Solsaem Clinic (Dr. Minbo Shim) Experience

Once again, stop making this about Dr. Shim. My entire point is that this needs to be further investigated, not casually dismissed. There is a lot of evidence that IGF-1 injections into the ear improve hearing and have proliferative effects on cochlear supporting cells. IGF-1 is in PRP. There are no huge leaps of logic here.

 

That's odd. The thread is named Minbo Shim clinic. Are you saying people shouldn't talk about him in a thread named after him?

 

I thought he was the only one in the world doing these particular IT treatments at this time? Other than a person in Russia that @Arseny mentioned.

You seem to know all the technicalities involved supposedly, but the bottom line is that people want relief. Why not take your "leaps of logic" to Shea Ear Clinic as they are probably reasonably close to your residence.

 

In regards to Shim's pricing:



I got some things wrong, but I figured that this was basically the case.

 

You could be firmly resting your buttocks on a new Harley with a bottle of Lipoflavonoids in your back pocket for that. I personally have Japanese motorcycles myself. Harley's are too loud and too expensive. A hauling ass head ringer without a care in the world.

 

Actually my hissing is bad and will try oral steroids again if I can get them prescribed.

 

Hi, hope you're well. You have a hell of a job holding court here, I hope you're doing swell.

When you mention trials of ear injections with 35 decibel increases, have you ever posted these, please post.

This is what I am looking for, a trial, where people have tympanic injections. Not steroids after trauma, but something on the lines of Dr. Shim. That would be super when you have time, and if you have posted it, just direct me where. Some of the studies are on mice embryos and it is scientifically way over my head.

Next question for JohnAdams, and this you don't have to answer... it's not that big a deal to me.

What is your take on the Stefan Heller / Shim thing. Heller says Shim have got no training, Solsaem says they have training from Stanford.

Does this fall in the realm of ambiguity? What's your opinion, again, if you don't care to comment... that's cool.

Most sincerely, Daniel

 

Didn’t @JohnAdams go for two weeks for only $9000 for both ears the first time he went?

 

I asked him about that and he told me that he attended some lectures and visited some labs and that they did not teach him any special techniques, but that they definitely taught him that regenerating hair cells and restoring hearing was possible and that he was greatly inspired.

 

I’m just checking in to see if I have any PMs or loose ends to tie up on Tinnitus Talk and couldn’t help but check on the progress of this thread while I was at it.

I don’t know where to begin. Firstly, this has never been about attacking John or Glenn. I have always wished John the best despite all the abuse I’ve received, and I’ve always added to the discussion with the intent to debate Dr Shim and his methods; I’ve never meant for anyone to take anything personally. John is clearly brave for trying this out. My messages here have always been focused around the evidence for this method working because there isn’t any and there isn’t a good reason to explain why this is the case, either.

His price has tripled in just over 2 years and the explanations for this given by Artemis have never made any sense.



This conversation is quite alarming in and of itself. Dr Shim is openly admitting that his treatment doesn’t work. He clearly states that 1 week was not enough to make any significant change; this also contradicts what he has said in the past. He raised the price after John had his treatment and his reasoning for doing so (in his comment above) was because it wasn’t working. So why hasn’t he declared that it didn’t work for all those people who spent $9,000? This is why we need a proper clinical trial! At the moment it’s just a minefield of contradictory information.



You can clearly see here that $6,000 was for two weeks.

He seems to just make it up as he goes along which would explain why he doesn’t like people asking him too many questions. He never seems to give a clear and concise answer about what your money is paying for and what you’ll receive.

There are many people who have said he behaves oddly or defensively via phone/Skype/or email conversations. Just look through the original thread and also look at the way he spoke to @Amit Shah earlier in this thread.





Foncky then invited him to the forum to do a Q&A with the members here:



John, I explicitly said, ‘do not hand over any money to Dr Shim until he publishes his successful study from 2014.’

What is wrong with that advice? The onus is on him as the medical professional to publish his successful trial data (from 2014) so we can all see the clinical evidence. Give me one good reason why nobody has ever seen his successful data if it exists? Why hide it away in a drawer somewhere if it proves you are the first person in the world to regenerate hearing? Why let someone else beat you to the punch if there’s a risk of that happening?

To anyone reading this who doesn’t know the full story I might as well explain myself before I go so I don’t appear to be some kind of bully. I once had a debate with John about FX-322 and he became hateful and aggressive towards me because I disagreed with him. In private, I defended John’s behaviour and blamed his tinnitus for his outbursts but after this continued I finally snapped and bit back by criticising his grammar. Some saw that as me being horrible to him, but then there was no context. Since then he has been repeatedly quoting prehistoric Dr Shim quotes trying to lure me back into an argument, and when I finally reply, I’m a bully and a ‘schizophrenic.’

This was the comment that was nice enough to keep:



I generally don’t like these tit for tat arguments that add nothing to the debate, but if I’m not around to defend myself then I’d rather other readers be clear about things.

I understand the risk you took, John, and I’m glad you think it worked. I truly hope it did. I just don’t want to see other desperate people going to Dr Shim and expecting miracles, whilst potentially adding to their problems by plunging themselves into a debt that they cannot repay.

It’s not as simple as telling people to just go to their ENT consultant and ask him/her to inject PRP into their ears. They won’t do it.

If Dr Shim wants to be professional about his treatment then he needs to give people more information than ‘trust me.’

Sorry if this comes across as blunt, but this is my unfiltered point-of-view on the whole thing. I have never wished to make enemies on this site, but serious debate can sometimes draw out the worst in people. Especially if it’s something one truly believes in.

 

Sorry, it was 30 dB, not 35 dB. 30dB is still very significant.

Here is a collection of quotes from the study.

Growth factors and hair cells:
"As factors that effectively induce HC protection and regeneration, growth factors are considered good candidates. Growth factors are humoral factors, which bind to their specific receptors on the cell membrane to activate intracellular signaling in order to exert their effects. Growth factors play important roles during cell proliferation, differentiation, transdifferentiation, and survival (Anderson, 1989; Bhowmick et al., 2001; Cattaneo and McKay, 1990; Gao et al., 1995; Ghosh and Greenberg, 1995)."

What IGF-1 is:
"IGF1 was isolated from human serum in the 1950s (Salmon and Daughaday, 1957). At first, it was named somatomedin-C, but renamed because of the high degree of sequence identity between IGF1 and insulin. IGF1 has nonsuppressible insulin-like and cell growth-promoting activities (Rinderknecht and Humbel, 1978)."

First clinical trial:
"Based on the findings reviewed in Section 4, clinical trials were performed to study the efficacy of IGF1 in the treatment of SSHL. First, a phase I/II clinical trial was performed to assess the safety and efficacy of IGF1 (UMIN-CTRR000000936) (Nakagawa et al., 2012, 2010). SSHL that was refractory to systemic steroid therapy was selected as the target disease for the clinical trial. Patients (n ¼ 25) with definite SSHL and with no recovery after systemic glucocorticoid treatment for more than 7 days were recruited within 29 days of SSHL onset."

Trial outcomes:
"Hearing improvement at 24 weeks after IGF1 treatment was found to be statistically significant at all five frequencies compared with the hearing levels of the patients at registration. A time course analysis of the changes in hearing threshold revealed that hearing recovery after topical IGF1 treatment occurred during the initial 4 weeks in the majority of patients, but that further recovery (>20 dB) was evident in some patients at a later stage (Nakagawa et al., 2012). No serious adverse events associated with the test treatment occurred during this trial."

Second trial:
"Based on the result of the phase I/II clinical trial described in 5.1., a randomized clinical study was performed (UMIN000004366). Treatment with intra-tympanic steroids, which has been widely used to treat systemic glucocorticoid-resistant SSHL (Choung et al., 2006; Haynes et al., 2007; Ho et al., 2004; Kakehata et al., 2011; Lee et al., 2010; Plontke et al., 2005; Roebuck and Chang, 2006), was chosen as the control treatment (Nakagawa et al., 2014)."

Involved 120 patients:
"Patients (n = 120) were recruited from nine tertiary referral hospitals in Japan and were randomly selected to receive either gelatin hydrogel impregnated with IGF1 on the round window membrane (62 patients) or intratympanic injections with Dex (58 patients)."

Trial outcomes:
"In the IGF1 group, 66.7% (95% CI, 52.9e78.6%) of the patients showed hearing improvement compared to 53.6% (95% CI, 39.7e67.0%) of the patients in the Dex group. There was no significant difference between the proportion of patients with improved hearing in each group (p ＝0.109), primarily because an unexpectedly high proportion of patients showed hearing improvements after Dex therapy compared with previous reports (Choung et al., 2006; Haynes et al., 2007; Ho et al., 2004; Kakehata et al., 2011; Nakagawa, 2014; Nakagawa et al., 2014; Plontke et al., 2005; Roebuck and Chang, 2006). A trend, however, was observed: a higher proportion of patients with 30 dB HL improvements in pure-tone average hearing thresholds was measured for the IGF1 group than in that the intra-tympanic steroids group."

IGF-1 is safe and possibly superior:
"In this trial, no adverse events were observed. The findings of this trial suggest that IGF1 is an effective treatment for SSHL and that IGF1 is a similar or superior therapy compared with intra-tympanic Dex therapy"

Explant cochleas studied with IGF-1:
"The mechanisms of IGF1- induced maintenance of HC number have been evaluated using a cochlear explant culture system (Hayashi et al., 2013)"

"In this study, IGF1 treatment was found to result in the maintenance of both inner and outer HC numbers as shown for the in vivo application of IGF1 for cochlear damage"

"These observations indicate that IGF1 induces the maintenance of HC numbers by activating SCs (Fig. 2)."

IGF-1 is protecting and possibly regenerating hair cells:
"In this review, IGF1 has been described as a novel and potent treatment for SNHL, potentially via HC protection and regeneration."

Source:
Hearing Research 330 (2015) 2e9

Insulin-like growth factor 1: A novel treatment for the protection or regeneration of cochlear hair cells
Kohei Yamahara, Norio Yamamoto* , Takayuki Nakagawa, Juichi Ito Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, 54 Shogoin Kawahara-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606- 8507, Japan

 

Anybody with a quarter of a brain can put 2 and 2 together why Dr Shim would not have published his "findings" after all this time. Shame on him...

 

I would also question why he wasn’t present at the TRI conference, especially considering that it was on his doorstep. @Hazel managed to make it and she had to fly halfway across the world to do so. I would have expected the one ENT on the planet, who is regenerating hearing and objectively reducing tinnitus, to attend and give a speech at the very least.



Here’s a list of Drs from South Korea that did attend. Why didn’t Dr Shim being he is a pioneer of this field?

 

Can’t think of any logical reason for him to not go...

 

@Ed209 He is on Tinnitus Talk, I THINK.

@drshimminbo

 

Having talked with @Markku and @Hazel I think there is one logical way to move forward to finally clear up all this information and misinformation.

We are officially inviting Dr. Shim to come on the Tinnitus Talk Podcast to clear the air. We will obviously discuss his treatment, science, studies, trials, and pricing model among other things.

We will not accept vague answers though and will require some more in-depth responses than the ones he gives in Skype conversations we have seen. We will press him on topics that people are skeptical on, which should be no issue if this is all legitimate.

We would also be happy to have @JohnAdams on as well to discuss his experience about the process and procedure.

I see no reason for Dr. Shim to not take this opportunity if he has nothing to hide.

I do not know how to get in touch with Dr. Shim so we hope @JohnAdams could help us out in that respect.

 

Maybe he was busy?
Maybe he has a life?
Maybe he has more important things to do than rip other people apart?

 

Too busy to promote his groundbreaking work that treats hearing loss?

 

No thanks. I am very uninterested in participating in a podcast. I've already explained everything, there is nothing new you'd learn from one.

I am going to schedule an appointment to get my hearing tested no sooner than the June 8th, and then another one a few weeks later from another audiologist, as I said I would. I am going to dump all of my audiograms and a little write up about my tinnitus level, quality of life.

All of the goofs slandering this man and accusing him of impropriety need to know this:
None of your arguments have disproven that what he is doing is effective in treating hearing loss, and by making this about him more so than the role of IGF-1/PRP, in this, on which I am advocating that further studies be done to take this man, Minbo Shim, completely out of the loop but all these super geniuses that obviously know everything can do is continually harp on him and his credibility.

 

Look at that research paper I quoted above, other researchers have used IGF-1 to treat hearing loss, in human trials, conforming to all of the scientific methods that you all want from Dr. Shim. Why don't you go after their credibility?

 

It would have been a great opportunity for you to spread awareness of this treatment to a much larger audience, but we understand.

 

It’s impossible not to make this about him.

As far as we know he is the only person on the planet injecting eardrums with these growth factors and charging people for it claiming it treats hearing loss.

There isn’t a responsible ENT available to me that would take any of this information you have provided and replicate this treatment on me.

This is HIS treatment, stop asking us to remove him from it. It’s his and he can’t or won’t write it up or present it to anyone that is more educated than desperate people with hearing loss/tinnitus via email or Skype.

Even on these venues tough questions are met with “trust me” or “you must not be ready for treatment then”.

I sincerely hope that he is ahead of the world and providing a treatment that you benefit from.

It’s going to take more than quoted studies cited by some random guy on the intranet with poor people skills and Dr. Shim’s word to convince people this is legitimate.

 

What should be happening:
Tinnitus Hub people take note of my experience and the scientific research I've done and then go to their contacts at the BTA and say, "look, maybe there is a viable treatment here and we should hook up with some doctors and further research this." It won't be very expensive to replicate this and it probably wouldn't be too hard to find willing participants.

Instead what's happening:
Endless nagging and bickering about Dr. Minbo Shim and his alleged lack of credibility and zero discussion about this being a possible path forward in the quest to free people from tinnitus hell. All while the BTA continues its wasting of research funds into mindfulness research.

I'm pretty sure that using research funds to study PRP/bone marrow ear injections would get far more support from the community than money wasted on mindfulness studies.

What's the goal here? Treating tinnitus? Doesn't really look like it to me.

 

I thought @brownbear said it would be difficult to find participants in an earlier post. He is an ENT, so he would probably know more so than anyone else on this forum. Until then we have to rely on testimonies of Dr. Shim's current and past patients, which seem few and far between.

 

He can read people's minds and already knows how people will respond to being offered a treatment like this.
He must be an Ear/Nose/Telepathic doctor.

Besides, one thing that this website has taught me is how flaccid and ignorant most ENTs actually are.

 

Why don't you give Dr. Shea a holler and see what he thinks? They are used to doing IT injections. They use a laser to make a hole in your eardrum. I thought that was much less painful than a needle at Paparella.

 

Having to prove a negative is classic creationism-style tactics:

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

"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

The extraordinary claim here is that these injections effectively restore hearing in the deaf. The burden of proof is on Shim to prove, not us to disprove.

I've already keyed you into this and yet you simply fall back to your default "prove a negative!" approach.

It's a non-starter and always will be. Stop expecting us to go along with it. Rational minds don't do "prove a negative".

Our skepticism doesn't necessarily mean we don't think regenerative medicine is possible, but it IS moonshot science and is not something to expect to happen in this manner.

 

Can you get in touch with him via email or Skype? Here is his contact info:
Email: solsamclinic@gmail.com / Skype ID: cmclinics

I do feel the aggressive negative attacks against Minbo Shim are a little unbalanced which is understandable as the tinnitus community makes people highly skeptical and pessimistic about cures with all the scams out there. In digging through his website myself, I have found more information on his procedure and more video testimonials from patients than any other ENTs I've found. Highly regarded ENTs I've found in the US don't have anything like that and talks more about insurance policies than anything else. The House Clinic, a world renowned hearing clinic in the US has 5 case studies and 3 relate to hearing loss and causes were with acoustic neuromas, diabetes and blockage. Their listed treatments for tinnitus is the same shit we've seen for the last 2 decades. TRT, hearing aids, etc... I don't see them divulging details of any kind cures to hearing loss. You can't even talk to a doctor without making an appointment first. Why can't I just text them and ask them how exactly will they restore my hearing? Not gonna happen. Oh and it's $500 just to get a consult if you don't have insurance.

I do see Mimbo Shim outputting data and testimonials, making himself available. See if your own ENT would do the same. I doubt it. I think we need to pull our claws back a little and be a bit more understanding to his behavior like missing the conference or being abrupt via email. I email my ENT and he doesn't have time to reply, he has to have his assistant do it. I think many here see Mimbo Shim has a magical unicorn that is always available with all the right answers. No, he's a busy ass doctor but does more than most but I agree more specifics would be helpful because it is a large investment and the trip alone is very difficult, hearing wise, for many of us. It could cause a huge spike or raise our baseline and I hope he understands why we would like a little bit more reassurance because of the risks we have to take just getting there. I myself would have to go by boat.

Let's start approaching this realistically in a more reasonable manner.

1. Has @Markku or @Jack Straw reached out to Dr. Minbo Shim yet to invite him onto the Podcast? If and when that happens please share the outcome of that invite.

2. @JohnAdams can you reach out to Dr. Minbo Shim as well and invite him to speak on the Tinnitus Talk Podcast? You have formed the best relationship with him than any of us and it may help coming from you as well. You and @GlennAz have implied that he is a caring doctor and I believe you two when you say that and I hope you can convey to him that we are a community in suffering that is very interested in his work and that we sure could use a bit of that caring right now and for him to give us a little bit of his time when permitted from his crazy schedule and help us understand how he may be able to help us.

3. Let's get a real devil's advocate and instead of us assuming this is a scam and doesn't work, let's get medical professionals in related fields to get on the Tinnitus Talk Podcast and tell us why Dr. Minbo Shim's protocol doesn't work. No more arm chair doctors. I want the real deal, on camera, on the record, explaining to us if this a scam, then why.

Everyone deserves respect. Let's not jump to conclusions and let's get to the facts and keep things realistic. And always ask yourself when passing judgment, what would my own ENT do. Mine just offered me a free phone for the hearing impaired so at least I have that going for me.

 

Thank you for that.

You guys do realize that I have spent a month+ of my life this year in Minbo's clinic. I have had very many in depth discussions with him, even outside the clinical setting, lunch, dinner etc.

Even before I went, I had researched his patent and how this may be legitimate etc. Why do you think I keep bringing up IGF-1? There are peer reviewed published medical studies about human clinical trials regarding IGF-1 in the restoration of hearing through the regenration of hair cells. PRP contains IGF-1.

IGF-1, IGF-1, IGF-1, IGF-1, IGF-1, IGF-1

The path forward in research is IGF-1.
@David @Markku @Hazel @Steve

It sure as HELL isn't mindfulness. We have a potential shortcut to healing through PRP, which contains IGF-1.

Quit harping on Minbo Shim. He is a brave man that put the puzzle pieces together as an independent ENT and realized PRP has IGF-1. Would he use pure IGF-1 I'd he could? YES. The next best thing is PRP.

Frequency Therapeutics's FX-322 isn't going to be approved for several years, and if we want to have an escape from tinnitus TORTURE anytime soon, it's going to be through intratympanic injections of bone marrow and PRP.

Stop obsessing over Minbo's unorthodox practices. He as a man isnt even required to dig into this further. I've already explained everything. Only mental midgets are still worried about him as a man.

Tell @David to man up and actually fund research into a real treatment instead of being a loser and funding mindfulness research and drawing mindless road maps towards a cure that include Tai Chi as a possible cure.

Tinnitus Hub, which runs this site, and the BTA are friends. We, as a community, need to be pushing towards expediency in developing a publicly available treatment for this torture, whether it's accelerated approval of FX-322 or use of PRP or whatever.

The beauty of PRP is that, in America at least, any willing ENT could perform this procedure.

Stop even mentioning Minbo Shim. After this post, if you bring up him, or his lack of published material, then you're an idiotic loser. I've explained the science behind this, and backed it up with true human clinical trial research. The BTA, unfortunately, is a god in the tinnitus world and with a very small advocacy campaign, could easily get the ball rolling on this, completely irregardless of Minbo Shim's involvement.

@David