Florical drug information

Kat:

Twenty years ago Dr diagnosed me bilateral otoslerosis and I´m not a surgery candidate then give me just one option . . . take Florical . . . for years I took it but now Dr. recomended me take it again for ever.

As I told you recently I have been losing hearing rapidly.

Regards

Have you considered if you might be a candidate for a BAHA (bone anchored hearing aid)?

If you hae mostly a conductive hearing loss from otosclerosis with good sensorineural (nerve) hearing, you may be a candidate.

If you look on your audiogram and see that marking such as a > (left) or < (right) that are much better than the o (right) and X (left), then you may be a candidate.

I was prescribed Fluotic (sodium flouride) tablets when I was first diagnosed with otosclerosis several years ago. I took it for approximately a year along with a calcium supplement. It’s debatable whether it had any effect on the progression of the disease in my ear. I now have approximately 60dB conductive hearing loss and constant tinnitus.

that isnt too uncommon. I have heard of many people taking Fluotic and getting no results from it.

I haven’t known anyone who has benefitted from years of fluoride treatment. And high-dose fluoride is NOT the safest medication in the pharmacopeia. It has always seemed that fluoride prescription is a case of: “we can’t do a stapedectomy, but since we’re doctors we should prescribe SOMETHING…who knows, it MIGHT work!”

I think the only sensible interventions with otosclerosis are stapedectomy by a person with a long proven track record, or hearing aids.

My partner had two stapedectomies 25 years apart and now has superb hearing in both ears. I alas, have nerve deafness…so its hearing aids.

Interestingly, that is what some have suggested, not Mexico but Canada.
Unfortunately, I wouldn’t begin to figure out how to find someone in Canada either…
But thank you.

why dont you open the yellow pages?
goggle it via internet…

I would personally prefer to go to Canada - any day

Donna,

I dont know if he is any Good or not ive never had the stapedectomy but my ENT does do it and has been doing it for 20 ish years he says both the standard stapedectomy and a new slightly different version (honeslty dont know much about it)

He has a good reputation in the area and The Medical clinic my wife works for uses him for everything ENT even though he is from a Competeing medical clinic/company (take that for what its worth <shrugs>)

He is in the South western wisconsin area in Lacross Wisconsin on the missipi river with gunderson lutheran here is a link to him. http://www.gundluth.org/web/providers.nsf/39fe71ad8336951a862569fb007a52bc/cd41313ddb7a7ecb862569ba004fb627!OpenDocument

his name is brian seick.

He has done great with me for not surgical things in the last 2 years… and im going to get nasal surgury to remove a growth that has closed off all my nasal passages in may… i cannot and will not endorse him as i really have no right… its up to the indevidual person but you may want to talk with him he gave me both the option of stapedectomy or the bone anchor hearing aid… or using the standard hearing aid … ill try the hearing aid route myself first i dont like surgury ive had it too many times and dont react well to it … but the nose surgury im having is unavoidable … the grown has grown to the point that i cant breath at all and its completly destroyed my septum and causing headaches now. if your not in a hurry i can Email you my results and experience from the surgury and him in may when thats complete

I just found this forum. I have mixed loss due to otsclorosis and have had a failed primay and revision surgery in one ear. The doc who did the surgeries was a pioneer in this procedure (that may have been the problem, he was too old:confused: for this delicate procedure).

Anyhow, once I informed him I was done being cut open, he referred me to a doc who treats those with mixed loss due to otosclorosis medicinally. I have been seeing him for over a decade. During this decade, my loss has been very slowly getting worse (about 10dB over 10 years). I have a sister who is two years my senior and she also has hearing loss. Hers has progressed much more rapidly, to the point her loss is getting out of the range where hearing aids can help. The doc I see (Ken Brookler in NYC) has written a paper on his treatments. I am not a doctor, but I found his paper to be weak, the link between his treatment was not as strong as I would have liked to see. The bottom line is that my hearing has been doing much better then my sisters, so I intend on sticking with him.

His treatments are not ‘cookie cutter’ (i.e. everyone gets the same treatment), he keys on glucose absorption as one example. Initially I was using flourical (I believe six! daily), but he has change the mix to include perscription osteoperosis medications (fosamax, didronel), and only a dash of flourical. Also included in the mix are calcium and vitimen D.

He claims that in some instances the inner ear losses are even REVERSED to some degree with this treatment. Does it work? I do not know. I do know that my sister is almost totally deaf, and my father was also, so given that my hearing seems to be doing much better, I’ll stick with it!

I take Florical and do not notice any negative effects from it. I do notice that when I run out and don’t take it for a while, my tinnitis gets worse. Then when I start taking it again the tinnitis quiets down again. Dr Lippy of Warren Ohio did my stepedectomy in 1999. He did a wonderful job which improved my hearing significantly. Since then I’ve lost some hearing in that ear but it is still much better than it was. I’m now losing hearing in my other ear and may someday need surgery in that ear too. As a patient I would highly recommend Dr Lippy and his practice.

Regarding long-term effects of flouride, the national academy of sciences (NAS) has a report from 2006 which gives a comprehensive interpretation of the scientific literature. The NAS was tasked by the EPA with doing the review to evaluate safety of flouride supplementation of drinking water.

Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards

Read online, download a free PDF, or order a copy in print.

http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/epa/nrc/index.html

The report costs $50-$80 (on-line versus print).

For adults concerned about taking flouride supplements (like me), the report is inconclusive. Here is a summary as I understand it.

My recommended dose is about 10mg flouride (3 florical tablets) daily. The report recommends that the daily dose in water should not exceed about 1-2mg/liter (giving a typical person a maximum flouride dose of 2-3mg daily). Above 4mg/liter the report warns of adverse health consequences (summarized below).

The adverse health consequences discussed are mostly for developing kids or for people exposed to 4mg/L or more for decades. Most people considering flouride supplements are not in this category. So the report is not conclusive regarding supplements. Still, after reading the report, I am pretty sure I don’t want to take 10mg flouride per day for an extended period. A year makes me a little nervous.

The kinds of problems discussed in the report are:

• bones, muscles, teeth
• reproduction and development
• neurotoxicity (brain) and behavior
• endocrine (hormones)

The studies cited by the report are only suggestive, not conclusive. Existing studies done on humans are only epidemiological (studying population data, not doing experiments), and these seem to focus on children. The remaining studies are mainly on rats. These studies seem to show clear biological effects on bones and brains (and perhaps other organs, I didn’t read the full report) at daily dosages less than the rat-equivalent of 10mg. Whether these effects cause health problems is unclear.

Furthermore, the risks seem complicated. For example, some of the problems show up only if low levels of aluminum are also in the diet, and the level of aluminum matters – higher levels, or very low levels, lower the risk.

My summary conclusion is that there are probably some risks of taking 10mg/day flouride, although the degree of risk is not clear.

(continued from previous post)

On the other hand, I’ve been able to find a few studies (via pubmed) that suggest that flouride supplements can help slow down hearing loss.

note: 25 mg of sodium flouride = 11.3 mg of flouride (actually, florine)

• [Otospongiosis and sodium fluoride. A clinical double-blind, placebo-controlled study on sodium fluoride treatment in otospongiosis.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2655462)
Am J Otol. 1989 Jan;10(1):20-2.Links

(positive results on ~ 20 mg flouride/day)

“The effect of sodium fluoride treatment in patients with otospongiosis has been evaluated in a prospective clinical double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 95 patients. The results showed a statistically significant greater deterioration of hearing loss in the placebo group than in the group actively treated with 40 mg of sodium fluoride daily. These results support the view that sodium fluoride can change otospongiotic, active lesions to more dense, inactive otosclerotic lesions.”

• [Fluoride Therapy for Cochlear Otosclerosis? An Audiometric and Computerized Tomography Evaluation.](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cluster=2615447961535151138)
Acta Otolaryngol 2001; 121: 174 – 177

(positive results on ~ 11mg flouride/day; 1-2 years suffice; sample size ~ 20)

“The progress of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) in patients with cochlear otosclerosis was compared for 19 patients treated with fluoride for 1-5 years and 22 untreated controls. CT scans of eight patients before and after fluoride treatment were evaluated visually. Fluoride therapy arrested the progression of SNHL in the low (250, 500 and 1,000 Hz) (p<0.001) and high (2 and 4 kHz) (p=0.008) frequencies. It seemed to be more effective for the higher frequencies in cases with an initial SNHL of <50 dB. Fluoride administration for 4 years did not seem to be superior to a shorter treatment period (1-2 years). For six patients followed up after discontinuing fluoride therapy there was minimal deterioration in SNHL. There was no clear relationship between the size and site of otospongiotic lesions on CT and the severity of SNHL. Follow-up with CT evaluation did not provide reliable information as to the efficacy of fluoride therapy.”

• [Sodium fluoride: effectiveness of treatment for cochlear otosclerosis.](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cluster=9915185532078141485)
Am J Otol. 1986 Mar;7(2):121-5.

(positive results on ???/day; lifetime maintenance dose; sample size ~ 100)

“We examined the effectiveness of sodium fluoride in treatment of cochlear otospongiosis in ninety-four patients with cochlear otosclerosis and ninety-eight patients with stapedial otosclerosis and sensorineural hearing loss. The drug halted or slowed the progression of sensorineural hearing impairment in 63% of the patients with cochlear otosclerosis and 46% of the patients with stapedial otosclerosis. The single factor that best predicted which patients would respond most favorably to treatment was rate of progression before treatment. Sodium fluoride therapy was successful for 79% of the patients losing their hearing at a rate of 5 dB or more per year at one or more of the speech frequencies. The finding that patients with more rapid rates of progression responded most favorably to sodium fluoride therapy suggests that patients with the most active otospongiotic processes will be the most responsive to treatment.”

• [Sodium fluoride therapy](")
The American Journal of Otology. Issue: Volume 14(5), September 1993, p 482–490

A 1993 summary, encouraging use of sodium flouride.