South Korean Clinic Treatment (Dr. Minbo Shim)

So, did he decide to measure higher then 8khz ? Did he address this possible hi freq loss ?

Its possible I misunderstood something, dont think so though .

 

If Minbo was hurting people wouldn't some of the Koreans that have gotten this treatment have sued him and had him shut down?

I've search for any malpractice cases involving him and cannot find any. I've searched in English and Korean.

 

If you are referring to my comments then I doubt that he is hurting people as such , thing is , its easy for grandma to be happy about hearing her grandkids better after treatment even though she lost the ability to hear the top end in her harmonica music . Top end she was hardly ever aware of or just lost her hearing in the top end 30 years ago.

What I am saying is that a lot of people will not instantly recognize that they lost hearing above 10 k.
No professional audio people will go for his treatment until he can answer these hi freq questions, I am pretty sure of that.

 

I think this can be reversed with more shots. I will have to check.

 

It just seems so basic to me that if you are doing this procedure, you know exactly what it does to your hearing...that includes above 8khz. Theoretically we can hear up to 20khz. I could hear up to 18khz before I had my hearing problems. Often dealing with mixing issues at 15 -17 khz.

Also, my T is probably about 14-15 Khz. So what effect it has on those freq is quite relevant.

 

I wasn't even specifically referring to your posts. I was just musing out loud asking the whole thread questions.

 

please ask him for us!

 

From my research into this technology, I don't think there is a way to know exactly how it will affect each case.

I also don't see how it could negatively affect HF but help others. The only physiological difference between the frequencies is the size of the cochlea. It acts like a Low Pass Filter that sweeps as it goes deeper.

The only thing I can think is that the substance he uses act in a dose dependent manner, which makes sense.
In my research into all of this, the growth factors studied seem to also work in a dose dependent manner, however I never saw anything about any negative affects.

It would be nice if some corporation would pony up and conduct large scale clinical testing of this technology. I just don't know how much money a corporation could make off PRP that anyone can make.

Can you even really patent PRP intratympanic injections? PRP is open source, so is intratympanic injection technology, I think.

 

well, one of us needs to go get this treatment to just be able to answer these questions........

maybe I will do it. At this point I'm willing to take the risk.

 

I think it was @vaka that did a summary of his measurements and saw a decrease in hi freq hearing.
We dont know if that was a measurement taken soon after and if that is the cause or what .
Also , no long term follow ups that I am aware of , in short , pretty unprofessionally handled.

 

in his patents it says that he did follow ups 120 days later.

About 2 days to about 120 days after initial administration of PRP, the pure-tone audiometric test was performed as described in 1. From the obtained test results, to examine a difference between before administration and after administration at each frequency, an SPSS WIN 18.0 program was used to perform the t-test.

Pure-tone audiometric test results of the left and right ears are given in Tables 1 and 2, respectively and graphs thereof are shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, respectively.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2017/0056447.html

 

TTalk needs to make a Guinea Pig badge and or trophy for anyone that goes over there.

 

Looks like he is a registered member of Tinnitus Talk. So if he wishes answer the various questions people are asking about the treatment, he is all set up with Tinnitus Talk to make posts and share with us.

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/members/drshimminbo.34861/

 

I suggest email for now. He wanted to wait until his papers are ready to avoid being harassed by super skeptics.

 

Thanks for tagging me in this. That sounds pretty interesting @Arseny. I would experiment and go, but my V. High frequencies are my concern as well. I want him to say why it causes issues up there and not anywhere else

 

I think he patented a specific formula, so I think it's doable.

The loss is indeed weird, and I am definitely curious on why it happens. But I am certain that it can be reversed with another treatment, because if it's healing everywhere else, then whatever happened could probably wash out and be repaired. If multiple treatments can improve the effectiveness of regenerating a frequency, then odds are it can also balance out any anomalies.

 

"Yes,It's reversible. I think sometimes there happened 'damping effect' especially when some unwanted RBCs were included in my solution. That RBCs could become a clot in the middle ear and prevent transmission of sound. That clot usually affects high frequency more. It takes about 1~2 month until complete elimination of that residues. So sometimes it looks as if there happened high frequency hearing losses. Anyway, these phenomena were gone in 1~2months in all of my patients. I felt it wasn't a big deal so I showed the whole results as it is even though I thought some people might worry about this phenomenon. And there days, I seldom experience that phenomenon, mostly because I've been trying to purify my solution more."

Quote from Shim.

@RaZaH @Daniel Lion @humptydumpty69 @PDodge

 

Why wouldn't it just fix up the high end first though? Seeing as they're at the entrance of the cochlea

 

So if you only do stem cells there is no risk of blood clot and high frequency loss?

 

From my research it looks like stem cells alone do nothing. I'm just guessing here but to me it seems like the growth factors were needed to make the stem cells differentiate into haircells.

 

Hmmm.
I don't know about the purity of the local prp formula.
I think somebody in the forum got stem cells injections in trigger points near ears and got an improvement?
Maybe I should try stem cells with prp injected in the space near the eardrum so there's no risk of blood clot inside cochlea?
I mean 30-50% reduction will make a significant difference for me.
I want to try adipose intravenous with hope it will help, but mainly to treat allergies.

 

That sounds good , now we just need measurements higher then 8 k , not only to see if there is damage , I would like to know of there are improvements , every other middle aged audio engineer would go to Shim for that , T or no t.

 

Just food for thought here, but people can recover some hearing loss (from SSHL) without doing anything at all. As Dr Kohan says in this recent article regarding potential treatments: “far more studies, with much more stringent criteria and controlled variables are required to make more definitive conclusions."

I’ll paste an excerpt below which you may find useful:

Sensorineural hearing loss occurs in about 1 out of 10,000 people," said Dr. Darius Kohan, and is thought to be triggered by a viral infection or circulatory problems within the ear. Kohan directs otology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

He said that 1 in every 3 people will get their hearing back without any treatment. For the other two-thirds of patients, drugs -- most often steroids -- are used, as well as hyperbaric oxygen.

In this treatment, patients are placed in a device that boosts oxygen levels in the inner ear.

But just how well does the therapy work? To find out, Rhee's group looked at data from 19 studies that compared outcomes for people with sensorineural hearing loss. Patients either received drug therapy alone or drug therapy plus hyperbaric oxygen. A total of more than 2,400 patients, averaging 45 years of age, were included.

The team found that people who got the combo therapy were 61 percent more likely to achieve complete hearing recovery compared to people who only got medicines. The average amount of hearing recovery was also higher, overall, for people who got both therapies rather than drugs alone.

Also, hyperbaric oxygen appeared most helpful for those patients who had experienced the most profound hearing loss.

Therefore, adding hyperbaric oxygen therapy to steroids or other drug treatment seems to be a "reasonable option" for people with this form of sudden hearing loss, Rhee's team said.

Kohan did have a few caveats, however. First, he said the analysis couldn't control for certain variables -- the dosage and timing of drug treatment, for example, or the presence (or not) of vertigo or tinnitus (ringing in the ears), which often accompanies sudden hearing loss.

He believes that "far more studies, with much more stringent criteria and controlled variables are required to make more definitive conclusions."

Finally, there's the cost of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The study found that benefits usually appeared after at least 20 hours of therapy, and Kohan noted that hyperbaric oxygen typically costs $300 per hour in the United States.


https://consumer.healthday.com/hear...n-therapy-for-sudden-hearing-loss-738095.html


It’s difficult to differentiate what is influencing what, or what is causing what when it comes to our ears and hearing loss (in particular SSHL). This is why I’m so sceptical of Dr Shim as he hasn’t done any studies.

 

Indeed , it's hard for me to swallow that he wants to be taken seriously end even sells his treatment with no real studies.

 

That matches what Shim has said, that he thought Stem cells alone didn't do much, and growth factors were the key.

 

​

He released the results of a study he did on 20 humans.

"First, to examine hearing of the subjects (n=20) before PRP administration, a pure-tone audiometric test was performed on the right ear (“RT”) and the left ear (“LT”) of each subject using a pure-tone audiometric tester, Earscan (Micro Audiometrics). Results of the pure-tone audiometric test were obtained from the subjects before administration of PRP to their tympanic cavity. Of the subjects, one subject was administered with dexamethasone nineteen times, but no hearing improvement was observed."

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170056447A1/en

He just hasn't been published in a medical journal, but he still did the study, that is unless he has fabricated all of this.

Are you saying he has fabricated all of this? And if so, what evidence do you have?


Here is a published study from 2017 in the International Tinnitus Journal that shows they have investigated a very similar technique using growth factors and mesenchymal stem cells to grow into hair cells.

TERMS:
Neural-induced human mesenchymal stem cells (NI-hMSCs), Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), Auditoryneuropathy (AN), Spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs)

"In this study, we attempted to differentiated human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells) hBMSCs (to auditory hair cells using growth factors."

"Growth factors increased the expression of ATOH1 "

[[[my notes: ATOH1 is what Novartis's CGF-166, which has been proven to restore hearing is based on viral vector application of ATOH1.
"It uses a gene know as Atoh1 which causes hair cells in mammals to grow in the embryo stage, and then shuts off. With CGF166, Atoh1 is added to a harmless virus which binds to cells in the cochlea and tells them to begin growing hair cells again."
https://www.hearinglossjournal.com/cgf166-latest-news/]]]

"Results show the potential of NI-hBM-MSCs to give rise to replace the lost cochlear cells in hearing loss mammals."

"TransplantedBM-MSCs actually invaded the injured area and contributed to the structural reorganization of the injured cochlea, BM-MSCs transplantation improves incomplete hearing recovery."

"ABR results showed mild hearing recovery after transplantation. neural differentiated BM-MSCs are able to restore damaged SGNs and decrease hearing thresholds in an AN model."

SOURCE:
http://www.tinnitusjournal.com/arti...-to-hair-cells-using-growth-factors-9090.html


So, at this point, there is an profound amount of evidence suggesting that he has found a viable method to restore at least some hearing loss.

If you want to accuse him of fabricating all of the before and after audiograms and declare that the testimonials he has released are all frauds that's on you.

 

Also from the above study:



[[[my notes: If you don't know what control vs treated means, control means they didn't treat that sample, or used a placebo and treated means they used the active compound(s) on the sample. You can see that the growth factors increased ATOH1]]]

http://www.tinnitusjournal.com/arti...-to-hair-cells-using-growth-factors-9090.html

The key has always been to increase ATOH1.

That was the basis of the curcumin experiment I did on myself, I was trying to upregulate the expression of ATOH1 in my body. It just didn't work.

Increased ATOH1 expression is what notch inhibition accomplishes.

"Hair cell generation resulted from an increase in the level of bHLH transcription factor, Atoh1, in response to inhibition of Notch signaling."

"To find the most potent inhibitor we tested several known drugs, DAPT, L-685458, MDL28170, and LY411575, for their effect on hair cell differentiation from utricular spheres derived from neonatal Math1-nGFP reporter mice (Lumpkin et al., 2003). LY411575 had the highest potency"

Source:
Notch Inhibition Induces Cochlear Hair Cell Regeneration and Recovery of Hearing after Acoustic Trauma
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3573859/

Correct me if I'm wrong but, notch inhibition and upregulation of ATOH1 is the basis of the drug fx-322.

 

I’m saying it’s bizarre that he hasn’t published a study to prove that his approach works (like any other scientist/doctor). He has been doing this procedure for quite a while now and yet he has no published work at all. Would you have experiential heart surgery from a guy that’s never been published? The whole point of the peer review process is to root out bad science and to prove to the world that your methods are legit (or at least show clinical efficacy). He is not setting himself up to be taken seriously at all.

How could he say this with a straight face:



“There is no reason to be hurried for me to publish?”

Are you kidding me? There’s every reason. He should have done this way before he started charging people top dollar to be experimented on. Where’s the evidence to back up his claims? There is nothing that would make me trust this guy and about 10 or more reasons why I wouldn’t.

And finally, I never went to Dr Shim, but my audiogram results - before and after around 8 months or so - showed improvements of 15db on some frequencies.




My latest audiogram that was done about two months or so ago (I don’t have a print out) showed even more improvement. Essentially, my latest audiogram was near enough a straight line on 0 dBHL in both ears. It was pretty much perfect and in some frequencies, my hearing even goes above 0, and yet my tinnitus is very intrusive, loud, and multi-tonal. I obviously have some hidden hearing loss, somewhere, or some kind of nerve/synaptic damage.

I note that many people’s audiograms are like mine. Take @Yoshi for example. I’ll quote one of his posts below:

The thing with audiograms is that a lot of things can influence their results. Speaking for myself, the three audiograms I've had done this year have wildly fluctuated within a 5-10 dB range. The first audiogram I got showed a 15 dB threshold near 3 kHz with a jagged pattern from 250 Hz to 8 kHz. When I had it done again recently, it was a straight line through 5 dB for all frequencies. Many factors impact your audiogram, such as the presence of wax, anxiety, stress, the equipment used, the tests performed, the frequencies tested, and many else. Your audiologist will treat anything <25 dB as normal though, so you could hypothetically drop from 0 to 15 dB in one frequency, which would be noticeable to you, and your audiologist will still think your hearing is normal if you don't have a previous audiogram to compare with. I felt like dpdx did immediately after my tinnitus appeared, music sounded flat, distorted, and hollow for some reason, but when I had my hearing tested the audiologist said it was normal. If you feel your hearing isn't as good, you have hearing loss for whatever reason, simple as that. Audiograms are much too imprecise for people whose hearing aren't severely impaired.

Dr Shim needs to do a hell of a lot more than post dodgy looking audiograms on a website. The onus is on him to prove his legitimacy to you; not the other way round. The fact you have to do so much digging speaks volumes. World class pioneers don’t need researching. Their work speaks for itself and everybody knows about it.

 

Dana White said he went to a PRP clinic in Germany and they cured his vertigo 100%. Why isn't that published? Why hasn't the world recognized this ground breaking treatment? Is Dana White part of a conspiracy to get people to fly around the world to get PRP treatments that don't work?

 

How can you confirm what he says is true, and where are all the other testimonies? You cannot prove clinical efficacy with just one person as there are too many variables at play. Why isn’t PRP standard treatment for Meniere's? Why isn’t PRP held in high regard within the scientific community?

There are lots of questions and not many answers, and this is why we need properly controlled and well-designed studies.