Dr Pamela Smith - 6th March 2019 (LDN, low dose naltrexone)

Dr Pamela Smith, MD - 6th March 2019 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Linda Elsegood: I'm joined by Dr Pamela Smith, who is an MD from Michigan. Pamela has written ten books, and she has just released the 10th book, and the 11th book is going to be coming out next year. Thank you for joining us today  Pamela could you tell us about your new book that has just come out?

Pamela: Absolutely, and thank you so much for inviting me on the program. My new book is called "What you must know about vitamins, minerals, herbs, and more". And it really is an anthology of looking at all of these kinds of nutrients. And the whole idea is choosing the right nutrients that are right for you.

We have different sections of the book. We have vitamins as the first part of the book. So we do look at vitamins A, D, E, K, etcetera. We have a section on minerals, one on fatty acids, one on amino acids. We have section number five, which is on herbal therapies. 

Section six of the book I loving call it "other nutrients" because it covers things like Coq10.

Alpha-lipoic acid, probiotics and other things that really don't fall into a traditional category. And then part two of the book is on a health concern, meaning we actually go through different disease processes like hypothyroidism, low thyroid function: hair loss, insomnia, dry eyes, all these different things.

And we make suggestions from the medical literature: which nutrients work better for those clinical conditions.  

Linda Elsegood: So, do you test people of their minerals and vitamin levels, or do you, increase vitamins anyway for certain conditions? How does it work? 

Pamela: Well, basically, that's an excellent question.

You can do many things. You can measure 28 vitamins in someone's body. There's a test called the nutrient testing available worldwide, where literally you can measure all of those levels. You can go by eight. As long as people have normal kidney and liver function, for example, starting at the age of 50, most people make less of some of their vitamin sources.

They make less coenzyme Q10, less lipoic acid, et cetera. So you can make some generalities as well.

Linda Elsegood: Okay. So, once you decide which path you're going to take to treat a patient, what is the next step? Do you titrate them up or do you work out what would be the appropriate dose?

Pamela: Oh, my favourite way is obviously the measure.

I'm a physician. I'm a scientist. We'd like measuring people. So for example, if you measure vitamin D, vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin. That one should always be measured because vitamin D you can get toxic in. So we try and measure that, but we want the patient to have optimal levels and not just normal. Vitamin D is so, so, so important.

But the question is: What does perfect mean? So, when you look at vitamin D in American units, which are what is used most commonly internationally when you look at vitamin D, you want the revenue to be 55 to 80.  44 is normal, but it's not optimal. So you want that patient literally to have perfect levels because then vitamin D decreases the risk of developing breast cancer, colon cancer, Parkinson's, ms diabetes, high blood pressure, and really a number of different disease processes if you get the right amount of vitamin D. I mean, we can go through and talk about each vitamin. It is so important to have vitamin K adequate bone mineralization, so you don't get bone loss. It's very important for heart health.

It's very important for blood clotting, and so each different nutrient plays a very important role in the body. 

Linda Elsegood: You mentioned probiotics. Now I've had so many doctors tell me that when I've asked what are the top four nutrients, vitamin supplements that you would always rate highly and probiotics. It's usually maybe number one and in your book, you said that you're talking about probiotics. It's a bit of a nightmare, isn't it?  When I was looking to find out, which was the best for your money because you can pay a ridiculously high amount of money for a very good brand where you may be paying for the name as well.

But how do you assess when you are looking to buy a probiotic, which is the best one that you should be taking? How do you navigate your way around that?

Pamela: That's an extremely good question because first of all, new literature is showing for most people, not all, but the general population, we probably should rotate probiotics.  May mean that they shouldn't take them all the time, the same one. So for most people, take one really good for six months. Then the next six months alternate into another one. A good doctor has prescribed a particularly probiotic for you. Otherwise, for the general population, it's good to rotate them. Most of the really good probiotics do require refrigeration, and so we do keep them in the fridge.

I usually like to take my probiotics separately, so they're not taken with other things because sometimes nutrients interfere with that. So it's nice just to take them by themselves. 

Linda Elsegood: Okay. I didn't know that. And how do you go by the different strains. What we should be looking for?

Pamela: Well, you want a good general probiotic so that it carries a number of different things, and you also want something that's what's called pharmaceutical grade.

Nutrients come in different grades, and pharmaceutical grade means two things. Number one, it means that it's bioavailable meaning it gets into the body and does what it's supposed to do. And it is also, pharmaceutical-grade means that it's guaranteed to be 100% sure with outside verification. When you look at the idea of probiotics, you want a well-mixed probiotic for overall health because probiotics improved digestion. They help the immune system function as well, your gut, your GI tract.  70% of the immune systems is right in the gut. So the gut has to have that good bacteria and also people don't think about it, but probiotics help manufacture biotin, folic acid and niacin so that they're all in the right amounts.

So, if you asked me: Are there three things I suggest for every single patient in the world? There are.  Anybody who's an adult:

1. a probiotic

2. a multivitamin, and then 

3., it may be somewhat variable with people and depending on where they live, most people do need additional vitamin D, unless they're out sunbathing.

Okay? But the third one that everybody else needs otherwise is Omega fatty acids, otherwise known as fish oil. Most people don't get enough Omega 3's. So, I do take two fish oil tablets a day, every day, because I don't eat fish every day so it gives you really good fats.

Linda Elsegood: And there are so many people, patients, that I speak to who will tell me that they have a very good balanced diet. They don't need to supplement it at all. But as you were saying that once you reach 50, your body is lacking in certain vitamins, minerals, supplements, and is this something that you discuss in the book?

Pamela: Absolutely. It is something I discuss in the book. We look at things on what happens with age. Absolutely. There are also interesting things that happen when you combine food with medications. For example, grapefruit. I discussed this in the book. Grapefruit increases caffeine levels, and so, some people, if they eat grapefruit and they drink a cup of coffee, they're going to get nervous.

Great food also can increase the levels of different medicine like warfarin, which is a blood thinner. In fact, there's even a trial showing the grapefruit can cause hives if taken with Naprosyn, which is a nonsteroidal drug. So interestingly, even foods can have an effect on what happens in the body. And we do discuss all of this in the book.

There's a whole chapter looking at mixing supplements, drugs, and food. 

Linda Elsegood: Hmm. Well, I was mixing my probiotic with yoghurt. Is that allowed or not?

Pamela:  You should be taking it by themselves? 

Linda Elsegood: That's interesting. Very interesting. So what else do we learn in the book?

Pamela: Well in the book you're probably going to be surprised to realize that most people cannot eat their way into health. Believe it or not, in today's world, because things get genetically engineered, and we don't always replenish the ground with nutrients, almost everybody does need to take a least a multivitamin.

People tend to be surprised about that. Other things that people tend to be surprised about, and they look in the book, but there are actually many medical trials showing that if you look under health conditions, there are studies showing ways that we can all look at things to prevent cancer. There are studies showing that Chlorella taking a teaspoon a day decreases the risk of developing cancer. Not eating a lot of sugar decreases the risk of developing cancer, eating too many bad fats and salt—just some common sense things. And then again, a lot of it depends on what you're interested in. So, for example, if you're interested in the prevention of cataracts, then, believe it or not, there are medical trials showing that alpha-lipoic acid, B vitamins, bilberry, carnosine, which is an amino acid, N-acetylcysteine, glutathione, your basic vitamins,  Selenium. Those things help prevent cataracts, so a lot of it is prevention as well. It's always best to prevent the disease.

Linda Elsegood: Absolutely. You mentioned multivitamins there. And again, it's a bit like the probiotics. There are millions of different multivitamins, you know? Where do you start? What is a good multivitamin? What should you be looking for?

Pamela: You always want to look for pharmaceutical grade and a broad spectrum. And those are the two things you look for, and the trouble is that you usually if you're in my age group and you're over 60 you will only usually end up with a multivitamin where you have to take a number of them.

It's not like when you're 20, and you may just take two multivitamins in a day, that's enough. I really do have to take a number of them because you want to prevent disease and treat things. I have high triglycerides so I personally take Omega 3 fatty acids, which many studies have shown help lower triglycerides.

So, you know, my goal is that I may still have a heart attack because I inherited high triglycerides from my dad, but I'd like to be 95 when I had that heart attack and not my current age of 64. It's also important to have nutrients to keep the body going well. So, for example, the thyroid gland has to have enough iodine.

So if you'll never,  ever eat any fish, then you probably want to see your healthcare provider, have your iodine levels measured and see if you need iodine. If you're not eating your way into it.

Linda Elsegood: Oh, that's interesting.

Pamela: I think a fascinating one in the book has to do with high cholesterol. Everybody thinks high cholesterol is, I ate too much, this, that, and the other. Of course, it can be, but people don't realize that high cholesterol can be due to buy it to the deficiency.

Biotin is made in your gut. So if you've got reflux, IBS, GERD, all those things you've got, it's not healthy. You're not going to make enough biotin. You have to have carnitine. You have to have some of these nutrients in order to lower cholesterol, including vitamin C. So there's nutritional things that are important for the body but I think sometimes people don't realize So that's part of the reason why I wrote the book. I want people to have a good idea of vitamins, minerals, herbs, and more. More of a personalized approach to them, and it's called a concise guide to better health and longevity and that's what we want people to be, as healthy as they can be.

Linda Elsegood: Well, that's interesting that you talked about high cholesterol. I suffered for many years with acid reflux. My mother had a heart attack in 2000. Well, Christmas 1999, just before the New Year, and she had what they called hereditary high cholesterol, and they wanted to check me and my two daughters.  My cholesterol level was so high that I could have had a heart attack or a stroke at any time.

My eldest daughter's cholesterol level was fine. My youngest one was borderline, so they put me on a statin, and I had to see a consultant. And I said to her: " I would rather not take anything.  Ultimate diet Is something I can do so I don't have to take this statin?

And she said: "If you were to live on a glass of water and a lettuce leaf, you would still have high cholesterol." 

Pamela: Exactly. You have inherited that pattern. That is correct. 

Linda Elsegood: So I altered my diet. I have to say,  listening to doctors, Tom O'Brien. I'd stopped eating gluten and literally in days of stopping the gluten, the acid reflux stopped, and I was able to stop taking the anti-acid tablets. So that was amazing. So that's not a problem. But would I still be able to reduce that level of cholesterol naturally, or even if I have to still take the statin,  I don't care, but I would like to try and bring it down. So because the doctor had said to me, as I get older, I might have to increase the amount of starting I take, and if I can do something new and I'm 62,  I may not have to take a higher dose. Do you see what I'm trying to say? 

Pamela: I can absolutely see what you're saying. The goal is that you take the right dose of a statin drug and so side effects do go up with any drug.

The higher the dose you take. So number one, anybody taking a statin drug, they get deplete on important nutrients. Coenzyme Q 10. So they need Coq10 if you're on a Statin drug. So for you, for example, you're over the age of 50, so you need a 100 mg of CoQ10 and another 100 mg because of the Statin drug.

Are there other ways that come over cholesterol? There are pages and pages in my book. My personal favourite is bilberry. I absolutely love bilberry. Bilberry, 200 mg, twice a day is a great place to start. You can go all the way up to 500 mg,  3 times a day. Very effective to lower cholesterol, even coenzyme Q 10. Gugulipid. People may not be familiar with that one.

It's G. U. G. U. L. I. P. I. D. 50 mg,  twice a day, lowers cholesterol. Policosanol works very well for those out there. If you haven't heard of that one, it's P, O, L, I, C, O, S, A, N, O, L, 20 mg,  once a day or 10 mg, twice a day. Another one of my favourites is tocotrienols. It has a special kind of vitamin E, 400 to 800 international units a day. Very good to lower cholesterol. So, all of these can be very effective, and most of them do mix with a statin drug. Not all, but many of them do. 

Linda Elsegood: It is like a foreign language or hasn't heard of these.

Do you have to take all of those or just one or a combination? 

Pamela: For most people, I suggest starting, like for you, for example, you're on the statin drug, make sure you are on Coq10,  start a little bilberry, 200 mg,  twice a day. As long as you have normal kidney and liver function, that would be great.

Linda Elsegood: okay. Wow. This is really educational, isn't it? And it's all in the book. So people who are listening to this can follow your recommendations, and I'm sure they would get a really good idea of the guidelines of what you're suggesting now. 

Pamela: Absolutely. They'll have all of us in the book and more.

I mean, we didn't talk about amino acids. The body produces amino acids, eat your way into some of the amino acids. They're very important for memory and energy. So yes, we hope everybody picks up a copy of what you must know about vitamins, minerals, and more because there's a lot in here and it's written in bullet style format so that it's easy to read.

Linda Elsegood: Well, that's good because if you see chapters and chapters of text It's hard going, isn't it? But you can pick it up and put it down easily if it's in bullet points and it's easier to remember, I think as well. 

Pamela: I do too. I think people learn in bullet style format now because of computer systems. So it does make it easier.

Linda Elsegood: As we said, this will be the 10th book you've written. What other books have you written? What have they been about? 

Pamela: Well, I've written two books on hormones. My most recent is: " What you must know about female hormones". Let you know about women's hormones. Has done very popular.

Probably my most popular book is: " What you must know about memory loss and how you can stop it."

Linda Elsegood: And of course you're going to be a speaker at the 2019 conference in June, so we will actually get to meet you. So that's really exciting. 

Pamela: I'm very excited myself. 

Linda Elsegood: So, all the things that you talk about in the book, do they complement LDN?

Pamela: They do. They absolutely do. I have the world's best editor. She is so fabulous, and she makes sure, but they all complement each other.

Linda Elsegood: Oh, that's wonderful. And where can people buy your book? 

Pamela: People can buy my book at almost any major bookstore. You can order online from Amazon or any major outlet and online worldwide.  

Linda Elsegood: And do you have a website? 

Pamela: Actually, the website for this is going to be changed as the book is coming out because they're updating it.

So that part I'm not going to give to you because that one would be difficult, but if people can't find my book, they can always email me at faafm63@yahoo.com, and we can give you that new website as it comes up next week. 

Linda Elsegood: Fantastic! Well, absolutely amazing talking to you! But if patients want to see you, do you have a website for that?

Pamela: Yes, people can absolutely come to see me or any of my partners. And probably the easiest way of accessing that is to literally call as opposed to get on the website. But we are, if they want to be on the website and look at us, we are the Centre for Personalized Medicine. So if you type that in, then everything will come up.

If you're going to go on the web. 

Linda Elsegood: And what numbers should they call if they would like to make an appointment?

Pamela: as I'd like to make an appointment. (313) 886-4060  

Linda Elsegood: And are you, not just yourself, but your partners in the clinic there too?  Do you have a long waiting list too? Do people have to wait to see you?

Pamela: Well, our goal is there's not. I do have four partners, so I'm very blessed to have great partners that are all fellowship-trained and metabolic, an anti-ageing and functional medicine. They've all done an entire fellowship, so we hope that people will be happy seeing any of us. So we tried for there not to be a long wait.

Linda Elsegood: Well, thank you very much for joining us today and speaking about your fantastic new book. I mean, I've made so many notes here. I'll certainly be getting a copy and checking it out. 

Pamela: Good! I hope you enjoy it and I hope everybody in the audience enjoys it as well. It truly was a labour of love, but I'm very happy with how it turned out.

Linda Elsegood: Fantastic! And just where we go, you said there was another book to come out. What is that one going to be about? 

Pamela: Yes. That one is scheduled to come out November 2019, and it's called "What you must know about autoimmune diseases." But believe it or not, there are 105 autoimmune diseases. Certainly, all of them are not going to be covered in the book, but the major ones are.

There's more and more to know about autoimmune. So yes, that will be November 2019. "What you must know about autoimmune diseases."

Linda Elsegood: Well, we'll have to have you back talking about that because obviously, LDN works amazingly for autoimmune diseases. Not saying it works for everybody, but it does seem to work really well.

So that would be a really interesting topic as well. 

Pamela: I would be honoured to do that, truly.  There are three things that I do for every single patient with an autoimmune disease, and one of those is to put them on low dose naltrexone, LDN. There's not a single patient in my personal practice with any of the autoimmune diseases that is not on LDN.

Linda Elsegood: The million-dollar question that people will ask is: How long would I have to take LDN before I noticed an improvement? What would your answer to that be? 

Pamela: 30 to 90 days.

Linda Elsegood: That's amazing! So a short period of time, isn't it? 

Pamela: Yes, it is a short period of time.

Linda Elsegood: Awesome! Amazing!  Well, we have to go. We've come to the end, but thank you very much for being with us today, Dr Pamela Smith, and we'll have you back again. 

Pamela: Well, thank you so much! Everybody. have a great day! You as well have a happy rest of it, of everything because I just love this time of year and spring is about to blossom.

It's such a happy time. Thank you. Bye-bye. 

Linda Elsegood: This show is sponsored by Dickson's chemist which are the experts in LDN at associated treatments in the UK. Dickson's chemist, the most cost-effective for LDN in all forms within the UK and Europe maintaining safety standard of what is required. Why would you choose to get your LDN from anywhere else?

Call 01414046545 today to speak to an LDN experts 

Any questions or comments you may have, please email me at Contact@ldnresearchtrust.org. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for joining us today. We really appreciated your company. Until next time, stay safe and keep well.