Re: Your Treatments

Dear Tadao,

Thank-you for your informative and encouraging message which I much
appreciate. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with many of the terms you use as I
have hardly ever studied the structure and function of the ear before but
sometime late last year I began a detailed study of the eye. Your message
inspires me to also begin a study of the ear and I will probably go back and
reread what you said many times again in the future.

The medical name for my condition is called Usher syndrome (US) which is a
combination of nerve (sensorineural?) deafness and Retinitis pigmentosa (RP)
which is estimated to affect 3 to 5 persons per 100,000 (at least in North
America). According to Western science it is a hereditary disease and
researchers have identified the gene(s) responsible for it. There is no
known cure but recently there has been some success at implanting a bionic
retina behind the retinas of several RP patients in the U.S.

My Chinese acupuncture doctor, Prof. Xi, speaks very little English and most
of the communication between us is done through an interpreter, usually on
Saturdays. I really don't know what his take is on the disease and what he
is attempting to do. It was through Sarah and her acupuncture doctor in HK
that I found out about the treatment and Prof. Xi. Sarah can communicate
with her doctor much better than I can with mine and so she was able to
gather some good information about the disease according to Chinese medicine
earlier last year. He says that the disease is caused by an evil wind virus
in the nerve sheathing/insulation and the trick is to get rid of the virus
by building up the immune system. Now I don't know if Prof. Xi agrees with
this or not but I think I mentioned it to him when I first contacted him by
letter last fall.

I was at the clinic again this morning and another Chinese interpreter (who
I had met once before) was present after my treatment. Most of the
discussion was focussed on: if and how the treatments will continue on after
I'm finished the first round in mid-July. The Prof. said that a full
recovery is not possible but there is certainly room for improvement.
The interpreter is also a patient of the Prof. and has the same eye disease
as I have but without the hearing loss and has been receiving treatments
from him for the past two years. He is quite young and drives a car and in
fact gave me a ride back to my place. I will keep you informed of any
significant improvement should it come about.

Best wishes,
Jim

> Hi, Jim:
> Nice to hear that you are responding to the Chinese treatments
> (to a certain degree). Judging from your description, I am guessing
> [in a conventional manner] that your impairments do not stem from
> the peripheral systems. That is, both your visual and auditory organs
> are intact. In many cases, hearing impariments are caused by an impaired
> cochlea, which functions as a FFT (Fast Fourier Transformer),
> decoding complex waveforms into simple (sine) waveforms. One end of
> the cochlea is sensitiv to the lowerest frequency and the other end
> the highestfrequency of decoded waveform (and the rest the in-between
> frequencies). As you may know that the cochilia is filled with two
> types of fluids being separted by so-called basilasr membrance,
> to which hair (nerve) cells are attached. Many patients with hearing
> impairments sucessfuly receive cochlea implants. (In fact, it is not
> an implant of the entire cochlea, but a (re-)wiring of auditory channels
> inside the organ.) In your case, the problem seems to be beyond the area
> of hair cells. My guess is that your Chinese doctor is trying to stimulate
> the limbic system, which contains such cerebral organs as thalamus,
> which seems to be regarded as the primary recepter of sensary (including
both
> visual and auditory) stimuli. At any rate, I think, it is quite normal to
> improve one's hearing in a selective manner (in auditory freuquency).
> Good luck with your further treatments, and please remind yourself of
"kantiyo
> paramag na vijjati".
> Take care, tadao



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