LDN Video Interviews and Presentations

May - US: Fibromyalgia, Hashimoto’s, Asthma, Allergies (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Mae from the US takes Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) for Fibromyalgia, Hashimoto’s, Asthma and Allergies.

Mae started having skin issues as a teenager and at 37 was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. Her rheumatologist put her on amitriptyline and after two weeks she started losing her vision. Mae tried diet changes, elimination of certain foods and additives and managed to get control of her migraines. Feeling a little better but not as well as she could have been she was prescribed prednisone which made everything worse still. 

Feeling at her lowest she admits to feeling suicidal and finally found mention of Low Dose Naltrexone in a blog and she researched it. Mae got a prescription from her doctor and took her LDN the first night and woke the following day feeling better than she had in a long time. Within three days of taking LDN she felt better brain function, less pain and stiffness and she had renewed hope for the future. 

Mary - US: Lyme Disease (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Mary shares her story of using low dose naltrexone (LDN) to treat Lyme disease. She became ill approximately four years ago, at age 42. She was in great shape, exercising four times per week, but she had a heart attack and was hospitalized for it, although tests did not show evidence of coronary artery disease. After that, she started having a lot of pain, reduced tolerance for exercise, and her doctor thought she had fibromyalgia. The doctor prescribed Cymbalta for the nerve and muscle pain. 

Mary didn’t think that she had fibromyalgia, so she researched things herself. Two years after the heart attack, her symptoms worsened greatly. She started developing palpitations, transient tachycardia, and neurological symptoms including burning pain in her feet and tingling in her fingers and toes. The fatigue was to the point that after coming home from work, she slept hard for two hours. She went to many doctors, who ran quite a few tests, but the only tests coming back abnormal were her inflammatory markers. She went to a holistic doctor that she knew, who prescribed LDN for her. 

Within a week or two of starting LDN, her fatigue was diminished, and her joint and muscle pain was a lot better. She also modified her diet to remove gluten and dairy, and reduce sugar. She also started eating more organic, cleaner food.

Since beginning the LDN and improved diet, she is happy to be able to keep working. She’d been having terrible pain, fatigue, trouble walking, and brain fog, and as a nurse, she was having trouble doing her job. But all that improved tremendously with Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN).

Mary has found that her best dosage is 3 mg. She takes her LDN at night and it works well for her. She was also recently diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, and is hoping that the LDN will help with that as well. While drugs like Cymbalta had side effects that were as bad as her symptoms the doctor was trying to treat, LDN has improved her life very much. 

This has been a summary of Mary’s interview. For the full story, please go to the recording at the link above.

Dr Bob Lawrence, LDN Radio Show (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

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

Dr Bob Lawrence from Wales was shocked when he first came across Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN), puzzled as to why such a simple treatment could be so effective at treating such devastating diseases.

He has found LDN to be very successful in his patients, some of whom have noticed improvements in their health within a matter of days.

He first prescribed LDN in 2000 and within weeks he had many of his patients on the drug. In this interview he explains LDN’s benefits and his shock as to why mainstream medicine is yet to adopt LDN as an integral component of treatment programs.

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

Laurie - US: Lupus, Raynaud's, Mixed Connective Tissue Disease, Scleroderma (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Laurie was diagnosed with Raynaud's disease aged 12 and at 22 suffered mixed connective tissue disease, various types of arthritis, progressive scleroderma and lupus. Despite seeing many different doctors her symptoms deteriorated leaving her feeling useless with a low quality of life scoring only 1. She had little energy and was losing muscle strength. Often unable to walk she was forced to crawl. As a professional pianist who could no lomger play she was miserable.

Since the age of 22 she had taken Prednisone in fluctuating doses. She was taking other drugs to offset the side effects of steroids which simply masked the pain.

She runs a B&B and when a guest suffering from MS told her about LDN in 2013 she began an autoimmune diet with supplements and weaned herself off strong medication taking only 5mg of steroids daily. Her inflammation reduced considerably and she is now full of life. She is able to dress herself, do chores and prepare breakfast for her guests. She has her life back and no longer suffers from depression.  She can even run! Her quality of life she  now rates at 10.

This is a summary. To listen to the whole LDN interview please click the video link.

John from the United States takes Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) for Crohn's disease.

"I was diagnosed with Crohn's when I was 19 years old. I'm 55 now. When I was about 17 years ago I had a resection done.

During the time before the resection there were times when I felt great and then there were times when I had major flare-ups where I was cramping in excruciating pain with diarrhoea, vomiting and always promising that I'll be better.

I walked around with a perforated intestine for three months and I was down to 127 pounds.

 I was in the hospital for 20 days and at that point, I came to the conclusion that I just have to come up with a plan so I started reading everything.

I finally accepted my disease and I embraced it. My life really changed a lot. I made sure that I ate what I was supposed to eat.  I had acupuncture four to six times a year. I took vitamins. I stayed away from beef and dairy.

I was only on two milligrams of prednisone every day and I was fine until my doctor told me that I had strictures and on top of that I had active crump, even though I was pretty much pain-free.

And I just freaked out because, at that point, my mom was dying of cancer. And so anything that had cancer written into it just about a death sentence for me.

So I started searching out any avenue for alternatives.

One day when I was looking for more answers, all of a sudden Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) came up and Crystal gave me the name  an LDN doctor in my area, and she put me on a very strict diet along with some anti-inflammatory supplements like curcumin and EPA and DHA and stuff like that. On top of that, I take three milligrams of LDN, and my C reactive protein level went from a an 8 to 0.19 in two months.

The biggest thing that's really helped me with Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) is my mental health.

One thing that I learned is that you have to accept and embrace your disease and  to search out all the answers. And I'll be honest with you. Traditional medicine is going to send you towards trying to beat it into submission whereas LDN is going to love your body and it's going to help you heal your own.

You're going to have to take on traditional medicine and you're going to have to go against your doctor. Unless you're willing to go with your traditional doctor, but there's a lot of side effects. You can't stay on that poison forever. Sooner or later, you've been happy to get off of it, and you'd have to come my way sooner or later".

Summary of John's interview. Please listen to the video for the full story.

Jill Brook, MA, LDN Radio Show 12 Dec 2016 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Jill Brook, MA, is a long-time nutritionist, researcher and autoimmune patient benefiting from LDN.  After earning degrees from Princeton University and UCLA, she worked for both universities and the Pritikin Longevity Center before opening a private practice in Southern California. After experiencing serious health challenges of her own, she now focuses her research and nutrition work on autoimmunity, gut health, SIBO, mast cell activation, gastroparesis, and specialized diets for healing.

In this interview Jill discusses what we should be doing diet wise to help Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) be more effective in our bodies. 

Topics covered answer the questions: 

“There are so many conflicting diets. What diet should people be following?”

“How would somebody who has never looked at their diet before go about looking to eliminate foods?”

“What about the blood test? Can they help show what foods you should avoid?”

“It's not easy to follow healthy eating. How does willpower come into this? What does the research show?”

“Could artificial sweeteners help get me off sugar?”

“How can I lose weight when I can't exercise?”

“Could digestive issues such as inflammation, leaky, gut, etc cause someone to have low sodium or potassium and vitamins?”

“For a patient with Mast Cell Activation and Autoimmune issues do you have any diet suggestions or inflammation information from your own experience that would help?”

Check out Jill Brook’s LDN Nutrition and Lifestyle page at https://ldnresearchtrust.org/ldn-nutrition-and-lifestyle where Jill posts recipes, nutrition research findings, a blog and LDN Lifestyle and Nutrition Q & A’s.  

Any questions or comments you may have, please contact us at ldnresearchtrust.org. 

Jill Brook, MA, Healthy Eating, LDN Radio Show (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Jill Brook, MA shares her Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) experience on the LDN Radio Show with Linda Elsegood.

Jill Brook works as a Nutrition Consultant to the Dysautonomia Clinic, serving on the Boards of patient advocacy groups, and assisting several POTS specialists with their research. Most recently she was the subject of a published case study describing her unusually successful recovery.

Jill Brook suffered for over 17 years with dysautonomia and was on her “last legs” before discovering Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN). She shares her story, describing her worsening symptoms and various treatments on her road back to health. 

As a dietitian she also shares with us, how diet affects the immune system and overall health. This interview will benefit anyone with an illness caused by a low autoimmune system, and autonomic dysfunction.

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

Jennifer from the United States shares her experience using Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) to treat Hashimoto’s, Ankylosing Spondylitis, and Lyme disease.

She first noticed symptoms in January of 1999. She thought she had the flu, but was sick for a week with a high fever and migraines. After that, she didn’t feel as if she’d recovered. When she went back to the doctor, the only thing that came up on testing was kidney failure. At that point, she had to stop playing hockey and drop out of night school for college, and it was difficult to work her full-time job. She had problems with fatigue and focusing. Over 14 years she saw over 40 different doctors and had over 60 tests done, but the doctors never found much that they could diagnose. However, her health continued to decline. Doctors ran tests for Lyme disease, connective tissue disease, other types of autoimmune disease, and Marfan syndrome, but they couldn’t come up with a good explanation for her symptoms. Eventually Jennifer developed Hashimoto’s and Ankylosing Spondylitis. Her doctors also found she had two mutations of the MTHFR gene. 

In 2012, she went to the Cleveland Clinic and saw a neurologist who recognized her autoimmune conditions. He recommended a gluten-free diet, which was helpful in reducing her rheumatoid factor. At that time, she still suffered from fatigue and chronic urethritis, which was very painful. Finally she saw a urologist who recognized she had an infection in the walls of the urethra, and put her on antibiotics. However, the antibiotics weren’t very helpful in relieving her symptoms.

By 2013, her symptoms would flare and subside, but she began having IBS issues as well as increasing cognitive problems and migraines. She couldn’t walk right, she couldn’t talk right, and her writing was illegible. She felt that she had a lot of symptoms of Lyme disease, but the infectious disease doctor said she didn’t have it. She then went to a lung doctor who tested her again. This time her tests were negative for IgM, positive for IgG, and positive for bartonella, anaplasma, and mycoplasma. He started her on low dose naltrexone in October of 2013. They started at 3 or 4.5 mg, which was too high of a dose, so they went down to 0.5 mg, which was a better dose. She learned that she reacted badly to the higher dose of LDN because of her chronic Lyme disease, parasites, and systemic candida. Within a year, she responded to the LDN and her doctor was able to gradually increase her dosage to 3 mgs as her health issues resolved.  

Just before starting LDN, Jennifer would rate her quality of life at about a 1 on a scale of 1-10, due to constant pain, fatigue, and sickness. 

In terms of side effects of LDN, Jennifer had vivid dreams for the first week, but after that, she’s had no ill effect from the LDN. She does find that it works best for her to take LDN in the early evening, around 6 or 7 pm.

Jennifer noted positive effects from the LDN in the first week of taking it. She was able to lower her blood pressure medicine, and her IBS issues resolved. She also was able to get off all of her allergy medicine, including Singulair and two inhalers. Initially, her pain levels increased, but after the first two weeks, the pain went away. The LDN has allowed Jennifer to get off of about 90% other medications, and she’s lost over 30 pounds. 

At this point, her quality of life is significantly improved, though she’s still dealing with the Lyme disease and coinfections that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for over 14 years, so on a scale of 1-10, she’d rate her quality of life at about a 5. She would definitely recommend that patients with her conditions give LDN a try--she tried LDN instead of going on the biologic Remicade, and she’s glad she did. The LDN regulated her immune system rather than suppressing it. It might seem to make some symptoms worse at first, but in her experience the LDN just brought forward underlying health issues that needed to be addressed. As those issues are addressed, her quality of life continues to improve. 

This has been a summary of Jennifer’s story. Please listen to the interview for the full story. 

Jeni - England: Psoriasis (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Jeni:  Im here to talk about psoriasis and, um, my experience of using LDN with psoriasis and, and hopefully it'll help other people with psoriasis just to give them another option of treatment. Since I was, I had quite good success with it. Say, Just bit about the psoriasis. It affects approximately 2% of the UK population in varying degrees.

And it's a chronic skin condition, which causes basically red scaly practice to appear. And it's quite uncomfortable. It can be if it's all over, which is what I had, um, it's related to the immune system, but I think it's not knowing exactly, um, how. How it's related, or any say current treatments involve steroid creams and versed alignments moisturize.

Um, there are some immune system drugs out there at the moment. I think they just, they were long term. So, and they have quite a lot of side effects. So I've never been keen to try layers, or any of the confess, the physical effects that easy to see. But if it's. Quite, um, considerable coverage of psoriasis, then it can have other emotional and personal effects to you.

So let's start skiing is Rossi's when I was about 21, 22, funnily enough, when I was at Penn state university studying over there. So it wasn't a where they're doing the research at the time, unfortunately. Um, Um, stopped is just a small patch, my neck, and then gradually over the next couple of months, spread everywhere, basically arms, legs, body, face, scalp, every way you can think of really so pretty much covered, um, not very comfortable condition to have really, but I tried to not let it face anything all day, really day today, but for some people, it can affect the DC living.

Is that you tried various creams or ointments steroid creams? UVB light which is, which was quite successful, but don't want to repeat it too many times anything and different diets, gluten-free diets. Um, do you sing herbal remedies, acupuncture? Pretty much everything you could think of, but nothing really.

Whereas degree affects, obviously you didn't do some treatments were better than others, and everything varies for different people. Some things were better. Okay. So I was looking for something else to try basically. So after doing a lot of trailing around and the internet, I discovered LDN about a year ago and decided to give it a try. So I've seen his name. Mmm. The side effects as far as I can see. And you may say I visited the essential health clinic in Glasgow and started off taking malaria steaks. Congratulated next few months increase the dosage, um, by about, after about three months.

And I was kind of thinking, Oh, was not really working, couldn't see any effect really, and they're a great improvement, but if it was continued taking it off, six has no side effects I can see.

 so I've spent after about five, six months, my skin was clearing and all the red patches getting less red, basically less itchy and uncomfortable.

And it was very beneficial saying some. Pictures the evidence and all the leftovers, the exam on her face had it all in my face and both sides, forehead, um, psoriasis can vary. So in the song, they would get better sometimes because with the sunlight we can improve. But on the right-hand side, it's been a bit of better, better foods.

Actually, that was probably my camera phone, and neither was decent: because he wants to see. Completely clear to my face. Anyway, that's just the more back before on the left-hand side. It was pretty much covered. Um, and on the right-hand side, a few months later,

it's not great for our team, but I can kind of see Jose on the left-hand side is covered in red patches and, um, is actually, I think that was bout after two or three months taking it. So that's not the worst it's been. But I'm like no legs now. Completely clear. Same. So luxury to have skin pain, to be honest, search thing in conclusion, LDN definitely works for me.

I've actually, um, being offered every few months now. Cause I'm expecting a baby in February and it didn't kind of mix with morning sickness at the time, but it seems to have prolonged effects. And then my skin hasn't come back very, very much over the last four or five months stayed pretty constant,  which is good.

it hasn't. Suddenly the whole come back, which is great. And hopefully, it can help a lot of people with psoriasis and has actually talked to my GP yesterday for something else. And she mentioned she'd be prescribing LDN more, but didn't realize it more for psoriasis. So hopefully. I can educate her, get her to try on some other people.

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

Holly Warner, LDN Radio Show 04 Oct 2017 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Holly Warner shares her Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) experience on the LDN Radio Show with Linda Elsegood.

Holly Warner is a Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner who has her own clinic in Ottawa, Canada. She deals with hormone imbalance, thyroid issues, gut health, adrenal dysfunction, metabolic syndrome, and most autoimmune diseases. 

Her fascination with medicine began at an early stage. In her late teens she was focussed on cancer preservation but kept on getting drawn towards thyroid issues. Her experience as director of a medical facility for a number of years has added to her a great depth of knowledge in the pharmaceutical sector.

Warner specializes in clinical Nutritional Therapy. Her clinic does Skype appointments in Canada and the USA. She prescribes LDN and explains how it moderates and balances our autoimmune system and reduces the bad antibodies.

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