Lenire — Bimodal Stimulation Treatment by Neuromod

Hello my friends. I want to buy Lenire.

I do not have hearing impairment. I have an allergy to sounds and I have tinnitus in both ears.

What is your opinion with respect to my case and chances of success with Lenire?

 

Your chances are zero. I'm sorry to say.

 

Can you support this statement please?

 

Honestly, I think you have a chance. It seems that people with no hearing loss and hyperacusis respond better to the treatment. Thus far it hasn't done anything for me, but I have mild hearing loss and no hyperacusis. The only way you are going to really know if you try it since everyone responds differently. That decision is yours and how you feel about spending the money if you don't get any results. There is also a chance of worsening too so be sure you take that into account in your decision making.

As far as Neuromod themselves I haven't been very impressed from them not releasing their study or no follow-up whatsoever since COVID-19 hit.

 

In terms of symptoms that would indicate a better outcome, I believe no hearing loss and hyperacusis is a promising profile.

 

Yes I can. According to the studies undertaken at the Universities of Minnesota and Michigan, signal timing was the key element to bimodal stimulation.

The Lenire treatment is void of such. The device sputters out a cascade of sound and electric stimulation, with no apparent timing and crude synchronization, where as the treatment developed in Michigan employ one sound and one electric pulse in tandem, with a carefully timed offset.

Placebo is probably the best one can hope for whilst worst case scenario is drastic increase in tinnitus. Believe me, I experienced the latter.

 

"worst case scenario is drastic increase in tinnitus"

No. Worst case scenario is to develop trigeminal neuralgia. It happened to a Tinnitus Talk member.

 

What are your final opinions, whether I should buy Lenire or not? I have become very hesitant...

 

I'm really sorry to hear that.

I ended up not using mine because I was afraid of that happening. Lenire did advise me that over half of all patients' tinnitus would get worse at first but that it would then improve, so I hope this ends up being the case for you.

 

Lenire looks very scientific and all but it is just a gimmick. Stay away.

 

Thanks. Good on you not using the device. I unfortunately got lasting adverse effect from using Lenire.

 

Is Alice not feeling any better? I hope she has made Neuromod aware.

 

Well, I'd say if we've reached the point where people have used Lenire all the way to wearing out tongue tips and still not experienced much relief I'd say it's safe to consider it a bust. My focus is now on FX-322.

 

I wonder whatever happened to @JayBowson with his experience of Lenire...

FWIW at this point my belief is that bi-modal stimulation may have a role to play re-synchronising the auditory circuit but only once the regeneration has taken place. I also believe it's entirely possible that voltage gating has a pivotal role to play and in fact failures or shortcomings within the original gating circuit may even be what predisposes one to tinnitus in the first place. Therefore I'm very interested to stay up to date with Thanos's trials.

Wouldn't it be amazing if one day in the future we pop a pill to fix the voltage gate, receive a few jabs in the ear to regenerate the hairs then finish it all off with a course of bi-modal synchronisation? Sounds like a visit to the car mechanic...

 

Some people have though. The issue isn't really 'does it work for some', because as promised, it does. It's whether or not it has the potential to make tinnitus permanently worse for others.

 

That's still very much an issue for me in my book, especially when improvement is still very much overlapped into placebo territory. Even the best user reports of Lenire have been less than overwhelming, IMHO.

 

48% of the Tinnitus Talk survey participants experienced clinically significant improvement. It hasn't removed the tinnitus, but it has improved it in almost half of the cases. I trust the sufferers to be able to tell whether their tinnitus has improved or not.

I'm not sure how people are arriving at the conclusion that the results are (probably? maybe?) placebo. There's no way to know that, and even if we did, placebo has been proven to work even when people know it is placebo -- it's that powerful.

So what difference does it make, essentially. Improvement is improvement.

Just wanted to add a different perspective as it's easy when reading negative reviews to feel that there isn't any hope. I think the results show that there is hope, but it's a gamble, and not one I'm personally willing to take without knowing more about the worsened cases.

 

"Clinically significant" is just a binary label. It's either clinically significant or NOT clinically significant. Improvement doesn't work that way. It's a continuum, anything between placebo to being fully cured. So when you apply a label on results which are all relegated to minor improvements then where you draw the line on where placebo ends and real improvement begins is going to differ from person to person. That's just how it is and how a thread like this can keep running in circles.

The only way a tinnitus treatment can really escape the curse of being called a placebo scam is to have improvement well above and beyond that fuzzy line, dramatic enough that subjectivity doesn't really factor in anymore. Lenire doesn't qualify. The results are mild enough that even if you classify them as "clinically significant" they are so close to placebo range that the debate will rage on endlessly. The precise description of people's new normals that some describe as a so-called improvement will underwhelm others. Classic half-glass-full subjectivity.

Now, given a choice between that and no improvement at all, it's easy to understand why people might opt for it, in which case the risk of worsening might be the only caveat.

But given the choice between that and potentially more promising treatments like FX-322--something that attacks the root of the problem and could both reduce tinnitus and restore lost hearing? Well, it's hard to imagine how neuromodulation will go down as anything but a short-lived stopgap if regeneration works.

 

Even though the majority of people have cochlear causes of tinnitus, regenerative medicine won't fix the non-cochlear causes.

There would still be room/a need for bimodal stimulation, providing it works. Susan Shore is way more rigorous, at least it appears so.

 

What happened to your Lenire device? Were you able to return it for some credit?

 

How are you doing with your Lenire @RaZaH? Are you overall happy with your results? Haven’t heard from you in a long time? Your tinnitus seemed similar to mine.

 

I see what you're saying in the first paragraph, however clinically significant = improvement, so almost half had an improvement of some kind. If by placebo you mean 'very small improvement' (an improvement of any size could be due to placebo, couldn't it?), then yes, the improvement may be very underwhelming, whether due to placebo or not, but it would still be an improvement nonetheless. And we don't actually know what the TFI scores were to be able to tell this, as far as I know...?

Tinnitus treatments will always rely on subjectivity to determine their effectiveness because it's a subjective condition. Even with FX-322. However, I do agree with you that FX-322 sounds more promising. I just don't want to hop between treatments only to dismiss them because they don't turn out to work for everyone. I think as Tinnitus has many different causes, it is likely to have many different treatments and just because it doesn't work for some, does not rule out the possibility that it might work for others.

Anyway, like you I won't be trying it for now. Maybe it will have more potential in the future.

 

Yep.

Yes, and there be dragons, as far as opening up tinnitus sufferers to snake oil.

Remember when we saw the original Neuromod testimonial videos--how wishy-washy they were? Well, the language used in the user reports seems to match those to a T, where people are straining to quantify how it may have helped them in some way. Whether or not that is classified as statistically significant it falls quite shy of the criteria I would use to justify the expense and logistics of international travel (assuming no COVID-19 of course).

I do think some people are fixating on symantics in order to make Lenire appear to still be as much of a game-changer as it seemed like it was back during the hype stage. I'm not buying it.

 

It may be working for a specific subgroup. I think that this is also what they said, right? If I remember correctly, the claim is that people with hyperacusis benefit more than others.

 

I haven't read a single report that wows me, hyperacusis or no hyperacusis.

 

Maybe, maybe not. It's clear that they are the ones who have to prove efficacy. It's just that it does not make any sense to me that the device doesn't work and that they prepare global commercialization at the same time.

https://neuronewsinternational.com/lenire-neuromod-tinnitus/

If the device doesn't work and they plan those steps, it's simply a fraud. However, this is a strong claim and I think that it is more reasonable to give them the benefit of the doubt. The coming months will show what they are truly doing and I am pretty sure that threads like this one are actively read by many outsiders in the industry as well. Even if the device doesn't benefit a large group of tinnitus sufferers (which should be expected due to tinnitus heterogeneity), it could still help to improve symptoms for a smaller subset of sufferers.

 

That’s true. I’m not sure the headphone part of the bimodal device is a good idea. I remember trialing SoundCure. Time will tell I suppose. If it comes to the US they must think it’s working for at least a subset of tinnitus sufferers.

 

What exactly are you expecting to see in the "coming months"? Your link is from over a year ago--and long before COVID-19.

 

It's not about the virus, it's just that things take time sometimes. I don't see any benefit in being hyperskeptical.

 

That's the mindset scammers in the tinnitus space are banking on.

Naive sufferers with recent tinnitus onset looking for a quick fix.