Fear-mongering Facebook post misleads about tinnitus

Tinnitus is annoying, but does it forebode a vegetative state? A recent Facebook post claims it does. 

"Ringing in your ears can cause total shutdown in under two years," a narrator says in the June 16 video post. "Tinnitus is now known as ‘precursor dementia,’ according to the Mayo Clinic, where doctors have made a shocking discovery that changes everything we know about ear buzzing and how it relates to mental decline."

The video also claims tinnitus is caused by "faulty nerve hair linking between your ear and brain" that then causes "brain cells to shrink, wiping out your memory by the minute."   

The video then promises a cure for tinnitus, and encourages viewers to click the link in the post that advertises a "simple method for hearing issues." 

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

We clicked the link, which led us to a page in which an anonymous "leading neuroscientist" has a "15-second technique" to help with hearing issues. Another button leads to another page in which a "top doctor" has a "simple 7-second ritual" that "wipes out tinnitus while you sleep." 

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A video on this page promises "a two-minute frequency hack discovered by German scientists." Ultimately, this rabbit hole of links and videos leads to a product for sale: Tinnitus 911, a supposed anti-tinnitus pill that promises to make tinnitus "disappear."

A photo of a man identified as "Charlie Gaines" describes the pill’s purported benefits. But we found the photo — a "portrait of a bearded middle-aged man" — on Shutterstock, and no evidence that the Charlie Gaines described in these tinnitus relief ads actually exists.

We reached out to the Mayo Clinic about the post but didn’t immediately hear back. 

But Dr. Bradley Kesser, a University of Virginia professor who specializes in hearing loss and tinnitus, called the post "completely spurious." 

"No such medicine exists and the claims are false," Kesser said. 

We also found nothing suggesting that the Mayo Clinic has dubbed tinnitus "precursor dementia," as the post claims, although it reported on its site in June 2022 that "several large studies have shown that people who have a degree of hearing loss, even in midlife, have an increased risk of developing dementia later in life." Hearing loss has been linked to tinnitus as a possible cause, but tinnitus itself "does not cause hearing loss," according to the Mayo Clinic. 

We rate this post False.