Can You Take Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) in the Morning? And Does LDN Affect Your Sleep?

Can You Take Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) in the Morning? And Does LDN Affect Your Sleep?

Answered by Pharmacist Michelle Moser

Can You Take Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) in the Morning?  What are your thoughts about taking it in the morning and how might that affect taking thyroid medication first thing in the morning?  Those are excellent questions.  When people have dreams when they're taking Low Dose Naltrexone it indicates that LDN is actually working. When LDN drops us into REM sleep then we have a wide variety of dreams.  Sometimes they are very vivid.  Last night I had some incredibly vivid dreams that I have no idea where they came from. I was able to wake up and kind of clear my mind a little bit and just calm myself back down and go back to sleep.  Some people haven't dreamed for a long period of time for a variety of reasons and when they do dream sometimes they're vivid dreams or they are coming from an area that might concern them or they can be rather vivid and sometimes active. Therefore they can be classified as some might say that they're a bad dream.  

If the LDN changes your sleep pattern for more than five to seven days then it's recommended to move it to the morning. Low Dose Naltrexone helps to modulate the immune system by up-regulating endorphins.  We produce more endorphins because of how it blocks those receptors.  That's just one of the ways it works.  In doing that's how we can see better activity in reducing inflammation throughout the body and because you actually noted that you're taking thyroid medication first thing in the morning as well, I'm assuming that there's a Hashimoto or an autoimmune thyroid issue, Graves disease such as that going on as well. 

If you are taking thyroid medication it is really important that it be taken completely by itself with water and nothing for about an hour.  Nothing.  No supplements, coffee, food, nothing.  Nothing but water for an hour.  If you are going to move your Low Dose Naltrexone to the morning, which most practitioners are seeing a fairly even success rate, whether it's dosed in the morning or at night  then you need to separate your medications by at least an hour.  For me what pops into my head as a pharmacist is how that's actually going to work for compliance.  Is someone going to remember to take their medications an hour later?  I don't know.  If that works into your schedule and it works better to take Low Dose Naltrexone in the morning please separate it from your thyroid medication and then see how that works for you.  If that works better, than it has resolved your issues.  If not, you can always go back to taking it at night.  It really doesn't matter for most situations.