Want to know about LDN ....or should I say.. Do you want to know MORE about LDN.? By now, you should know the basics and then some if you have been reading my blogs that I've posted about the treatment
If you haven't watched anything or read anything about LDN, this is the one to watch. The doctor answers a lot of questions and talks about how the drug works. You'll understand it. Harvard-educated Bernard Bihari, MD is interviewed about his life, and his discovery of Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) for autoimmune diseases: multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease; also HIV/AIDS and some cancers. This video was given to me by Dr. Bihari's widow, Jacqueline Young.
The video is below. The interviewer isn't that great cause you can't hear him to well. Despite that, the Dr. is easy to understand and follow. This is a long video (fyi), not all may be interested if you don't care about knowing how the drug works to treat different diseases . I watched the whole thing because I like such action packed videos. lol Im such a nerd!
I wanted to hear what the man had to say about his advancements that he discovered through his lifetime. He's freaking awesome. He speaks a lot about the research he was working on before he passed away which was HIV/AIDS and cancer and how LDN really is helpful with regulating the immune system . But he's talking about the body and how the endorphins in the body effect the immune system/response. He touches on the following points that you may be interested in watching
I'm glad I watched this because I have a better understanding of how the medicine works in the body and helps balance/regulate the immune system. His theory suggests that people with cancer, aids, autoimmune diseases have a lower than normal amt of endorphins in the body. Its all about increasing the body's endorphins!
11:40 - talks about the improvement in AIDS patients with taking ldn, also talks about cancer patients
16:10 - He speaks about LDN and the endorphins.
18:45 - cell death (cancer cells)caused by endorphins
**20:19 - 23:00 ** I would def watch this part. good explaining about the importance of endorphins more about how ldn works in the body (cancer patients... speaks about low endorphins and how LDN raises the level of endorphins in the body)
51:10 - the different endorphin receptors and what they effect in the body. interesting
He says around 30K-40K people take LDN.
& Here it is...LISTEN ---> 57:09 - 100:20 Touches on Autoimmune Diseases FINALLY. My undertsanding of how this works goes like this I think. - .our t-helper cells get out of wack and get impaired some how... (probably by a bacteria, that throws it off) that therefore effects our killer cells & macrophages which get confused with the self vs the bacteria/fungus. They get confused and attack own tissue/cells and not the foreign bacteria. From what he says I think the LDN enhances the functioing of the t-cells by increasing the endorphin levels, the endorphins then regulate immune response
101:13 - the amount it costs to run clinical trials for LDN for each condition. not sure if he said 15 or 50 million for the 1st 3 trials. He says that finding a drug company that would want to run the trials, work w/ FDA, ability to manufacturer , distribute and then advertise is difficult.
1:04:40 - talked about low toxicity rate... it doesn't exist. That's so bomb!, the cost (super cheap).. Those aspects are probably the main reason LDN will never get approved to treat any other condition.. There's no money to make with this medicine, what would be the incentive.... to make people better... Yeah ok!! LOL Guess doctors will just have to continue to write it as "off label use".
Background of Low Dose Naltrexone LDN
Naltrexone was licensed in 1984 by the FDA in a 50 mg dose as a treatment for heroin addiction. It is a pure opiate antagonist (blocking agent) and its purpose was to block the opioid receptors that heroin acts on in the brain. When it was licensed, Dr. Bihari, then involved in running programs for treating addiction, tried it in more than 50 heroin addicts who had stopped heroin use. None of the patients would stay on the drug because of side effects experienced at 50 mg such as insomnia, depression, irritability and loss of feelings of pleasure, all due to the effect of the drug at this dose in blocking endorphins. These are the hormones in the body that heroin resembles. Physicians treating heroin addicts therefore, for the most part, stopped prescribing naltrexone. In 1985, a large number of heroin addicts began to get sick with AIDS—studies showed that 50% of heroin addicts were HIV Positive.
Dr. Bihari and his colleagues decided to shift their research focus to AIDS, in particular focusing on ways of strengthening the immune system. Since endorphins are the hormones centrally involved in supporting and regulating the immune system, levels of endorphins were measured in the blood of AIDS patients. They were found to average only 25% of normal.
Naltrexone, when given to mice and people at high doses, raises endorphin levels in the body's effort to overcome the naltrexone blockade. This drug became the focus of Dr. Bihari's research group. When the group discovered that endorphins are almost all produced in the middle of the night, between 2 AM and 4 AM, the studies focused on small doses (1.5-4.5 mg at bedtime) with the hope that a brief period of endorphin blockade before 2 AM might induce an increase in the body's endorphin production. In fact, the drug did so in this dosage range. It had no effect below 1.5 mg and too much endorphin blockade at doses over 5 mg. A placebo-controlled trial in AIDS patients showed a markedly better outcome in patients on the drug as compared with those on placebo.
During the trial, a close friend of Dr. Bihari's daughter had three acute episodes of multiple sclerosis over a nine-month period with complete spontaneous recovery from each. Because of his knowledge of MS as a neurologist and of recent evidence of an autoimmune component in the disease, Dr. Bihari started his daughter's friend on naltrexone at 3 mg every night at bedtime. She took it for five years with no further attacks. At that point, when a particular month's supply ran out, she stopped it because of some denial that she had MS. Three and a half weeks later, she developed an episode of weakness, numbness, stiffness and spasms in her left arm and resumed LDN, which she has stayed on since. This episode cleared and over the 12 years since, she has had no further disease activity.
The apparent mechanism of action of LDN in this disease parallels that in AIDS and other immune-related diseases. A small dose of the drug taken nightly at bedtime doubles or triples the endorphin levels in the body all of the next day restoring levels to normal. Since endorphin levels are low in people with MS, immune function is poorly orchestrated with significant impairment of the normal immune supervisory function of CD4 cells. In the absence of normal orchestration of immune function, some of the immune system cells "forget" their genetically determined ability to distinguish between the body's 100,000 unique chemical structures (called "self") and the chemical structures of bacteria, fungi, parasites and cancer cells (called "non-self"). With this loss of immunologic memory, some cells begin to attack some of the body's unique chemical structures. In the case of people with MS, the tissue attacked by immune cells (particularly macrophages) is primarily the myelin that insulates nerve fibers. These attacks result in scars in the brain and spinal cord called plaques. LDN in such patients works by restoring endorphin levels to normal, thereby allowing the immune system to resume its normal supervision and orchestration.
There exists a common notion that the immune system in a person with an autoimmune disorder is too strong and, in its exuberance, targets a body tissue for attack. Rather, the evidence is more consistent with autoimmunity resulting from immunodeficiency.1 Kukreja et al have demonstrated that multiple immunoregulatory T cell defects lie behind Type 1 diabetes both in humans and in non-obese diabetic mice.2
Multiple scientific papers from various other research centers have demonstrated that an underlying immunodeficiency is characteristic of any tested autoimmune disease. Examples thus far reported include multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, and chronic fatigue syndrome.3, 4, 5
Sacerdote et al measured low beta-endorphin levels in two animal examples of autoimmune disease — a mouse strain with a lupus-like syndrome and a strain of chicken with an autoimmune thyroiditis.6 They had significantly lower hypothalamic concentrations of the opioid than normal controls. In each case, the low levels of beta-endorphin were found well before the expression of autoimmune disease. This adds to considerable evidence of a key role for endorphins in regulating immune responses and suggests a therapeutic pathway.
Bihari et al found that a low oral dose of the opioid antagonist naltrexone, when taken at bedtime, led to a doubling or tripling of low levels of circulating beta-endorphin.7 Bihari has since treated some 100 people with autoimmune disorders. None of them has progressed further while the patient continued taking low dose naltrexone each night at bedtime. Since no side effects are apparently associated with its use, this medication might well be studied as a possible preventive for Type I diabetes in those youngsters with beta-cell autoantibodies.
- Buckley RH. Primary Immunodeficiency Diseases Due to Defects in Lymphocytes. N Engl J Med. 2000; 343:1313-1324.
- Kukreja A, Cost G, Marker J, et al. Multiple immuno-regulatory defects in type-1 diabetes. J Clin Invest. 2002;109(1):131-40.
- Thewissen M, Linsen L, Somers V, Geusens P, Raus J, Stinissen P.Premature immunosenescence in rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis patients. Ann N Y Acad Sci. Jun 2005;1051: 255-62.
- Marks DJ, Harbord MW, MacAllister R, Rahman FZ, Young J, Al-Lazikani B, Lees W, Novelli M, Bloom S, Segal AW. Defective acute inflammation in Crohn's disease: a clinical investigation. Lancet. Feb 2006;367 (9511): 668-78.
- Vernon SD, Reeves WC. The challenge of integrating disparate high-content data: epidemiological, clinical and laboratory data collected during an in-hospital study of chronic fatigue syndrome. Pharmacogenomics. Apr 2006;7 (3): 345-54.
- Sacerdote P, Lechner O, Sidman C, et al. Hypothalamic beta-endorphin concentrations are decreased in animals models of autoimmune disease. J Neuroimmunol. 1999;97(1-2):129-33.
- Bihari B, Drury FM, Ragone VP, et al. Low Dose Naltrexone in the Treatment of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Oral Presentation at the IV International AIDS Conference, Stockholm, Jun 1988.
Dr. Skip Lenz at the 08 LDN Conference at USC,
www.skipspharmacy.com - Very good Compounding Pharmacy for LDN
Video talks about taking other drugs with LDN (pain meds)
Dr. Lenz talks about patients' symptoms prior to taking LDN, after taking LDN & side-effects
(aw poor guy. he said he only makes 32 cents/mo from the sales of LDN (fyi-he owns skips pharmacy..
He says about 4500 doctors write scripts for LDN in the US(these are just #'s at his pharmacy)
He mentions how many people w/ Crohns take LDN from his pharmacy, 200 I believe. and he called Crohnies amazing people.. hahaa Go to 1:33. He mentions Crystal the chick w/ the list of all doctors that prescribes LDN across the US and many other countries. She was very helpful to me when i was searching for a prescribing Dr. (If you'd like to know which doctors prescribe in your area, just let me know. I will give you her contact info)
Naltrexone is an opiate antagonist drug developed in the 1970s and approved by the FDA in 1984 for opiate and drug abuse treatment. When used at much lower doses in an off-label protocol referred to as low dose naltrexone (LDN), the drug has been shown to halt disease progression in Crohn's disease and certain cancers, to reduce symptoms in multiple sclerosis and autism, and to improve numerous autoimmune and neurodegenerative conditions, including Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Grounded in clinical and scientific research, this book describes the history of naltrexone, its potential therapeutic uses, its effects on the immune system, its pharmacological properties, and how the drug is administered. It also lists fillers and compounding pharmacies, doctors who prescribe LDN, and patient resources, and includes interviews with LDN patients and researchers. *Author: Moore, Elaine A./ Wilkinson, Samantha/ Agrawal, Yash Pal *Binding Type: Paperback *Number of Pages: 213 *Publication Date: 2008/12/04 *Language: English *Dimensions: 8.80 x 5.90 x 0.70 inches
The 200 genes so far linked to Crohn's are more than have been found for any other disease, according to the researchers. For example, just 66 gene regions are known for type 2 diabetes.
