To anyone here experiencing tinnitus after vaccination
Hi all - have seen some helpful discussion here over the past few days on tinnitus presenting for the first time, or being exacerbated by COVID-19 vaccination. Creating this post to share my own experience with my doctor in case it is helpful to others.
First off, my personal experience: Doctor recommended antihistamines (Benadryl) and a standard anti-inflammatory such as acetaminophen (Tylenol) which seems to have substantially improved things. She has had 3 other patients personally present with similar symptoms (one of whom partially lost hearing in one ear). All of her prior patients have now recovered, and all three prior patients only developed symptoms after their second shot.
My own symptoms developed about 36 hours after my first shot (at some point in the night) I just woke up with high pitched tinnitus, which is totally constant and at around 16.7kHz, which approaches the limit of my hearing). Had tinnitus for 5 days now with no notable change until trying the antihistamines (I had previously taken some other anti-inflammatory medication which seemed to have no impact). After taking a benadryl and sleeping (pretty well due to the benadryl lol), I woke up with the tinnitus only presenting intermittently and ~30% of the volume of previous.
Some thoughts for the community:
- You're not going crazy, there's lots of people experiencing this. It's likely well below 1% of people who've been vaccinated and will end up in the "uncommon" or "rare" side effects bin - but it's enough that your doctor may well already have other patients with it.
- As suggested by a recent publication, it's likely an inflammatory response from the immune system. Inflammation around the auditory nerve is thus likely the cause, and indicates that you're developing antibodies - likely at an elevated rate.
- In almost all cases, it will get better as the underlying inflammatory response relaxes as the immune system pipes down.
I wanted to share all of this in case it helps people who have shitty access to medical care or just need some support. This is not intended as medical advice, just sharing personal experience. Good luck to everyone out there, and congrats for (apparently) having an immune system that is 2swole2control.
tl;dr - Doctor recommended antihistamines (Benadryl) and a standard anti-inflammatory such as acetaminophen (Tylenol) which seems to have improved things markedly.
edit: Tylenol is pretty highly not recommended by the community, and I’m personally dropping this aspect.
edit 2: Checking in after 9 days of tinnitus symptoms here for anyone who finds this thread in the future. Things are continuing to improve on my side, hoping for the same for everyone else out there! The intensity of ringing has subsided substantially, and seems to range from 30-50% of original, so it looks like my experience might end up similar to those who said they took about two weeks to recover. One more tip from the community has been melatonin - helps with sleep similar to Benadryl, is naturally synthesised in your body anyway, and has been shown to statistically help with tinnitus. Thanks to those who gilded this thread (thanks for coming to my TED talk...) and good luck to everyone out there!
Also, if you are in the US it’s worth submitting a report to VAERS. Most countries have similar systems. Let’s get our data out there!