How Do You Increase Dose of Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN)?

How Do You Increase Dose of Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN)?

I use a chart. Whenever we dispense medications, if we're doing oral liquids or oral capsules we start with a chart.  We usually give an outline of the bottle or the vial that it's in and we have color diagrams that show how to increase that. 

 We also give a chart with dates at the top that can be filled in so that everybody has a reminder as to when to increase their next dose.  It really depends on your situation and your sensitivity.  Usually doses are increased every 7 to 14 days and if you find that if you're on a medication let's say you're on three milligrams and your next dose is at three and a half milligrams and so you increase that and you don't feel as good as you did last week.  Maybe some of your symptoms are coming back, maybe you're having you're just not feeling as good, then drop your dose back down.  That's one indication to show.  So no you don't need a new prescription every seven days or seven to ten days.  What we do is one prescription usually, the provider will write something like Naltrexone, five milligram per ml liquid which means every 0.1 mil is 0.5 milligrams.  We would literally show you using a syringe how to increase that dose or an oral dropper how to increase that dose.  Shake that bottle up really, really well and then you start with 0.1 mils, which is 0.5 milligram you do that every night at bedtime for a week and then the next week you go up to 0.2 mils, which is one milligram and then subsequently increase from that  

If you go every 10 days you will have to definitely follow a chart because it's hard to remember exactly where we're at in the calendar and of course that changes when we have a 28 day month versus a 31 day month.  It gets confusing a little bit and that is the easiest way to follow. There are educational pieces that we hand out with new prescriptions and subsequent refills.  It just makes it easier for everybody and then when we do our follow-up and we follow up with our providers for that individual patient it just makes the communication much easier so that we can help them to determine what their happy dose is.