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Naltrexone

 

 

Naltrexone – An amazing ‘low dose’ treatment for so many diseases...

 

What do multiple sclerosis (MS), HIV/AIDS, prostate cancer, myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease all have a common?

Not a lot you might think other than that they are all terrible diseases that can have devastating effects on the lives of their sufferers.

But these diseases do all share one very important feature and that is that they are all immunologically related disorders. In other words, they are all diseases in which the functioning of the immune system plays a key role.

Why, you may ask, is it so important to know that these diseases share this common feature? Well, it’s this fact that has proved crucial in the development of a remarkable treatment for such a seemingly diverse set of illnesses – namely low dose Naltrexone therapy.

Naltrexone is certainly not a new drug. It has been around for over thirty years, having originally being approved back in 1984 as a drug to help addicts come off heroin and opioids. It is also used to help alcoholics overcome their addiction. In this context, the usual dose of Naltrexone is 50mg. It acts to block the receptors in the brain that are triggered by the narcotics/alcohol, effectively stopping the drugs or alcohol having any effect on the patient.

However, in recent years it’s been the use of Naltrexone at much lower doses (typically about one tenth of the 50mg dose) that has really caused a stir in the medical community.

The clinical effects of Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) therapy were discovered by New York physician Dr Bernard Bihari. In 1985-86 Dr Bihari conducted groundbreaking clinical trials into the use of LDN therapy for those patients suffering from HIV/AIDS. Dr Bihari demonstrated that LDN therapy could be an effective treatment for protecting the ravaged immune systems of his HIV/AIDS patients. This discovery was truly remarkable especially when you consider that at the time HIV/AIDS was untreatable. Given such amazing results, Dr Bihari continued with his pioneering work into LDN therapy. He has now successfully used LDN to treat a whole range of diseases – but central to all these diseases is the fact that the immune system plays a key role.

Given the remarkable results that Dr Bihari was able to achieve, others have also joined him in the quest. As a result, LDN has been shown to hold considerable promise for the treatment of a whole host of diseases including:-

  • HIV/AIDS
  • Some cancers such as pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, carcinoid cancer, Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, lymphocytic leukaemia, neuroblastoma and colorectal cancer
  • Multiple sclerosis
  • Rheumatoid arthritis
  • Lupus (SLE)
  • Psoriasis
  • Behcet's Disease
  • Myalgic Encepalomyelitis (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)
  • Crohn’s disease
  • Hashimoto’s thyroiditis
  • Fibromyalgia
  • Parkinson’s disease
  • Alzheimer’s disease
  • Lou Gehrig’s disease

    •  

    Patients have reported amazing benefits including improved quality of life and, in some cases, remission from their illness.

    It would be impossible here to go into the details of how LDN can help in all of the above diseases but let’s look at in a little more detail at one or two of them.

    Cancer

    By mid 2004 Dr Bihari had treated over 300 patients with various cancers, all of whom had failed to respond to standard treatments. After 4-6 months of LDN therapy some 50% of cancer sufferers he was treating had begun to demonstrate a halt in their cancer growth and, over a third had shown significant tumour shrinkage. Dr Bihari has certainly not been alone in using LDN to treat cancer patients and, indeed, the 2006 LDN conference in the US was held at the National Cancer Institute in United States..

    Crohn’s Disease

    In a recent clinical trial conducted by Pennsylvania State University (reported 2007), researchers were able to demonstrate that LDN showed promise in helping Crohn’s disease sufferers by putting their disease into remission. In the pilot study involving 17 Crohn’s disease patients, almost 90% of the patients responded to LDN with 67% achieving remission – and this was after receiving a daily dose of LDN for just 12 weeks.

    Multiple sclerosis:

    The largest group of patients that Dr Bihari has worked with has been those suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS). Having treated around 400 MS patients with LDN, less than 1% experienced fresh MS attacks – providing they maintained regularly nightly treatment – an impressive result by anyone’s standard!

    One of the most recent studies into LDN therapy and MS was undertaken by a team from the University of California, San Francisco in early 2007. The results of these trials were presented in September 2008. The study involved 80 MS patients and after 8 weeks of LDN treatment significant improvements in quality of life had been achieved.

    So just how does Natrexone LDN therapy work?

    The generally accepted theory behind LDN therapy is that autoimmune diseases and diseases where the immune system plays a key role, must result, in part at the very least, from immunodeficiency.

    With LDN, the endorphin/opioid receptors in the brain are blocked for a few hours. During this time, endorphins cannot attach themselves to the receptors and the body compensates by creating more endorphins. Once the effects of LDN have worn off, the patient is left with normal rather than low levels of endorphins which, in turn, normalizes their otherwise compromised immune function.

    In other words, LDN boosts the immune system and this helps those suffering from disorders where the immune system plays a central role. This is the reason why LDN does not just help those with autoimmune diseases but also illnesses like HIV/Aids and certain cancers.

    But not only does LDN increase the body's production of metenkephalin and beta- endorphins, blood tests have indicated that it can also double or even triple the activity of natural killer cells (NK cells). NK cells form a distinct group of lymphocytesand have the specific job of killing infected and cancerous cells.

    Conclusion

    Naltrexone LDN therapy has produced remarkable improvements in the health and quality of life of patients suffering from a multitude of diseases. And, as we have already mentioned, in some cases, LDN has even put their disease into remission.

    Add to this the fact that the side effects of LDN are virtually non-existent (if any at all are experienced they have been limited mainly to vivid dreams or sleep disturbances) and you can begin to see why LDN is causing such a stir.

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