Public Forum
Default group for all members. Biological family sometimes get you down? Come join your logical family!
Organizers:
- Organized by
-
-
How Much Do You Know About Low-Dose Naltrexone (LDN)?
-
How Much Do You Know About Low-Dose Naltrexone (LDN)?
I was fascinated to watch this interview with Professor Angus Dalgleish and to learn the remarkable story behind low-dose naltrexone (LDN).
Like many repurposed medicines, LDN began life with a completely different purpose. In the 1980s, Dr. Bernard Bihari was using naltrexone to help patients recovering from heroin and morphine addiction. As he reduced their doses, many patients asked to remain on a much lower dose because they noticed unexpected improvements in conditions such as multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, arthritis, and other autoimmune or inflammatory disorders.
The most important part of the story? He listened to his patients.
Rather than dismissing what they were telling him, Dr. Bihari worked with colleagues to investigate why these effects might be occurring. This led to research suggesting that low-dose naltrexone temporarily blocks opioid receptors, triggering biological responses that may influence both the immune and endocrine systems.
Professor Dalgleish became interested after one of his own oncology patients experienced unexpectedly positive results while being treated with Dr. Bihari. Curious, he travelled to meet Dr. Bihari and better understand both the drug and its proposed mechanisms.
Professor Dalgleish then began offering LDN to patients with advanced cancers who had exhausted conventional treatment options. He noticed that some patients continued returning for repeat prescriptions, prompting him to re-scan several of them. In some cases, tumours that had been expected to progress appeared to remain stable, leading him to investigate possible mechanisms further, including the potential role of inflammatory pathways such as IL-6.
Of course we are on repeat …even with promising observational results, we are unlikely to see the large RCT needed for this cheap generic drug.
It’s another interview from one of fantastic senior fellow’s, watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Y_ShsPTpQ
-
4 Replies
-
I’ve been taking it for about a month and a half, along with myriad other repurposed drugs, as part of a protocol for cancer. It’s really too soon to tell what effect it is having. I have also been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. (I gather this isn’t common in men, but I guess I’m the exception.) I’ve taken some steps to reduce thyroid antibodies in addition to the LDN, and will be interested to see if the numbers improve. (I’ll be tested again in August.) Naltrexone, as prescribed for addiction, may be cheap but I have to get mine compounded from a local pharmacy. It’s not prohibitively expensive, but I wouldn’t call it cheap, either. Medicare doesn’t cover it, like almost everything else I’m doing. Everything I buy at retail adds up!
-
Thank you for sharing your experience. I hope your August tests provide some helpful answers.
Your point about cost is also important. While naltrexone itself is an inexpensive generic medication, low-dose naltrexone often has to be specially compounded, which can make it significantly more expensive and, as you’ve experienced, it’s not always covered by insurance or Medicare.
Stories like yours highlight why promising observations deserve proper scientific investigation.
Unfortunately, as we have seen time and time again, because LDN is a generic drug, securing funding for the large randomized clinical trials needed to answer these questions can be much more difficult.
Please let us know how you get on.
-
-
About the big kahuna RCTs, why couldn’t it be feasible for individual integrative physicians handling their cancer cases to funnel their patients’ blood and other fluid tests, their X-rays, miscellaneous imaging results, and other clinical diagnostic and after-repurposed drug result data into a clearing house sponsored by and managed by the many collaborating Senior Fellows of the IMA?
Because this effort would amass a variety of case histories, it would probably approximate the scientific quality of an RCT – especially if it included lab tests that examined biomarkers that probed the veracity of the Warburg effect at every possible point of every patient’s treatment.
Of course, this kind of clinical “clearing house” would require informed consent and permissions paperwork to comply with privacy laws. These permissions might easily flow from the participating patients, because not only would their highly stratified and intensely analyzed case histories inform their own therapies, their publication in the Journal of Independent Medicine would strengthen the science underlying them, and help the entire population of cancer patients.
-
A collaborative registry or “clearing house” where physicians contribute standardized clinical data, laboratory results, imaging, outcomes, and patient-reported experiences could become an incredibly valuable source of real-world evidence. A great idea.
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges isn’t the science, it’s building the infrastructure, securing funding, and encouraging enough physicians to contribute data consistently. But it’s certainly an idea worth exploring.
-
Log in to reply.