LDN Video Interviews and Presentations

Elizabeth uses LDN for: Chronic Lyme Disease, CFS/ME, Food sensitivities and Cipro (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Charis on the LDN Radio Show 1st July 2020 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Charis from the United States shares her Lyme Disease and Hashimoto’s and Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) story on the LDN Radio Show with Linda Elsegood.

Charis was diagnosed with Lyme Disease when she was only 16 years old, four years after she had a tick bite from a family trip to Minnesota. Ever since she searched for many treatments in order to remedy the disease, yet none had any success.

Only five years ago she was also diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and was struggling to conceive a child with her husband. Following her visit to a local nurse who recommended Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN), Charis’ life changed.

Within two weeks Charis was pregnant with her first child, and the symptoms of Lyme Disease and Hashimoto’s were reduced to the point where some days she forgot she even was diagnosed with them.

This is a summary of Charis’ interview. Please listen to the rest of Charis’ story by clicking on the video above.

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Dianne Lyme Disease - 18th Mach 2020 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Linda Elsegood: Today my guest is Diane from the United States who uses LDN for Lyme disease.Thank you for joining us today, Diane.

Dianne: Thank you, Linda, thanks for having me.

Linda Elsegood: First of all, can you tell us what it was like before you had been diagnosed; did you see a bullseye rash? What actually happened to you? 

Dianne: I did not get a bullseye rash. I did have an unusual rash. Basically, in 1989 I went camping, and I came home, and I could not get out of bed.

And that was the beginning of this journey. I didn’t know what it was; I had to take a year off from school. I was finishing my masters at the time, and I was playing in a band. I was in a country-rock band and had a job with my professor, very active, and it just came all to a halt. So, I quit everything, and I didn’t really get help from the doctors.

I had to figure it out myself.   And basically other women friends helped me with nutrition and supplements. I kind of got back on my feet, but I was never the same after that. I worked for ten more years full time. 

Linda Elsegood: You said that you never really got over it, back to where you were before.  Can you explain at that particular time what it was like living with Lyme disease? What were your symptoms? Why didn't you feel as good as before, even with all the nutritional supplements and things?

Dianne:  I had severe fatigue.  I had a hard time doing daily living, activities of daily living. And then I got a lot of allergies so that I was just allergic to everything. And the trendy thing then was candida, and so I went to an allergist and he started treating me for candida, which means a strict diet.

For a year I went to a naturopath, and my whole life was just getting better.

I had to quit my band. I was never played again professionally in the kind of band where you have contracts to pay for it?  I'm a percussionist, so it's pretty physical.  And that was huge; I think that's one of the biggest losses of my life, actually not having that band anymore. And socially, it's kind of isolating. People don't know what to make of you. So then after maybe six, eight, ten months, I went down to halftime, and I did finish my degree. After a year, I went back and finished my degree. I didn't have the power that I used to have. So, I probably lost 40% of my, in my professionalism in my ability to perform. But you know I got by, that's what you do, you just got by.   So, for the next ten years, I did work full time. I also did get in a relationship. It wasn't very best one, but, yea so that, that got me through the 90s.

And, I was working like a kind of like a social worker, I was a DVR counsellor and a job coach for people with disabilities.  So, I could kind of bank my hours, so I could figure out how I could get through the day.  But I drank a lot of coffee, a lot, but I didn’t know what was the matter with me, I  figured that I would eventually I’m going to figure it out, that I would eventually get better, but I did not, I regret.

Linda Elsegood: Did you know it was Lyme disease at the time? Did you suspect it was Lyme disease?

Dianne:  Well, initially I suspected it, back in 1990, I went to a doctor and they said no, you don’t have a bull’s eye, I’ll give you a week of tetracycline, I think, and it didn’t help.  It didn’t help at all.  Yeah, so I mean, I think that’s the hardest part, not knowing what is the matter with you.

Linda Elsegood:  Yes, So were you still visiting your doctor or had you given up seeing them?

Dianne:  I saw a really good allergist, George Croker from Wisconsin. And he diagnosed me with chemical sensitivities, and he hung in there with me.  I think my insurance paid for a little bit of it,   I got to quit and work part-time again. And then I got worse, my relationship broke up, and then I was homeless when I was sick.

So, I was sick and homeless together.  And there are all kinds of things that happen. Socially,  people don't know if you're the problem, or if my pain was my problem with my family's problem, or my family doesn't know if I'm the problem. My mom always said, how come you can't get through this? You know, I had a daughter with seven kids, and she can get through this, but why, why can't you get through this? Do you know? 

Linda Elsegood: How did you manage to get through this?

Dianne: I, I really have this Irish kind of fight in me. If somebody tries to take something away from me, no, I just fight; and that's what this disease did. I just kept fighting, and to be honest with you. I don't know how I got through it. I just wasn't ready to die 

Linda Elsegood: And how did you hear about LDN?

Dianne: I don't know. I just wanted to get my life back.

Sorry about that. It's kind of hard to talk about. 

Linda Elsegood: Oh, totally understandable. You'll be surprised at how many interviews I've given and have cried. 

Dianne: Yeah, right. Well, I wish that my parents knew, but they died. And so we never knew. So I suppose now I I know, but it would've been nice to know what I was dealing with. You know, to know that I had a disease that kills people. The fact that I see life was kind of awesome actually. That was, I wasn't really living, but I wasn't dying, you know?

Linda Elsegood: How did you hear about LDN? When did that start? 

Dianne: About LDN? Well, I heard about it from a lot of support groups. And it, and they said, we came in, and so I got it.????  I want some women's international pharmacy, you know, saying like it's praising. So I went to my doctor.

I have a really excellent doctor.

So anyway, I went on like 1.5. And it did nothing for me. I couldn't even walk with it, it was way off,  the dose was wrong. And so than a year later I just figured, well, I can't do this. Do you know? I know everybody likes it, but it's not for me. So I'm often a year, someone from my support group said, you know, he got, he got his LDN from a regular mainstream doctor, who put him too high, I dosage and he serious and Somnia.???? So he, he says, go to this, you know, go to this seminar with me.  And I did. Um, that was the, you know, that was, that's not a Creek, and it was hallways security. Um, they had an educator who really said, you know, more is not always better. Less is often better.

He really taught us about dosage. So, um, so I went all the way down to 0.5, and then it was like, Oh my God, I got some energy here. I remember my friend was moving and he, um, needed help with wood. He had a wood farm, and he needed help pet, you know, washing it with, stacking it and getting it ready for sale.

And there was even a gas motor going and all of a sudden I. I was able to work. I was able to work. It was just, wow, I can do this. Do you know? And a couple of my friends are like, are you working? Really? Are you working? You know, like, I thought you would've been gone by now. So that was just really nice. That was at 0.5.

And I, I did it for like three months, and then I had severe pain. I couldn't walk. My joints were really hurting. And, uh, I talked to David at Hoey apothecary, and they were, so what are you for a filler here? And they said it was Avacel, and it was supposed to be inert.

I thought that's not right for me. So I went back to women's international pharmacy. The only filler they use is olive oil, which is, it's always been right for me. So, so I switched. Fillers stayed at 0.5 and I. It was really nice. It was really nice cause the pain went away, the energy stayed. And I just was so. Happy that I could like to go out. I'm a, I'm a musician, so I, I love to go to hear bands and festivals and dance, and I was able to do that. So, It was a big deal for me. You know, it's been years, so that, that was a game-changer. And, I think I stayed at 0.5, you know, and I had lots of dreams.  I enjoyed Low Dose Naltrexone because you get all these vivid dreams It's just like a movie, you know because of your body's adjusting to it. And, I just loved it. I loved it. It really helped me. And then eventually I went up to 1.0 and, I, I knew I wasn't myself, so you don't really like that. So I knew I was at my full potential, but at least I could be more active, which is kind of who I am.

And then after a year, I went to 1.5. Yeah. That would be a year ago, January 2019. I went to 1.5, and I decided to work out more. So just that time I couldn't be losing weight and going down in size. And, and that's hard too because when you get rid of Lyme debris or lime, what goes up lime? It, it's hard on your body too, actually release it.

So, I think by mid-summer, I went to 2.0 yeah. The last one that I went to 2.0 right, well then, then I went up to 2.5 recently, and I think that's too high because. I think it's making me detox faster than my body can tolerate. So I'm going to go back to 2.0.

It push pushes yeast or candida or fungal. It just pushes it out of your body. It's like it kills it, or I don't know if it kills it or just pushes it out, but the detox thing is really big. You really got to detox. Aggressively, if you have Lymes and you're getting rid of the bugs, basically the and what's really got to detox. 

Linda Elsegood: what's your diet like now, Diane?

Linda Elsegood: Did you eliminate any foods in your diet?

Dianne:  Yeah. It's kind of limited. I have coffee, rice cakes and almond butter for breakfast, and the rest of the day is either salad or soup.  I don't eat grains. I did have rice cakes, but I don't need to have the grains. So it's mostly protein and vegetables.

I love fruits, but I've cut that out too. I eat apples sometimes. It's mostly vegetables and protein: red meat, turkey, salmon, white fish, and tuna fish. I have aches every couple of days.  Well, when I go out to eat, it's usually salad or soup, or more like Asian food: vegetables and meat. Really, and I put the rice on the side.

 I don't eat much rice anymore, but I do eat some. But, the best thing is fruits or vegetables and meat for me. Lots of water serves I take like grapefruit seed extract and hot sauce and minerals, lots of minerals, B vitamins. I have this detached, a green smoothie mix called detox detect.  It's great.  So what would I say; that I'm kind of a boring eater. 

Linda Elsegood: What would you say your life is like now in comparison to what it was like before LDN?

Dianne: Well, at least I can live.  You know, before, when tried LDN the first time,  or before LDN, I really could not live my life. I was like, how am I going to get through this day? How am I going to get to tomorrow? And I was heavier. I gained like 50 pounds. I went from 150 to 220 or something like that. I had lots of pain. you know, and I always tried to make the best of the day, but yeah, it was reduced. It was reduced to like, the people that I hung out with were like 20 years older than me, 30 or 40 years on me. That's what my level of energy was.

So I think the best, most wonderful thing with LDN was getting more energy. Even though I'm still tired you get your energy back so that you can maybe be at 75% instead of 50% you know.

Linda Elsegood: So what about pain levels now? 

Dianne: Well, it comes and goes.  Sometimes. It's a 10 like it was yesterday morning. I was like a ten, and then in the afternoon, I went swimming. I swim a lot.  I would like to swim five days a week, I didn't have any pain. I don't have any pain today. So, with Lyme, whatever you're trying to get rid of breaks down, and it really is severe pain, and then when you get rid of it, then you kind of come back to life again. That's the cycle I'm on. When I'm in pain, moh brother, I  just like walk it off.  I just keep walking, until I can move again, you know? Because if I don't, I don't get better. And I know you can't always walk, and everybody can't always walk, so then I swim, in order to move it out of my body.

Linda Elsegood: Well, we're now at the end of the show, Diane, what would you say to other listeners who have Lyme disease, who are thinking about trying LDN?  What would your message to them be? 

Dianne: Number one; don't go with the standard dosage. If you have Lyme, start at 0.5 or even less than that, and don't use Avista or any filler that's not biodegradable because Lyme people have so many reactions.

Stay with something like olive oil, which works for me. Some people use ginger, some people use rice flour.

I created my own ideas, and I went to 0.5 with olive oil. And I started coming back again. So, and a lot of times people are so confused, and they're on the websites because the doctor said, start at 3.0 I probably, every time I'm on the website at least three times, right? I tell them to start 0.5 with bio-degradable fillers.

The pharmacists don't get it. The doctors don't get it. So I'm really grateful to you, Linda because you get it. You know. 

Linda Elsegood: Well, I have to say thank you so much, Diane, for sharing your experiences today. It's very inspirational for other people. 

Dianne: You're so welcome. 

Linda Elsegood: Okay. You take care. Thank you. 

Dianne: Thank you.

Linda Elsegood: This show is sponsored by our members here with donations. We'd like to give them a very big thank you. We have to cover the monthly costs of the radio station software, phone lines and phone calls to be able to continue with their idea of the show. And thank you for listening.

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 appreciate it, and your company. Until next time, stay safe and keep well.

Dr Yusuf Saleeby - 19th Feb 2020 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Dr Yusuf Saleeby shares his Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) experience on the LDN Radio Show with Linda Elsegood.

Dr. Saleeby is a 1991 graduate with a medical degree from the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta Georgia. Upon completion of post-graduate training at East Carolina University School of Medicine in Greenville, North Carolina, he had a two decade career in Emergency Medicine serving Emergency Departments in NC, SC and GA. He held leadership positions as medical director in his career. In addition, he pursued training in functional and age-management medicine since 1998. 

Currently, he practices holistic integrative and functional medicine in North & South Carolina at Carolina Holistic Medicine. From 2000 until 2006 he was appointed as co-medical director of the Emergency Department at Liberty Regional Medical Center, Hinesville, GA. In 2007 he was promoted to medical director of the Emergency Department at Marlboro Park Hospital in Bennettsville, SC until 2010.

With over 400 patients being treated in his practice currently, he has around 60 currently on Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN). In this interview Dr Yusuf Saleeby explains his interest in Chronic Lyme Disease and how LDN can help to combat the disease.

This is a summary of Dr Yusuf Saleeby’s interview. Please listen to the rest of Dr Saleeby’s story by clicking on the video above.

Misty Rushing, CRNA - 25th Dec 2019 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Dawn Ipsen, PharmD - 4th Dec 2019 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Linda Elsegood: Today I'd like to welcome my guest pharmacist, Dr Dawn Ipsen, who is not only the owner of one compounding pharmacy but two confounding pharmacies in Washington State.  Thank you for joining me today, Dawn.

Dawn Ipsen: [00:01:35] Well, thank you Linda so much for having me. It's an absolute pleasure.

Linda Elsegood: [00:01:39] Great. So tell us, we're all interested. What made you decide you wanted to be a pharmacist?

Dawn Ipsen: [00:01:47] Oh, yes. So I knew at a, pretty early on that I wanted to be in healthcare on some aspect and pharmacy was very intriguing to me and started on that path and lucky for me, I got an opportunity to be a compounding pharmacy intern while I was in pharmacy school in a compounding pharmacy and immediately fell in love.

And so that was my path. I loved how personalized it was, how unique it was, how I was doing things that none of my classmates and colleagues was doing and so that started my journey. This was in the Seattle area. I went to the University of Washington School of pharmacy, and it was almost 20 years ago now and got my doctor and pharmacy degree there, and I've enjoyed it thoroughly.

Linda Elsegood: [00:02:43] So how did you get from pharmacy school to owning to compounding pharmacies?

Dawn Ipsen: [00:02:50] So I've always been an entrepreneur and really loved business sides of things and kind of had this long term goal that someday I was going to own a pharmacy and it definitely happened earlier in my career than I expected.

I had been working for the Kusler's family at Kusler's compounding pharmacy and had always told them: "When you're ready to do something else, keep me in mind." And got that call. Became owner of Kusler's compounding pharmacy. And  Linda, that was almost six years ago now and was just minding my own business, running my pharmacy, helping my community, doing great work.

And a couple of years into that, I received a call from another owner, the owner of Clark's compounding pharmacy in Bellevue, and he was looking for a buyer. He wanted to retire and he'd done his research and determined that he thought I would be a good fit, that I did the kind of pharmacy work that he liked to do, and I help people the way that he felt was the best way.

And so I've owned now Clark's compounding pharmacy in Bellevue, Washington for three years and even the pharmacies are only 25 miles apart. They kind of do similar, but yet different things or both, compounding, online pharmacies, Sterile. Kusler's does contract with some insurance plans, so we do help patients with that.

And Clark's is licensed in nine states, so we work with patients and not only Washington state, but Oregon, Idaho,  Arizona and Nevada. And we have Colorado and a couple of other States as well. So that's been really wonderful, great, fun and challenging. And it's just really neat that I get to use my really strong chemistry and biology background and help people really solve medication problems, for people and pets.

We helped the whole family. So that's intriguing and fun.

Linda Elsegood: [00:04:59] Wow. We never know.  It is been three years. You might get another phone call from another pharmacy.

Dawn Ipsen: [00:05:07] You never know. However, my staff might call crazy people if I do that, but no, I enjoy it, and I love the challenge and I think that it's something that, we're really successful at. We pride ourselves in the quality and in our teamwork and how we take care of patients and that we treat our patients like their family, and how we would want our family to be treated and very personalized with that care.

Linda Elsegood: [00:05:36] So with all your compounding, what forms do you compound LDN into?

Dawn Ipsen: [00:05:44]  So Low Dose Naltrexone is expanding. Actually had been working with Odell style Trek zone for roughly 10 years now, and kind of decided to become a state expert Low Dose Naltrexone about five years ago. And back then it was very primarily capsules only, and that's what we saw and actually five, 10 years ago it was even the doses were very structured at certain doses, not a lot of variability to it.   And we've learned so much, right?  Over the research and over the years. Now we're doing a much wider array of doses. Everything from ultra-low or micro-dosing for maybe patients who

are on pain therapies already and need some extra help with their immune system to even much higher doses, more frequent doses for mood situations or post-traumatic stress or depression.  And along with that, we're also helping patients who maybe there's an autism spectrum situation going on and they don't want to or aren't willing to take capsules in which we're able to make flavoured liquids and we're able to do now LDN in a transdermal.

And a transdermal is very different than just a topical. This is a cream-based that's very special and it's designed to drive the drug into the body,  but it's a great way to go when you have a patient who won't participate or can't participate in taking an oral medicine. And on top of it, we've started doing a lot of topical LDN treatment for skin conditions specifically for  psoriasis, eczema, things of that nature. So those are primarily the most dosage forms we see. So different ways to do oral, different way to do a transdermal, and then we have the topicals as well.

Linda Elsegood: [00:08:03] If I could just ask you, the topical cream or lotion, what do you call it?

Dawn Ispen: [00:08:11] It's usually a topical cream for the skin dermatology conditions.

Linda Elsegood: [00:08:17] So if you've got eczema or allergies or psoriasis and the other skin conditions like backtracked syndrome, Haley Haley's disease, applying that directly to the skin, what do you see? Does it take away the itchy, flaky redness? What do you see when people use it?

Dawn Ispen: [00:08:45] Definitely, so what we were noticing is, in psoriasis patients that were just on oral low dose naltrexone that they would typically get to effect at some point.  But it took a very, very long time. And it was, as you can imagine, hard for patients to be patient, so to speak, and wait for that. Because I mean, we all know how miserable it is to have skin that's irritated. It's red, it itches, it burns, it stings, all those things. It's very difficult to have any sort of quality of life. So we started doing both. We would help doctors with the normal oral therapies that we would be used to seeing, but then we would start making a customized cream for them, naltrexone being one of the ingredients. And we would put it in a cream base that actually had nutraceutical components to it that would help calm the skin already on its own with no drug in it. So yes, they often risked with the naltrexone and that cream base would find relief of redness and inflammation, and we'd start seeing the healing of autoimmune skin disorders much faster than if they were doing the oral alone.

On top of that, we could work more closely meeting their direct needs. So if it was causing pain, we could add an ingredient to help with that. If it was a histamine reaction, we could add another ingredient to help with that. And so it gave us a lot more flexibility to be very, very specific and customized with the treatment they needed on the skin that was bothering them.

Linda Elsegood: [00:10:31] So my question would be, Dawn. If, for example, 3 mg, the highest dose that you could tolerate orally and you're putting a topical lotion or cream on, does it matter how much naltrexone is in that cream? Does it get absorbed into the system? How does it work? Do you see what I'm saying? If three is all you can take and you've got three in the cream, does it matter?

Dawn Ispen: [00:11:03] Well, it depends. So if we are doing the topical cream base, there's a slim chance you could have some added absorption, but then we may want to go back and talk about what does it mean they couldn't tolerate more than three? Was it directly affecting their stomach and they were having nausea or cramps or something like that?

Or was it affecting sleep or why was it three their oral stealing number, right?  So when we go topical or even transdermal, a lot of times we can go higher than one would have thought than they could do orally and still avoid the side effects because they're avoiding that, what we call it in pharmacy, the first-pass effect. When a drug is swallowed it goes to the stomach and then it goes to the liver, and that's sometimes the portion of the system that's causing the side effect. And if we're avoiding that, we can get away with that. The other thing is that, given in these dermatology conditions, if we're doing Naltrexone  and it is just topical, we're not getting the systemic absorption that we would be getting in oral or transdermal delivery.

So in that sense, the amount probably doesn't quite matter, but also the amount of drug that's in that cream, they could put quite a bit on and not be getting a significant dose directly into the bloodstream. 

Linda Elsegood: [00:12:34] okay. And then would it be exactly the same as oral LDN and that if it kicks into the bloodstream, it would be the, and then go quite quickly.

Dawn Ispen: [00:12:44] Righ, so if it did go into the bloodstream or it was a transdermal delivery, what was driven in intentionally, you would expect to get the same effect as if they were on oral. You may avoid side effects of the stomach directly because again, you're not putting that drug directly in their stomach, and that can be helpful for some patients for sure.

Linda Elsegood: [00:13:09] okay. Now, patient feedback. What has been the outcomes of your patients taking LDN?

Dawn Ispen: [00:13:21] The feedback has been very, very positive. It definitely seems to be a drug that Is extremely safely tolerated with very few side effects, if any, and if there are side effects, they're typically dose-related and things that can be managed by proper titrations and proper dosing.

The benefit can be anywhere from subtle improvement to very profound improvement with a huge direct link to a much better quality of life. Even on my more subtle improved patients, they often find that their improvement was way more than they anticipated because they'll sometimes take a vacation or a holiday from LDN and realized symptoms are coming back.

They are not feeling as good,  more fatigued, on and on. And then when they restart low dose naltrexone they can then more clearly see how much benefit it was providing to them.

Linda Elsegood: [00:14:23] And what conditions would you say patients are taking LDN for? Do you know that?

Dawn Ispen: [00:14:30] Yeah. I often do know that. Of course, we have our longterm patients that have been on it for five, even five-plus years at this point that had the Fibromyalgia, Multiple Sclerosis, Crohn's disease, of course. We're seeing even more though conditions that are just in general inflammation-based and in which we're trying to control the body's autoimmune system. So Hashimoto's and Graves', Lyme disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis. We have patients that are using it, as I mentioned, for psoriasis specifically. And then, more recently in the last couple of years, we're seeing patients who do have post-traumatic stress disorder or depression that is been not responding to normal therapies and even cancer conditions that have been very helped by low dose naltrexone.

Linda Elsegood: [00:15:30] So do any of your doctors around your area prescribe LDN for infertility issues?

Dawn Ispen: [00:15:41] We don't have too many in our area that is doing naltrexone for infertility. However. there ts definitely known, it's definitely talked about. There's pretty good literature on its use  and it just might be that I'm not right next to where the infertility clinics are that are working with that.

Linda Elsegood: [00:16:09] What about mental health issues?

Dawn Ispen: [00:16:13] Yes, we definitely have doctors who are using this for mental health issues and are really trying great because they're trying to bring to light the whole topic of mental health and how important it is. And they become so much more open to other ways of thinking, other treatments, other modalities for these patients. So we're seeing things like the use of ketamine for depression. We're seeing the naltrexone being used for depression and PTSD. And I mean, I can honestly say that had patients who had been very concerned about their wellbeing and that once they work with these types of providers, down the road, their quality is just so much better and they're doing great with it.

Linda Elsegood: [00:17:02]  And of course, so many mental health issues with antidepressants, etc can make people feel a bit sluggish, drowsy whether naltrexone actually makes you feel brighter and better, and it's not addictive either.

Dawn Ispen: [00:17:24] Right. You get that endorphin release, which is so important to our wellbeing and how we feel in our motivation and our willingness and desire to interact with others in our community and those are all such important things for being part of this world.

Linda Elsegood: [00:17:45] Do you have any patient case studies you could share with us?

Dawn Ispen: [00:17:49] I'm sure. A couple of my favourites is one, she's a younger patient. Actually, she's only in her 20s, and she comes into the pharmacy and she's been coming in a long time getting naltrexone. At this point, it's usually just a quick pickup: " Hey, how are you?" And out the door, we go. And I was at the counter with her and I literally had to stop and scratch my head and I couldn't.  She looked just so great, so normal, so just young and vibrant. And I honestly couldn't remember why she even has started low dose naltrexone. And so I asked her. I was like, can you remind me why do you take the naltrexone?

What is it doing for you? And, and she's actually multiple sclerosis patients, which we actually have a lot of in Washington state because where we're located in our sunlight exposure and vitamin D levels and all that. And it has hot her completely in remission with her vitamin D and other things she's doing as well.

But she looks just so normal.  Is the only way I can describe it. And how cool is that? They here we have a twenty-something who, who is able to be a vibrant member of the community and have a well-rounded life and do what she wants to do. So she's one of my favourites because thank goodness you're staying on it to help slow any progression of the disease process that might occur later on.

And then I do have one psoriasis patient that I've ever seen psoriasis-like this before. She actually had it even on the back of her calves, which is an unusual location. And started naltrexone. Did that for about a month, just the naltrexone orally itself. And then when we added in the cream.

And when she would come back for refills, I just couldn't get over it, how fast it was healing and we marked it.  I actually took pictures of when she first picked up and then when she came in for refills and then now there's nothing left. So it's been really awesome to see somebody who had been dealing with this for most of her life, who now is doing great, well-controlled.

Her immune system is just functioning properly.

Linda Elsegood: [00:20:05] How long did that take before her skin looked normal again?

Dawn Ispen: [00:20:12] Yeah. So skin is always slow. I mean, that's with patience is a virtue. It's on any skin condition as you have to allow for the full all derm cycle, which usually is right about six weeks on average.

And so, you start in with treatment knew at the beginning or just trying to get the treatments on board and help with any symptom relief they might need. And then usually, like in this particular case, it was really about at the three-month mark that she was coming in happy that the condition was starting to reverse and go back to how the skin was supposed to be.

And then of course for full healing, it's another month or two after that. And then he'd go into maintenance mode at that point.

Linda Elsegood: [00:21:00] Well, that's amazing, isn't it? I mean, psoriasis, if you have it, and I know somebody with psoriasis, how embarrassing it is. People look at you when it's really bad. I'm not comfortable either, is it? So something that can heal and clear that up It's amazing.

Dawn Ispen: [00:21:26] Yeah, it's wonderful because it can be, like you said, not only visibly unappealing and they will often try to hide it if they can with clothing and coverage, but it hurts, it clot cracks, it bleeds, it burns, it itches.

It's just horribly uncomfortable and unrelenting, you know, it doesn't just stop. It continues.

Linda Elsegood: [00:21:50]  Do you have many children as patients?

Dawn Ispen: [00:21:53] We do. We actually work with some doctors who are very in touch with the pediatric population and that's their speciality. And they use naltrexone usually in the kids that they have some sort of a spectrum disorder where they're noncommunicative and they aren't interacting as we hoped they would be able to.

They're a great population to work with and that's where we get to become very creative and work really closely with the family itself on determining how does this child want to receive its medication and is it as simple as custom dosing and maybe they want the capsule a certain colour because it might be more appealing visually to them. Fine, perfectly great with that. Or do they need a liquid and do they want it to be flavoured a certain way or do they need a lozenge? And then for the most difficult of patients, we can do the transdermal cream delivery that I even have a couple of families that they actually apply it to the child's back, back skin area at night when the child is sleeping. So they can receive their dose that way. 

Linda Elsegood: [00:23:25] Wow. So what else do you know about LDN that you haven't shared with us?

Dawn Ispen: [00:23:35] With LDN there are lots of things can augment the therapy of LDN and getting the most out of it. And it's really looking at the patient at a whole and trying to discover what ways can we reduce inflammation load in that patient's body along with optimizing the dosage form and the regimen, the strength and the timing, it should be taken.

 I do work a lot on talking with patients about the importance, especially in Washington,  of vitamin D,  the importance of good gut health and probiotics. We're working more with patients on using full-spectrum C-- to help with pain and anxiety as well,  antioxidants and organic diet and how important all of these things are to get inflammation loads down, to get the best effect out of it.

Linda Elsegood: [00:24:32] Yes. Diet is a big one, isn't it? People do notice a big difference by changing their diet.

Dawn Ispen: [00:24:42] Diet is so huge, and you know, us living in a suburban area, gardening and farming is not simple, right? And our seasons make that challenging too, and just really encouraging our community to buy from the farmer's market get organic as much as you can, grow your food when you can yourself and just eat well, take care of your body, you're worth it. You know? It's like you are worth the extra effort in doing that.

Linda Elsegood: [00:25:14] And sugar is another big thing, isn't it? If you can't cut it out, at least cut it down.

Dawn Ispen: [00:25:21]  Right, and look for good alternatives that are natural and if you do have to have that sweet because, you're right, it's in everything and it's hidden often it's hard to even know it's there.

Linda Elsegood: [00:25:36] It surprises me when you look at a tin food.  Dugar is in pipe beans, it's in..Just trying to think of something else. It's gone. Slipped my mind. But...

Dawn Ispen: [00:25:52] Ketchup, salad dressings.

Linda Elsegood: [00:25:55] Exactly. Sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar. It's not easy, but it's, it's similar if you're buying foods and you read the labels, gluten is in so many things.

Dawn Ispen: [00:26:13] Absolutely.

Linda Elsegood: [00:26:14] I mean, when I first started to be gluten-free, it took me ages to do my shopping because I was looking at everything and trying very hard not to get anything with gluten in it.

But it becomes easier because you know which things you can have and which things you can't have. Once you've gone through reading everything, it does become easier and you do find alternative things. I use honey as a sweetener and I use coconut sugar but it's brown colour so I can still make cakes and waffles occasionally, but there isn't a different colour but if you close your eyes you don't know, you can't see that it's a different colour. You can be creative. It's very expensive to eat organic here, and I should think it's pretty similar in the US isn't it?

Dawn Ispen: [00:27:18] It is. It definitely can be challenging to be able to do that and hard for some families to make that happen. And I always like to refer to the dirty dozen as they call it, of if you really have to pick and choose which product is most important to purchasing, organic versus maybe you could save the finances on something else.  That's at a nice way to integrate or ended up the pathway. Lucky for us in our area, at least, we do have a substantial number of farmer's markets that are all close by and available different days of the week but that can be an option for patients that are really trying to do those things, but maybe not able to get it from the grocery store all the time.

Linda Elsegood: [00:28:16] And the thing is, with organic food, it doesn't last as long as a non-organic without us being sprayed with things to keep it fresh longer.

Dawn Ispen: [00:28:28] And it sometimes doesn't look as pretty, does it either? There are more bruises and changes in how it grows and things like that.

But it's funny how our minds have that used to be the normal, right? That produce always looked like that. And then we've changed to think that that product should look perfect in every instance and that's not necessarily the case. It comes back to what you're saying with the sugar.

Linda Elsegood: [00:28:59] We have a supermarket here that sells half-price vegetables from the supplier, and they're all packaged and they're called wonky vegetables. So the carrots, parsnips, that probably got deformed but they're perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with them. It's just as they call them wonky,  they're not perfect and I think that's great.

Linda Elsegood: [00:29:34] We've come to the end of the show so we could have carried on talking for ages. We'll have you back again another time and until then, stay well and we will speak to you again soon.

Dawn Ispen: [00:29:48] Wonderful. Thank you. Have a great day.

Linda Elsegood: [00:29:50] Thank you. Bye-bye. This show is sponsored by Kusler's compounding pharmacy and Clark's compounding pharmacy. They are more than a drug store. They are highly trained, compounding pharmacy experts, combining the art and science of preparing personalized medications to meet your specific needs, improving lives by solving medication problems for people and pets, creating solutions to medication challenges.

Visit www.kuslerspharmacy.net

Any questions or comments you may have, please email us 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.

Yusuf Saleeby, MD - 20th Nov 2019 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

I  am Dr. Yusuf Saleeby and practice in the South Eastern coastal United States in South Carolina. We have our main office near Myrtle beach and a second satellite office in Mount pleasant.

We see patients with autoimmune diseases of various types, everything from MS to Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn's disease where Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) can be used

We are prescribing a lot of Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN). We also have relationships with several compounding pharmacies in the area, both in North and South Carolina.

If somebody comes into a compounding pharmacy seeking out LDN, but does not have a prescriber that is knowledgeable or willing to prescribe, the pharmacist will give them our names and refer them to us.

Lyme disease is a problem in every state of India, every 50 States in the US and internationall in Brazil, Argentina, China, the Netherlands, Germany.

So we are doing diagnosis with the Borrelia as well as the co-infections, like the BCO Bartonella Ehrlichia.

We know very little about good treatments. There's the variety of different protocols for for treating Lyme in the chronic phase. And it's very poorly research. It's very poorly understood, and it's all over the place.

 To protect against tick bites, if you are out in nature, after, you need to do a tick check, a full-body tick check on you. Wear brightly coloured clothing like white as opposed to a dark colour.

If you're walking in high grass pull the socks over the bottoms of your pants. Use natural repellents.

There are also some clothes that are impregnated with Permethrin. You can wear the same garment multiple times, like ten times and wash it, and it still has the active agent within the material.

When you're out in the in the woods, these little critters will crawl up from your shoes to your legs and kind of lodge in your groin area, under the armpit or axilla or back of of the neck and they can feed on you for a couple of hours or even two or three days and then fall off. And you don't realize you've been bitten.

And the heralding sign of a bullseye lesion is only present and about 30% of people who will contract a cute line.

You wouldn't know until maybe months later when you start having symptoms. And it could be a mired of symptoms. A lot of them are confused with other disorders.

A lot of people come in with Ms diagnosis,  with fibromyalgia, people with all kinds of other autoimmune diseases. And when those diseases are identified the workup stops there.

Sometimes medications that are given could be even worse than the disorder itself. But in functional medicine, we obviously go deeper to find the root cause, and sometimes we find that it is a tick-borne illness that's causing these symptoms.

Usually, at that point, it's chronic Lyme disease or late-stage Lyme, which is a totally different animal than an acute line or chew. Lyme is really easy to treat. Sixty days of Doxycycline or  a type of penicillin drug. We'll usually eradicate it, and end of a story that's it is finished. But if it sets in as chronic Lyme, it's really a different way to treat.

And it's really, really difficult to try to get it under control.

LDN does have a place in Lyme disease, and many of my patients will benefit from Low Dose Naltrexone, whether it's for the pain states associated with some of the Borrelia and Bartonella that cause fairly excruciating pain, but also as an immune enhancer because most of the people that are susceptible to the late-stage chronic Lyme disease are folks that have a  out of balance immune system. And LDN is used to put it back into balance.

I had a longstanding 20-year history of ulcerative colitis woman that came to me and within a few days of taking LDN, I get a phone call from her, and she says.

You're not going to believe this, but the bloating and gassy and my intestines and my stomach have improved like 90%.

Her belly is nice and flat. She doesn't complain of all the usual symptoms of IBD, Ulcerative Colitis.

And she's not on any of the other traditional traditionally prescribed medications for Ulcerative Colitis  Irritable Bowel Disease.

We're are seeing a lot of publications in Europe which are proponents of the use of LDN and, Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

She has sensitivity to gluten and wheat,  so if she cheats a little bit on her diet, she'll get more symptomatic. So we encourage her to be more compliant with her diet.

She's been doing that for over a decade anyway. But then with the inflammation implementation of LDN and even one milligram, her symptoms were relieved almost instantaneously.

I was just quite amazing the change in her. She almost looked  like she was four or five months pregnant when she first presented if she was that bloated.

I had a woman with Hashimoto's and  while she was on LDN, her TPO titer started to drop on a steady downward slope. And then when she ran out and was without it for three months or TPO, tighter spiked up again. And she's on a natural desiccated thyroid replacement, and she's doing quite well.

She continues taking it. I usually tell my patients. I said," well,you take it as long as you want to continue feeling well. Now if you decide at some point in the future, after two years, you don't want to feel well, well then stop taking it." And so I think they get the picture.

Or only a few patients I have to take them off  and restart at a lower dose. And sometimes they use very Low Dose Naltrexone just because of some of the symptoms. They may report a GI upset, vivid dreams that are disturbing to them. And then sometimes I switched the dosing from nighttime dosing to daytime knowing that's going to be a little less effective, but at least we're getting it in them and then making dosage adjustments.

Summary from Dr. Yusuf Saleeby LDN Radio Show. Listen to the video for the show.

Dr. Eduardo Patrick Beltran Monasterio - 25th Oct 2019 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Dr Eduardo Beltran shares his Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) experience on the LDN Radio Show with Linda Elsegood.

Dr. Eduardo Beltran was originally born in Tripoli, Libya in 1978, later he immigrated to the United States and attended Dublin Scioto High School. After graduation he was accepted at Del Valle University (School of Medicine) in Cochabamba Bolivia. Here he graduated with honors in 2006. He then went on to pursue his specialty in Internal Medicine and Dermatology at Gama Filho University in Brazil.

Throughout the years Dr Beltran has developed a significant interest in treating specific autoimmune diseases such as Psoriasis, Vitiligo, Lupus and skin cancer. He has helped thousands of patients achieve a better state of health and quality of life through Integrative Medicine in Brazil.

Dr Beltran is also an author and a clinical researcher, having treated many patients with psoriasis using Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) and Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA). He has published his Clinical Research on ''The Cureus Journal of Medical Science'', showing promising results with LDN.

This is a summary of Dr Eduardo Beltran’s interview. Please listen to the rest of Dr Beltran’s story by clicking on the video above.

 

Bullseye - Low dose naltrexone and Lyme disease with Serbian Subtitles (LDN) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Bullseye - Low dose naltrexone and Lyme disease with Dutch Subtitles (LDN) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.