Feeling Great After 15 Clinical Low-Level Laser Treatments (LLLT)!

Does your dog do that to you? That could be why it gets worse. The noise is actually your dog growling.

 

Hello everyone,

I just finished up treatment here. I experienced no improvements. Please don’t waste your money.

 

@vlad2019
Yes apparently with laser tinnitus can get worse before it gets better due to “nerves waking up”. Not sure how true this is, I experienced nothing with a clinical laser.

 

Did they charge you $3750 for 15 treatments? I had a hard time getting referrals from them.

 

@just1morething yes they did. They also try to push you to do a bunch of other things like FCR and when I said I didn’t want to do it the doctor made me feel like I was hindering my “tinnitus recovery”.

 

You know you can build your own LLLT for less than 100 USD, just using two LEDs off and a power supply off ebay? Don`t spend thousands of dollars for such a simple device. That is •beyond words•..

 

@pinklights98, I hope you can get some delayed benefits from your LumoMed treatments.

 

What I have read here, laser therapy for tinnitus only works if started ASAP after the onset.

Does it really work years later? Can anyone here confirm this please?

 

I did it 6 months after my onset and it helped a lot.

 

Hey @scotty03874, when you did the LumoMed laser and had improvements, was your tinnitus reactive at the time? I have pretty sensitive spiking/reactive tinnitus, so I just want to be cautious about it. If I were to experience an increase in sensitivity or loudness at first, could this be normal and improve as laser treatments progress? Did you experience an increase in sensitivity and/or loudness before seeing improvement?

Thanks.

 

Yes, I would get high-frequency spikes for a couple of hours after each treatment. But they always subsided. From everything I've read about LumoMed, this is very common.

 

Thank you for the feedback, @scotty03874. I am actually in FL now, and since I am not able to stay for a full two weeks, they started me yesterday 2x a day at 50% power. Last night my ears were singing, my ultra high frequency sound was very intrusive and sensitive to sound and my other lower sounds were louder. It's better this AM but still sensitive, so just deciding whether to go to one a day or continue to try the two a day at 50%. The latest laser they got is updated and supposedly 3x more powerful than the older LumoMed version, so could be that too!

 

How much are the treatments?

 

It's possible it's their new laser that's stronger. Are you only doing the LumoMed treatments?

 

@scotty03874, I am doing the original laser today due to my sensitivity.

Nope, I am taking the leap of healing faith and doing SunaVae, 5 laser treatments (due to sensitivity with it) and I already did 1 FCR treatment.

 

Please keep us posted on your results Now I'm really interested that you are doing SunaVae too!

 

@Ryan Scott, it all depends on what treatment protocol you are doing as far as cost goes...

• It is $250 per laser treatment and they recommend at least 10 of those unless you’re someone like me experiencing sensitivity with it and choose to do less.
• Then there’s SunaVae, intratympanic ear injections (2 in each ear) that are your stem cells and cell-free exosomes (for growth factors) from placenta. If you do both ears of 2 injections each, it is $14,000.
• Then there’s other treatments such as functional cranial release, which I HIGHLY recommend and am so glad I did it. I’m actually doing it twice. That is $500 a session. I recommend this to anyone who has had a hit to the face/head in their lives, anyone who has sinus issues, recurrent headaches, etc.
• Other treatments to do include IVs such as Methylene Blue and Ozone. These are to boost immune system response, boost mitochondrial healing, fight against high viral loads. Those have their own price.

You can customize as you wish and they are very kind and helpful. Nursing/staff is great. For example, I only wanted to do 15 minutes each ear this afternoon on the laser as opposed to 30 minutes, so they cut price in half for that session since charging me full “wouldn’t be right”. I also am thinking only a second shot for my right ear tomorrow as that is where the nerve damage was, and they say “we recommend doing 2 shots for both, but you can definitely do that if you’d like”.

I cannot share any improvements as of yet with my tinnitus as it is actually quite sensitive at the moment, but I can tell you outside of the tinnitus, I feel very, very good.

Tomorrow is my last day, I am getting my last ear injections along with a functional cranial release and IV stuff.

 

ErikaS,

I've been to their clinic three times now, September 2019, December 2020 and July 2022. I have done FCR once on each nostril in 2019, laser all 3 times and Dr. Shim's injections once in 2022. I think you know I was Dr. John's first patient to ever do Dr. Shim's technique. I made their introduction (PRP, bone marrow injections), this is before he switched the protocol to what he now calls SunaVae with Stem Cells instead of strictly PRP. So I'm very well aware of their prices. Lol unfortunately enough...

But if you have good improvements, I may go back again for SunaVae injections. I earn a very good living so money isn't an issue for me. I just want my tinnitus to simmer down some and get back some more hearing back that I've lost. I wish the best for you!

Did you do a hearing test with him before the treatment?

 

@ErikaS, are you just getting your one ear treated where you had the ear infection? If I was to see Dr. John, I would just treat my left barotrauma ear. Do they have an ENT on their staff to do the intratympanic injections? Also do they use a laser to make the hole in your eardrum?

I hope you have excellent results!

 

I know the answer to this question. Dr. John does the injection with a needle that Dr. Shim trained him to do and has a patent on. It's just a small cone. It's called ShimSpot. So there is no ENT present on site.

 

Yes, I know you, unfortunately, I know the costs too! I figured I’d answer Ryan for you with the current costs as I am here, and to save you the time and memory of cost lol.

I honestly am just looking for my super high reactive electric hiss to calm down, which is where my hearing was damaged in right ear. I am blessed to have good hearing in speech ranges, but I think I’d exchange some hearing for this reactive shit.

I did do a hearing test. I don’t like how he does it, and as a speech therapist I know the correct way to do it, but I chose to ignore that lol. I showed him my audiograms from two audiologists, one up to 8 kHz and the other from 10-20 kHz.

What Scott said, and, he had an orthopedic doctor with him in the room; I was told he had him with him for all injections and that doctor does a lot of the joint injections.

I’ve decided to treat both as I have tinnitus in both ears and some sound sensitivity in left ear. The tinnitus and damage started/is in the right ear, but it was kind of like if I am going to do it, I will at least do one shot in left ear too.

 

@ErikaS, how long are the injections spaced apart? When I had Dexamethasone intratympanic injections years ago, I think they were spaced apart by at least a week. I had 3 injections back then. Then the following year I went to Shea Clinic and had more injections. They used a laser there to make the holes in my eardrum, instead of a needle which was painful.

 

Did the Shea Clinic do anything positive to help your tinnitus or hearing?

 

That was back in 2011. I don’t remember if their injections helped short term, but definitely not long term. I don’t know what they injected and I’m not sure if they still do injections? If they thought they were ineffective, they may have stopped doing them. I have high-frequency hearing loss in both ears, but tinnitus mainly in my left ear.

My tinnitus in my left ear is a loud high-pitched solid tone right now, but it changes to static other times. It could possibly be related to my Eustachian tube as when I use an EarPopper it hurts a bit on my left side.

 

What's the benefit of this "special needle" compared to the other traditional methods used for Dexamethasone injections, for example?

 

I just had my second shots this morning, first shots were Tuesday. Eardrums looked totally fine and looked healthy and healing already from the first shots before we did the second shots today. He has a camera to look in the ears and take pictures.

 

Nothing really but he has a US patent on it, that's all I know. The patent is on the cone device, not the needle. Regular needle is used.

 

How soon after the onset do you have to pursue these treatments? Do they have any hard statistics and data to prove efficacy?

Coming from an analytical background, what has surprised me the most since getting tinnitus, is the lack of data the medical field has. Blows my mind how local ENT practices don't have a data repository to prove the efficacy of different treatment methods. Somebody is going to make big money one day by incorporating data mining and augmented intelligence into medical practices.

 

My first treatment was 6 months after the injury to my ear.

 

I will just summarize:

- I agree it is awful how we have no real guidance with statistics, real data from an array of treatments, making this all a lot harder and just depressing and scary.

- I am 6 months post onset. I think it was good that I took the first 4-5 months to limit my normal life sound exposure and rest my ears more and try some relaxation things and a small sleep medication to calm me down from the most panicked/depressed/anxious I’ve been in my life. However, it wasn’t until month 5 when I got a very high-frequency audiogram to determine my actual cause of tinnitus (sudden hearing loss/damage in right ear from an ear infection.)

- I think before pursuing any advanced, alternative treatment, you have to try to determine the exact CAUSE of your tinnitus to really know if the said treatment would even be of any benefit to you. It was only after I found out about my SSHL and knowing that is what caused my tinnitus to start that I even considered a stem cell scenario. If I didn’t show any hearing loss, if it didn’t come on with bad ear infection, and it just came on during stressful time, I wouldn’t even look too much into stem cells.

So like I said, it’s very important to identify the true cause before putting a larger amount of money into a treatment.

Hope that makes sense!