Solsaem Clinic (Dr. Minbo Shim) Experience

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Did you have that before the procedure? That is also my biggest gripe, horrible metal ringing head sensation always when I wake up, I would have the procedure just to get rid of that.
Before my treatments my tinnitus was a completely different animal. It would fluctuate day by day, but it would be constant from the time I woke up until the next day. If it was low when I woke up, it would be low all day. If I woke up to head piercing screetching HELL it would be like that all day and I would be in tears by the end of the day.

Now, it is always essentially gone when I wake up and some days will stay low all day, but lately it comes back around lunch time and lasts a few hours, but always goes right back down by the evening. I really really really just want to be completely cured and I am afraid to achieve that I will either need more treatments, or something else like a combination of FX-322 and some BDNF, I don't know. It may not even be possible to completely cure this condition.

When I get my hearing checked next week then I will hopefully have some evidence of its efficacy. It would be nice if I could convince an ENT in my town to get a centrifuge and give me more periodic shots of PRP until I peak out at a certain level of improvement. Or something. That's basically been my plan all along.
 
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would prefer it if people didn't go to South Korea and tried to find a way to do the treatment at home. It's a lot safer and less expensive that
Hi. I'm new in this section of the forum. Please bear with me... Can I ask what is the treatment that someone might try at home? I was under the impression that the treatment being discussed is only available overseas. Sorry that I am not more up to speed here... I'm very interested in the discussion going on.
 
. It would fluctuate day by day, but it would be constant from the time I woke up until the next day. If it was low when I woke up, it would be low all day. If I woke up to head piercing screetching HELL it would be like that all day
I can relate to the pattern you describe. I pray for those days when I wake up and it is low because then it will most likely be low all day. I "get through" the days when it starts out loud, because most likely it will be that way all day.

Were the PRP injections in your ears?
 
Platelet-rich plasma: a promising product for treatment of peripheral nerve regeneration after nerve injury.
"Recent studies proved that PRP could promote regeneration of injured peripheral nerve. This review focuses on current trials using PRP to promote nerve regeneration and repairment, and proposes potential clinical application of PRP for nerve injury in the future."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21244302
 
Well, a good friend of mine's dad's band mate is about to ask me some questions about this and probably fly out to Korea. If he does I'll get him to join the discussion here.
 
Platelet-rich plasma: a promising product for treatment of peripheral nerve regeneration after nerve injury.

Thanks!
To be fair, I'm not so sure how much of the growth factors from the PRP could successfully diffuse through the round window, into the cochlea, and then from there through the organ of corti to the auditory nerve. Maybe some? I just don't know. They are certainly getting into the cochlear duct through the round window.

50_08bcochlea-l1335908000385-thumb400.jpg
 
Hi. I'm new in this section of the forum. Please bear with me... Can I ask what is the treatment that someone might try at home? I was under the impression that the treatment being discussed is only available overseas. Sorry that I am not more up to speed here... I'm very interested in the discussion going on.
The method itself is only practiced overseas. However, PRP is easily accessible. There are PRP clinics all across the US. Unfortunately, they all are focused on skin care, genital issues, and sports injuries. Getting those clinics to collaborate with an ENT would probably be extremely hard. Doctors would be concerned of ethics since it's basically new and experimental.
 
Getting those clinics to collaborate with an ENT would probably be extremely hard.
But also, I don't think ENTs here will do as well as Dr. Shim. Dr. Shim would pack your middle ear with whatever he could. He knew how much coagulation to do.
An ENT here, the first time, if he does do a first time, might give you a cautious little squirt inside your eardrum and call it a day. He most likely won't use bone marrow, by screwing that crazy thing into your back, that lymebite showed us a picture of, to get PRP.
I know ENTs need to start somewhere, if they will do PRP.
They won't do as well as Dr. Shim.
 
The method itself is only practiced overseas. However, PRP is easily accessible. There are PRP clinics all across the US. Unfortunately, they all are focused on skin care, genital issues, and sports injuries.

I'm somewhat familiar with PRP, mostly as it relates to muscle/sports injuries. I do wish that someone in the US was willing to learn from Dr. Shim and expand the treatment here, along with the other treatments I see being discussed here.

Thank you again to those who provided responses to my questions.
 
When I get my hearing checked next week then I will hopefully have some evidence of its efficacy. It would be nice if I could convince an ENT in my town to get a centrifuge and give me more periodic shots of PRP until I peak out at a certain level of improvement.
How much bone marrow extraction can you withstand? Is it not uncomfortable and painful?
 
JohnAdams, I appreciate your honesty. In a world full of frauds, cheats, two timing forked tongue crooks, you are a rare gem. You have been honest about your gains and shortcomings. I am really thankful and admire your character. You're a good man. Don't change brother, good things will come to you... well done.
 
JohnAdams, I appreciate your honesty. In a world full of frauds, cheats, two timing forked tongue crooks, you are a rare gem. You have been honest about your gains and shortcomings. I am really thankful and admire your character. You're a good man. Don't change brother, good things will come to you... well done.
Thanks, I try to be. I do get mad at people though and that's a big shortcoming.
 
One example in particular is intratympanic injections of dexamethasone, a steroid that has shown effectiveness in restoring hearing in acute cases of hearing loss to restore hearing. The British Tinnitus Association has a mention of this on their website but the study they cite had patients that were years into their tinnitus and the studies that showed improvement were acute, just days to weeks into their situation.

The standard of care is to take oral steroids. Eardrum injections of steroids are much more effective and perhaps many of us would not be here today if that had been offered to us.
Amen to that. My GP didn't even mention oral steroids. I went to a private ENT immediately but only got oral steroids and Serc. NHS ENT only saw me after 6 months because tinnitus is not urgent, apparently. Only much later I read that injected steroids were often effective in acute cases. This is infuriating, as not even a very expensive private ENT mentioned it to me.
 
I've been in S. Korea for the last 2 weeks getting PRP injected into my ears at Dr. Shim's Solsaem clinic in Seoul. I will answer your questions as well as periodically update my status. I've got between 2 and 3 months for the full effects to manifest.

Here's how I think Minbo Shim's therapy works. He didn't explain this to me, I put all of this together myself.

First off, this is how hair cell regeneration technology works.

A class of chemicals called notch inhibitors or gamma secretase inhibitors makes contact with the surface of the stem cell. The stem cells in our inner ear are classified as LGR5+ (positive), meaning that it expresses a gene called Leucine-rich repeat-containing G-protein coupled receptor 5.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGR5

Inside the cell there is a protein called Beta-Catenin. This is the finger that throws the "switch" that makes LGR5+ stem cells proliferate, which means divide and regenerate into mature cells, in this case, hair cells in the cochlea. In order for this to occur, enough Beta-Catenin has to enter into the nucleus of the cell.

But, the reason our hair cells aren't regenerating on their own is because once Beta-Catenin is created inside the cell, there is a group of proteins that form something called the Beta-Catenin destruction complex, this destroys the Beta-Catenin before it can enter into the nucleus in enough quantity to activate the proliferation process.

The β-catenin destruction complex.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23169527


One way to stop the Beta-Catenin from being destroyed is by activating a cellular signalling pathway called WNT (pronounced wint).
View attachment 29636


Generation of hair cells in neonatal mice by β-catenin overexpression in Lgr5-positive cochlear progenitors.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23918377

This is how drugs like FX-322 work to "wake up" dormant stem cells in the inner ear.

There is a class of proteins involved with many functions in our bodies called growth factors.
View attachment 29637

One of these growth factors is called insulin-like growth factor 1. IGF-1.

IGF-1 has been shown in multiple human clinical trials to improve hearing recovery.


Insulin-like growth factor 1: A novel treatment for the protection or regeneration of cochlear hair cells.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25937136

Actually I never noticed this part before but they verified that it causes cochlear supporting cells to proliferate in cochlear explants.

"The mechanisms of IGF1-induced maintenance of hair cell number have been investigated using a cochlear explant culture system, which demonstrated that IGF1 acts on supporting cells, leading to the inhibition of hair cell apoptosis and the proliferation of supporting cells."


Another study, showed that IGF-1 increases cellular Beta-Catenin levels.

Insulin and IGF-1 stimulate the β-catenin pathway through two signalling cascades involving GSK-3β inhibition and Ras activation

https://www.nature.com/articles/1204064

"IGF-1 increased the cytoplasmic levels of β-catenin."



IGF-1 is produced in our bodies, in part in blood platelets.

There is not any blood in our inner ear fluid. Inner ear fluid is different from blood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endolymph

You can create a platelet rich composition of blood by putting drawn blood in a centrifuge which separates the platelets into something called platelet rich plasma, PRP.
PRP contains growth factors, including IGF-1.

The growth factors and other cytokines present in PRP include:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platelet-rich_plasma


In your middle ear there is a semi-permeable membrane called the round window.

View attachment 29638
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_window


So that's how you can deliver medicine to the cochlea, by filling up the middle ear, via eardrum injection, with a viscous solution containing X substance, it rests in the middle ear and the substance, if molecularly small enough, will diffuse through the round window membrane. That's why the various presentations produced by FrequencyTX, as well as their homepage emphasize that their products are "small molecule drugs", because this is exactly how FX-322 is delivered to the cochlea.
View attachment 29639


Other neurotrophic compounds are also being investigated to repair lost cochlear synapses by diffusion through the round window membrane.

Round-window delivery of neurotrophin 3 regenerates cochlear synapses after acoustic overexposure

https://www.researchgate.net/public...cochlear_synapses_after_acoustic_overexposure


So that's my theory, that IGF-1 works just like FX-322 to disable the Beta-Catenin destruction complex and cause the stem cells to proliferate into functioning hair cells except that IGF-1 is already produced in our bodies and needs to be manually introduced into the cochlea. Also PRP may be much safer than FX-322 because it is good for healing holes to the eardrum that would be caused by the injection.


Topical use of autologous platelet rich plasma in myringoplasty.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25794691

"Topical autologous PRP application during myringoplasty is safe and highly efficient and successful with no reported complication"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25794691

Now watch the nay-sayers purposefully push this post up the page with extremely long-winded ad-hominem attacks on me and Minbo Shim.
Can I ask you John - looking back on your treatment and the period of time since then, how much percentage improvement have you noticed in your tinnitus noise level reduction.

Ultimately, were you happy that the results justified the expense?
 
Can I ask you John - looking back on your treatment and the period of time since then, how much percentage improvement have you noticed in your tinnitus noise level reduction.

Ultimately, were you happy that the results justified the expense?
Absolutely I am happy with the results.

In terms of a percentage, I would say it fluctuates between 50% and 90% quieter.
 
Absolutely I am happy with the results.

In terms of a percentage, I would say it fluctuates between 50% and 90% quieter.
John - thank you very much.

I am not well up on the science, but in your opinion, have the stereo cilia regenerated?

If not - what else could have produced such dramatic results?
 
Would PRP also help hidden hearing loss? I guess IGF is more for hair cells and BDNF for nerves, right?
Really man, I have no idea. Only guesses. But there is this:

"In the current study, we examined the effects of rhIGF-1 on IHCeSGN synapse regeneration after excitatory amino acid- induced damage using mouse cochlear explant cultures. Our find- ings strongly suggest that rhIGF-1 has the potential to induce IHCeSGN synapse regeneration in mammalian cochleae, which could contribute to rhIGF-1-mediated hearing restoration."

Source:
upload_2019-6-28_13-47-44.png
 
Sounds great. Might consider Minbo Shim then if this bothers me still the same at the end of the year.
I am about to post some hearing test results as well as a breakdown of how my tinnitus is and why. Also, Glenn still has to post his hearing test as well. You may want to wait for that and then carefully make up your mind.

Unless you are rich and curious and have plenty of time, just wait. The only absolute I can give at this point is that it is safe. An ENT recently examined my ears and could not tell I had ever had an injection into my eardrums, 100+ later.
 
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