my new tinnitus I had crushing squeezing headaches for a month, and still have bad fatigue. I mean yeah my ears were probably going bad down the road due to previous damage, however some of these people had no previous trauma. Also, regular tinnitus should not give you fatigue and crushing headaches. I’m naturally messed up so I won’t correlate the vaccine with mine, just funny how it all pops up at once 2 weeks after the shot, with no other events weeks before the occurrence. I track all my data daily for years...

 

Just to clarify in case anyone confuses it, two percent is not the risk level. It is the percentage of side effect reports that mention tinnitus. To find the actual risk level, it needs to be compared to the total administered doses.

There were 331 million doses administered in the U.S. Even if rounded to 10,000 reports, the risk is still well under 1 percent. It’s a 0.0000303 percent risk.

For the risk to be two percent, there would need to be more than 6.5 million reports of tinnitus. VAERS may not capture all reports, but millions of people with tinnitus and auditory changes would not go unnoticed.

I have no doubt that vaccines can cause side effects, but we do need to acknowledge the actual risk level is incredibly low for the majority of the population.

Any reason why you daily track your data? I did that initially when I lost my hearing and found it only seemed to increase my anxiety.

 

Correct. I would rank loud noise and ototoxic medicines a lot higher on possible cause of tinnitus than vaccines.

 

I track out of habit. I've been suffering years with gut issues, body pain etc and now I can look back and see what foods or what I did to maybe cause whatever I'm feeling. Yeah it's kinda OCD lol.

 

That is tough, and I can understand why you would track. It’s not easy balancing multiple health concerns. Entirely unexpected today, my eye doctor noted nerve damage that suggests the potential for permanent vision loss. So now any anxiety I have about tinnitus is taking a backseat to how much I would prefer not to be blind.

 

Sorry to hear that. I’m hoping you get a second opinion to say you’ll be fine.