LDN Video Interviews and Presentations

 

J Stephen Dickson, MRPharmS, BSC (Hons) - Uses of LDN, History and Pharmacology - 2022 Conference (LDN; low dose naltrexone)

 

 

John Bardsley, MRPharmS - The Road to Licensure of LDN - LDN Side Effects - 2022 Conference (LDN; low dose naltrexone)

 

 

John Herr, RPh of Town and Country Compounding Pharmacy Talks about the Many Forms of Low Dose Naltrexone and more

 

 

Linda Elsegood: Welcome to the LDN Radio show brought to you by the LDN Research Trust. I'm your host Linda Elsegood. Today we're joined by pharmacist Mark Filosi from Family Care Compounding Pharmacy in Florida. Thank you for joining us today, Mark. We'd like to find out more about who is Mark Filosi. 

Mark Filosi: I grew up in pharmacy. My very first job was in a pharmacy when I was 14 years old. I began compounding even back then. This is before computerization, typing on a manual typewriter, filling capsules, one at a time on a torsion balance on Saturdays in support of compounding. Fast forwarding to 2023 where we've got really a state-of-the-art very high-tech pharmacy this is very very different. 

Linda Elsegood: So are you the manager? The owner? What's your role? 

Mark Filosi: I own two pharmacies. I own Family Care Compounding. I also own Live and Learn Pharmacy. I've done a brief stint as a PCAP ACHC Surveyor or accreditation and compounding both sterile and non-sterile. I also sit on the board of directors for the Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding. It's really the only advocacy group that I know of in the United States in support of what we do and allows us to be able to compound things like low dose naltrexone and bioidentical hormones. I'm a preceptor for four different universities in America. I'm a career coach for young pharmacists. I also teach educational programs for continuing education for pharmacists through the parent company that's sponsoring me on Medisca and LP3 Network. I'm a senior facilitator for them. I've worked teaching sterile and non-sterile, advanced non-sterile business for pharmacists for the last 15 years. 

I've taken on a very new role on basically off the bench now as a pharmacist, even though I still work in my stores. I'm a success partner with Medisca Pharmacy Compounding Coaching Services. That is something that's very new. When my son was younger, I was a Boy Scout leader for him and horseback riding with my daughter and all kinds of fun stuff with my wife. Now we have a a lot of hobbies and projects. 

Linda Elsegood: You are a very busy man obviously. Please tell us about your pharmacies. 

Mark Filosi: We've been in business for 27 years. I started way back when there really wasn't much support for compounding pharmacies, back when there was just a publication called the Secundum Artem. 

I would learn everything then that Mark Erickson talked about in that particular publication. I learned how to compound a progesterone suppository. Then I would go out land market that one thing to physicians and practitioners in Florida. I became so impassioned with that that I wanted to learn more. I've taken flagship programs from Medisca Sterile Compounding, non-sterile and I've really expanded the scope of what we do to the point where I would say compounding has really eclipsed all the other things that I do in pharmacy, but I've probably done just about everything you could think of as a pharmacist. My most passionate and exciting thing that I do at my pharmacy is non-sterile compounding. I just love it. 

Linda Elsegood: What forms do you compound LDN into? 

Mark Filosi: Right now we compound rapid dissolve tablets, trochees, which are just basically lozenges that you dissolve in your mouth. Capsules of course are probably our number one, but one of the exciting things that you might not know about is something called Nova film from Medisca. It can bypass down the hatch, into the stomach, then to the liver, then to the blood, then to the biological side of action. We've got a new product called Nova film which is sublingual but the unique thing about it is it's also mucoadhesive so it gives your body much more opportunity for absorption in the tiny blood vessels inside your mouth. It is similar to a Listerine strip or some of the commercial products that are like that right now. The mucosal lining is kind of a moving target. There's a turnover rate with it and this really makes it bind to that and we're really looking forward to using low dose naltrexone in that type of delivery system. It is very novel, very unique. 

Linda Elsegood: Do you make low dose naltrexone (LDN) in a nasal spray? 

Mark Filosi: It's my feeling and the feeling that the folks that support me at Medisca and LP3 that that should probably start as a sterile compounded preparation as it doesn't have direct access to the body like an injection or intramuscular, but it's still something that you wouldn't want to introduce a pathogen into somebody's body. I don't really focus on sterile compounding anymore. That's not something that I do. 

Linda Elsegood: You mentioned two pharmacies. Are they run very similar? 

Mark Filosi: Yes they are. Live and Learn Pharmacy, a pharmacy I just purchased a few months ago, was nothing but compounding, and my pharmacy was a hybrid of just about everything; DNA, retail and of course compounding.

Linda Elsegood: What kind of doctors do you deal with in Florida? I know West Coast is mainly naturopathic doctors. Do you have MDs and DOs and physician assistants, etc. 

Mark Filosi: NDs would not be the primary here because they don't have prescriptive authority in Florida. It is interesting, I could take a prescription from an ND in California because they do legally have prescriptive authority and the right to prescribe low dose naltrexone in California, so if one called to here I could fill it, but an ND in Florida, I would not be able to. It is very interesting but I would say the primary prescribers that I see here in Florida would be MDs and probably nurse practitioners. Especially because nurse practitioners here in Florida can be autonomous. They can open up their own practices and this is really kind of a niche market that's very well supported with nurse practitioners. It's something that's really within their power to do that. 

Linda Elsegood: We find that there are many nurse practitioners who seem to have more time to spend with patients than a doctor. 

Mark Filosi: Although I've got some really wonderful prescribing MDs I will say that in my experience nurse practitioners do give you more of their time and because of that it can be a very powerful experience for a lot of people 

Linda Elsegood: Now in Scotland, and we're going to start having them in England – Pharmacy Consultant Prescribers. Something so new in Scotland, I think they had it before COVID. It will mean you can go to your doctor or your pharmacist with minor things. In Scotland they could prescribe LDN as well. In England I think it's going to be minor things to begin with. Do you have that already in place? 

Mark Filosi: It depends on the state because each state is run like a small country. We have different rules within the state versus Federal law standards and guidelines. In Florida we've got two programs. We've got something called Test To Treat where a pharmacist could do a CLIA approved test and then from that we would be able to prescribe certain limited things like you're describing in Scotland. We also have something called a Collaborative Practice Model where we could create a collaborative practice agreement with a practitioner and then prescribe things within that agreement. I would think that prescribing LDN could be one of those collaborative things that we could do moving forward. 

Linda Elsegood: It is really exciting. 

Mark Filosi: I am excited for that and I think that the world has recognized that pharmacists have a great place within healthcare and that we should be recognized as practitioners and we're probably one of the best suited professions, and that we would be able to prescribe because we know the drug. 

Linda Elsegood: Doctors only do a certain amount of drug interactions because that's not their wheel house that's yours. It's the pharmacy, that's the nurse, prescribers are like doctors to a point you know. Why wouldn't you have a pharmacist prescribing like you have a nurse prescriber? I don’t see what the difference is. 

Mark Filosi: That's very true and it's funny that the lobbying groups and the association surrounding nurses and doctors are strong but historically those types of groups surrounding pharmacists have been weak. We haven't been a cohesive body. That's one of the reasons why I sit on the board of directors for APC is to give that voice 

Linda Elsegood: Because in England there's a crisis that we are short of medical professionals, doctors, nurses, etc and I'm sure it must be similar to the US. It would be so much easier for patients who have access to medical care if all those pharmacists that were ready and willing and able to become prescribers. Surely that would take a lot of pressure off your health system. 

Mark Filosi: Yeah, and I think that it's a partnership with those people. It's not like we're taking power away from a practitioner. We're sharing the process. I think we make them more effective. If a physician only has five or ten minutes to meet with a patient we can work behind the scenes and write suggested prescriptions. We can measure outcomes with prescribers and patients and it's that triad. It's the relationship between a pharmacist, a patient and a practitioner that really rounds out that whole process. 

Linda Elsegood: It is all for the good of the patient. 

Mark Filosi: Of course, it works best if you have that kind of time. That's something that APC, an independent group, they have a new product called Outcomes MD. It is a platform available to both pharmacists and providers. It interfaces with electronic healthcare records and they have a very new platform specific to naltrexone that I can text a survey to my patient. Once they receive their prescription it will establish a baseline of symptoms with that patient associated with naltrexone and then I can start to measure and monitor outcomes. The measures are to prove that it's either working or if there's some sort of gap in therapy, or is there something that I can go back and now recognize because the beauty of compounding is it something that we can modulate, fix and make better, because it's personalized medicine.

Linda Elsegood: It is always good to start with a baseline. For people sitting in that survey initially before they take the first pill, capsule, whatever it may be, you then got the baseline which makes such a big difference. 

Mark Filosi: I would say to the pharmacist in the United States that might hear this that the data that's being collected by Outcomes MD will become redacted and shared back to the Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding. This is something that we can show evidence to the FDA that compounding is valid and that the works of pharmacy are true. We've been doing this as a privilege for thousands of years. With a stroke of a pen the Federal regulatory bodies could take that away from us. I think it's important if we want to preserve really valuable and powerful things like LDN and BHRT and all those things that go with it then we have to be proactive. 

Linda Elsegood: I believe you are quite big in the hormone community. 

Mark Filosi: With the community of everything that's possible within non-sterile compounding and sterile compounding. Yes, I've got a new role. In addition to being a facilitator for educational programs I also teach. I have been teaching compounding for 15 years. I've been advocating for colleges of pharmacy and so on. When you take a program like that then people don't know what to do on Monday morning after the program, after they get home. They've taken a course, they've gone to college but they still need somebody to hold their hand through the process and Medisca, now the parent company, the global leader in compounding, really has allowed me to open this channel and I become what's called a success partner. I have two other people that are working with me. I've got another coach that's working as a coach and remote patient monitoring and clinical services. I have another coach that's specializing in pharmacy operations, CEO mindset leadership. When somebody wants to open the niche market of non-sterile compounding or maybe they already are a fantastic non-sterile compounder but they want to open the niche market of LDN I can walk them through that process and really this whole team would guide them on that effort. Something that's very new and this is what we're going to kind of splash at the LDN conference.

Linda Elsegood: Third party testing is very important and pharmacists hold that in very high regard because as a pharmacist you can say there is definitely 4.5 milligrams in my capsule.

Mark Filosi: You know I have what I affectionately call pharmacists that behave more like bartenders. They're dabblers in non-sterile compounding. Then I have pharmacists that are truly professional, personalized compounding pharmacists and they're very different. It's different than just crushing a 50 milligram tablet and dividing it in some way to make a capsule or some other preparation. If you used an FDA grade, USP grade, active pharmaceutical ingredient from somebody like Medisca and you learn how to manipulate that. 

If I have five milligrams of Naltrexone, and 50 milligrams of Naltrexone it is very difficult for somebody to weigh that precisely. You have to learn how to weigh the unweighable. You need to learn how to do mixtures that if I was making a capsule, even if every one of my capsules the finished product weighed exactly 300 milligrams but the finished powders in there. If I make a hundred capsules at a time, if they all just by chance weigh 300 milligrams, my theoretical weight, how would I really know 4.5 milligrams or 1.5 milligrams on the titration was really in those capsules? That predicates itself on homogeneity and content uniformity when we make that mixture powder blend to start with. We would need devices like the Mazerustar, that's an inverse planetary mixer. We would need testing facilities to confirm and validate repeatedly that when I make a mixture in service of making a 1.5 milligram capsule or a 3 or 4.5 or what have you that I do have a homogeneous blend. When I make those capsules and they weigh the correct amount the finished preparation is correct. I believe that all pharmacists should operate by the family rule. If I was making that for my mom, I was making that for my wife, if it's not good enough to dispense to any of those people then I shouldn't be doing this. If you're just dropping a tablet into a glass of water, are you thinking about the fact that naltrexone is the salt of a strong acid and it could be either more dissociated or less dissociated in the presence of an acid or a base. It could undergo hydrolysis in water. It's not stable. What happens if a lot of the excipient ingredients have grabbed onto that drug and it's at the bottom of the glass and you're supposed to drink one tenth of this glass to give you the five milligrams which is going to be nearly impossible. At the beginning of that glass maybe you get a light dose, at the bottom of the glass maybe get a heavy dose and you're looking at a narrow therapeutic index drug where we're telling people that 1.5 milligrams in increments is what you need to do. If we're giving people instructions that are that precise. If we're doing very low low dose naltrexone, an ultra low dose naltrexone how is that possible without this committed validated process? 

Linda Elsegood: Please share your website so that people can go and find out more. 

Mark Filosi: Yes uh I would tell them to go on to Medisca.com and they can look at pharmacy success partners. They can look at our services. They can look at formulation development. We have everything. Really a need from LP3 education it's a one stop shop really to get somebody up to speed and able to do something like this. Which really is something that you really need to pay close attention to. If you don't do it right we can cause patient harm instead of patient good. I think that if you really want to do things correctly you want to work with somebody like this company Medisca. 

Linda Elsegood: Any questions or comments you may have please email me Linda@ldnrt.org. I look forward to hearing from you. 

 

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Do you have LDN Experience you would like to share? (LDN; low dose naltrexone)

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This was an LDN Radio Show interview in 2022.

Linda Elsegood: Welcome to the LDN Radio Show, brought to you by the LDN Research Trust I'm your host, Linda Elsegood. I have an exciting lineup of guest speakers who are LDN experts in their field. We will be discussing low-dose naltrexone and its many uses in autoimmune diseases, cancers, etc. Thank you for joining us.

Today we're joined by Dr Nasha Winters, who's also one of the LDN Research Trust Medical Advisors. Thank you for joining us today, Nasha.

Dr. Winters: Linda, it's so good to see you, and so good to be here with everybody else. I always enjoy these conversations.

Linda Elsegood: So, you're going to tell us about LDN and the future of healthcare.

Dr. Winters:  Yeah, you know, it's funny, because you and I, we've talked about a lot of different topics over our years together, though I’m going to spend the majority of our time today talking about where health care needs to go, and where LDN falls into that. I was actually looking back at my notes, I think this was back in 2016 or 2017 when I was at an LDN conference with you, where we were talking about why is this not part of just standard of care, this low-cost, highly-effective, very low if any adverse events, very multi-targeted in a lot of different disease conditions? It just still is a crazy thing for me to believe that this is still not included in standard of care, and that there are still so many naysayers out there in the medical environment. That is keeping people from having easy access to this very very supportive therapeutic intervention. So that being said, I think that is also just sort of an example of just how inherently flawed our medical systems are. And I think, depending on which side of the pond you live, that some people here in the United States think, “Oh wouldn't it be great to have a national healthcare system?” And then folks over in the UK look at us and say, “Wouldn't it be great to have access to more integrative functional medicine pieces?” And really, all of the systems globally are inherently flawed at this time, in the world around us.

And so, I just wanted to give maybe a little lay in the land to help people understand a few key things that have just happened in the last 50 years, to sort of highlight and stamp where we got off the tracks, and what it's going to take to bring us onto an entirely new path. This idea of health care, which I think is such a misnomer - it really is disease care, disease management - nothing about it is healthy or health-inducing or health-inspiring or health-creating. But we made a big shift after World War II. The whole planet had a collective experience with World War II, and as such, a lot of our resources got shifted of what we had access to and what we needed to sort of patch ourselves together. So you can appreciate why it came to be, but you can't appreciate that we're still staying in that mindset 50 years later. We moved into much more grain production post-World War II, just in order to keep up with the demand for more bread, which was deeply rationed during the world wars. Feed for animals, thanks to an increase in our concentrated animal feeding facilities, known as CAFOs here in the United States, to help feed the livestock like beef and pork. Specifically, we had the war on cancer which was waged in the United States in 1971, an act signed into life by President Nixon. It really was the first time we claimed the war on cancer, and 50 years later we're no further down the road with that. We started bringing glyphosate more out of a lab and into our world around us. Cigarette ads were only banned from TV 50 years. We finally banned them from TV, and yet they're still highly available to everybody, and a couple little warning labels on the packages has not changed our smoking rates much throughout the world. Berkeley Chemists in Berkeley California announced the first growth hormones that were later added to our food supply in 1971. We started using our first CT scans in London in 1971. We gave a Nobel prize to Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr for discovering the mechanism of action of hormones, namely epinephrine, which started to really elucidate our stress response patterns. Yet we've not really incorporated that into medical practice. We started monocropping the world and therefore monocropping our microbiotic internal soil as well, which left us really with poor resilience to how we deal with disease management and disease prevention. And in the last five or six years we've even awarded Nobel prizes, very very high level Nobel prizes, to things like circadian rhythm biology, fasting and autophagy, and the microbiota and areas around the immune system, and yet ironically none of these amazing Nobel prize awarded individuals have their work adopted in the general standards of care.

So I give you that example that yeah, we're talking about it, but we're not doing anything about it, and it feels like I’m having the same conversation around things like low-dose naltrexone. So that's a piece I wanted just to kind of lay that framework to go wow, the problem. Right. What's the problem? So a little bit more before we talk about the solution. Take a breath Linda, and see if there's anything you want to add or further clarify from that whole soliloquy.

Linda Elsegood: I just found that really interesting about the facts that I didn't know.

Dr. Winters: Well, good, because I’m a little bit of a history buff, and so I really like to understand where we've come from so we can understand why we got to this place. But it also helps us create a new path forward. It's like we don't want to repeat history over and over again, so let's come up with something new. But just as I said in the beginning of our conversation, there's really nothing healthy about our current healthcare system, no matter where you live on the planet. It's a model based on disease management with no interest in prevention of the disease or creation of health and wellness. In fact, in the United States there's an organization called the CDC. Everyone's heard of it, the Center for Disease Control. And a few years ago, there was a secondary part of that title. It was the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. That last bit has conveniently fallen off their website, and you don't see that anymore, which is also very interesting and telling. And because I only know the stats from the United States off the top of my head, we're not too far behind any industrialized westernized country, or kind of neck and neck with regards to these numbers, so if you live in the UK or other parts of the EU, these probably apply to you as well. The United States is ranked 27th worldwide in terms of healthcare, and yet we have the most expensive healthcare system in the world, and we're also the country losing longevity while other countries are staying the same or improving their longevity. And a lot of our scientists and researchers out there are calling that loss of longevity “an era of despair”. The longevity is coming down because of people taking their own lives, so suicide, and opiate overdose, which starts to show you kind of this trend of just sort of a dissatisfaction of life, hiding or medicating the pain. And yet we don't have anything in our medical systems to really address those head-on.

The United States spends over 20 percent of its gross domestic product on healthcare, whereas back in 1971, seven percent. That is a giant jump. The average cost of a meal in a hospital, which is where we're trying to nourish the most vulnerable people, is a $1.37. Right now, the euro and the dollar are almost next to next, so it's about $1.50 maybe for the euro, but $1.37 is what we're trying to nourish people with. Back to health. And so the cardboard and distilled water that you could take would probably be healthier than what's being offered in most hospital systems, which is really unfortunate. These are just some things to keep in mind.

The other thing is cheap food leads to poor health, and there are food deserts all over the world that exist, that are keeping people in really underserved and disenfranchised communities even more oppressed in so many ways. And we have a terrible deficit of our nutrition education, and wellness education, in our medical schools, where less than 25 percent of normal medical schools are even offered an elective course in nutrition. We're out there trying to tell people how to nourish themselves, and yet we've had no training in the medical field to do as such.

So, a wellness ecosystem, that's what we have to start to think about. That's where we start to move into a solution. It goes above and beyond food, it goes above and beyond access to inexpensive highly effective therapies such as low dose naltrexone. And it needs to break away from this disease management model and move us away from sort of the three big drivers of this model, which are big pharma, big agriculture, and insurance. And that means even the insurance model we have here in the United States, or even the national health care systems in other parts of the world, the only way we're going to break these habits and change this trajectory, is by leaving those systems in the dust by completely getting out of them. There's a quote, I don't know if you, Linda, or any of your listeners know the British Indian philosopher and activist Satish Kumar. He's a really interesting voice, sort of like a hopeful future, with regards to health and well-being. And so I love this quote:

"Holistic thinking brings soil, soul ,and society together as three aspects of one big picture. This is the new trinity of our time. When we become single issue oriented, we believe that if only the world could achieve environmental sustainability, or if only everyone could practice spirituality, or if only we could establish social justice in the world, then everything would be sorted. But this kind of single issue obsession doesn't take us very far, because it's too narrow. All of these issues. all of these disparities. are interrelated.”

I really love that piece because it's going to take us moving out of the current trinity as a collective, to make a hopeful future for all of us. We need to reclaim our health. We need to reclaim our ecosystem. And we need to set a new structure.

One of the things I love to think about here is, wouldn't it be amazing, Linda, if we could all have basically insurance coverage or health care coverage; a community supported agriculture - we call them CAFOs here in the United States - wouldn't it be amazing if you basically were given a stipend for your food that comes from a local regional organic farmer and rancher orchardists, to nourish yourself and to nourish your family, instead of having to depend on some of those deserts -  food desert environments or fast food environments, or highly processed chemicalized food options, to feed the less financially stable of our communities. Wouldn't it just be amazing if that was just a standard of care, to have access to good quality food, which doesn't take that much to create. It just takes leaving the current system and the dependence on that current system.

For me, these ideas started to spread about 29 years ago, after my own terminal diagnosis, growing up impoverished, growing up in extreme trauma, growing up in an environment where I would have been considered one of those people that could never leave the system in which I was created, never leaving this sort of cycle of abuse and poverty and trauma and lack of education. Yet I managed to pull up my own bootstraps and do something different for myself. But not everybody can do that, or has the resources or the wherewithal to do that. This vision started percolating for me all those years ago because I was sick, because I was uninsured, because I was literally on my own, and on every level you could imagine, I started dreaming about, envisioning sketching about, making lists, exploring the world for almost the past three decades, to build a non-profit residential hospital and research institute For me, obviously the special focus is on oncology care, but also in prevention and wellness. So this Metabolic Terrain Institute of Health, that's the first of its kind, will be the template. The sort of pilot is being built in southeast Arizona in the United States, against all of the goliaths of big pharma, big ag, of insurance, because we're leaving all of those models behind, and we're literally changing the standard to cancer care and prevention, from the soil to the soul, and recasting cancer from a death sentence as it's seen today, into more of a manageable disease process. And you could put other diseases in the place of cancer. That could be diabetes, that could be Alzheimer's, that could be cardiovascular disease, whatever chronic disease du jour you want to put in that, that's what this campus is hoping to support. And so that trinity that Kumar talked about here is about bringing a convergence of talented like-minded individuals to the table, and systemizing a methodology that enhances patient outcomes, and prevents physician burnout. And scaling it by training physicians and patient advocates globally to get into a new narrative around health creation versus disease management. We've been spending the last couple of years making this come to fruition. Our physician reaches now over 88 positions globally, over 200 patient advocates globally, growing twice a year. We do courses ongoing, so that we can start to educate a new way of thinking around the world. Our goal before the doors of the hospital open is to have 500 physicians and a thousand patient advocates, and we're well on our way to meeting that piece here, because we know it's just the start we need right now. For instance, there are only 12 million oncologists in the world, and we have too many patients needing them. There's not enough. We have to get folks trained, and more and more doctors are leaving general family practice now, and going into specialties, which is kind of leaving the general public in trouble. We're trying to change that need, and then we're also simultaneously building and launching a data platform that collects our information to show that this new methodology, this new systems thinking, this new collective networking global environment, is in fact lowering healthcare costs and improving patient outcomes. To show that, because we hear well, there's no research in this well, there's no research because there's not a model to research. All right, we all have our n of ones and our little integrated practices, but when you put a bunch of us together and that data comes into a really robust platform, we can show in real time the dents we're making.

That vision of this hospital where folks can come and immerse themselves, and show themselves again how to live healthy on an unhealthy planet, cost share their supplements, cost share their imaging, costs share their off-label drugs costs, share their pharmaceuticals, their other interventions, that they need for their health to thrive. That makes a huge difference. I don't know what it what it is for you guys in the UK, but in the United States the average American spends $20,000 each year on healthcare. That's just their insurance premiums, their deductibles and the out of pockets that aren't covered by insurance. That's the average, which means there's a lot more people paying a lot more than that. And if you want a truly integrative innovative approach, you're going to be paying a heck of a lot more than that. So, we were imagining, can you imagine taking that 20 grand and putting it into something that's actually health creating versus disease mitigating? What a difference that could make in a very short period of time. And then also, this move that many people are hearing about, to sort of a decentralized financial structure where you're looking more at sort of tokens, and sort of the cyber or the crypto currencies and whatnot. There are massive moves happening right now that within five years, this decentralized financial model that shows extreme transparency, so you really do know the true cost of your health care. And where those funds are really going will reflect that probably 90% of all the money spent on health care today is actually a huge failure, and not doing anything to change people's healthcare status. The overhead to maintain the monster model that we have that is clearly ineffective, is needing to be deconstructed and put into a whole other financial structure. So that's happening.

Then, those folks saying that there's no research in this, well no one wants to fund trials like this, and this type of health care does not put everybody in the same room and give them all the same treatment and expect a miracle for each individual, just like Linda. You and I have seen patient after patient after patient for just LDN alone. Look at the variability of who needs to have their dose in the morning, who needs to start at a micro dose versus the 1.5 milligram, who does better, who only needs 1.5 milligrams to derive all the benefit, who has results within a few days, who takes a few months to get the results. That alone for that single agent shows the incredible diversity of our health population, that is not given any credence in our standard of care models of health today.

So this is what's so fun to me, of like re-envisioning what we're building outside of this, and what needs to happen to make this vision come alive. A lot of that as well means we have to build it from scratch. We have to build it from scratch so this non-profit, we're taking philanthropic monies, we're taking grants, we're taking research dollars to build this model. Because of the cost share, we're even able to keep those that have the means into a lower cost cash pay model. We won't be accepting insurance of any kind from anywhere. If people want to submit it to their insurance, if they still have standard of care, they're welcome to do that. But we're very confident that what we could offer would be far less expensive and far more valuable and far more impactful than anything they're currently experiencing. You probably hear this all the time, and experience it. Especially my folks, who are in national healthcare systems, when patients say to me, “Well, I can't afford that, that's out of pocket” and I’m thinking “Well what are you spending your money on, like where are your priorities.” Health is our wealth. Without health we have nothing, and for people like you and I, who've experienced the side of the pendulum where health was elusive to us, we really value the importance of turning over every stone and recognizing that to actually survive, we're going to have to leave the system and do a little bit more on our own. You and I are the weird unicorns, in that most people don't even know that's available to them, or are truly poorly resourced in a way that they can't get access to that. We know that this future healthcare model needs to create a new standard of care.

I know I covered a lot here, but I just want to start to paint a picture of what is being built. I’ve been told for 29 years this could never happen, and what I’ve seen happen in the last 10 years, and in particular in the last two, it's happening. And now that more and more people are coming together collectively into our network, and other little islands and pods and silos of this happening all over the planet, we're all finding coherence and resonance with knowing that we can't fix it, as I tried doing in the first 20 years of my practice. I can't fix the broken system. It exhausted me, it burned me, out it broke my heart, it made me physically ill, going in time and time and time again trying to fix a broken system. So I realized about a decade ago, I have to completely get out of it and build a new one. Luckily I keep finding sort of tribal members all over the planet, that are interested and curious enough and willing enough to do the work to do the same.

I was excited that we got to have this conversation today, because I feel like what you offer. and what the Trust offers, are opportunities, resources, awarenesses, that there are so much more than we're just being spoon-fed. These are the conversations that I hope are just the beginning for you and your listeners, to help us create collectively a new and hopeful healthcare future.

Linda Elsegood: If there are any medical professionals or patients out there who really want to back and support you, what can they do? How can they start the journey with you?

Dr. Winters: Well, definitely start by going over to https://mtih.org which is our non-profit hospital and education platform. That stands for Metabolic Terrain Institute of Health, mtih.org. You can get a ton of information there. There's even a little ‘how can I help’ button that shows like, you can help in donations, you can help in volunteering your expertise. We have a CEO who was the head of a billion dollar revenue non-profit hospital who's come to the table because he did that work for 26 years, and saw what a dead end it was. So he's jumping on board to help us with his expertise of how to build the new hospital system. For things like the regenerative agriculture environment, we have farmers and ranchers coming too, because our hospital is on a massive campus where 75 percent of the campus is a food forest. So we're able to nourish people. Our patients that come to this environment will be in the fields with the farmers, as well as in the kitchen with the chefs. But they're also going to be in the fields, in the kitchens, with the doctors and the nurses and the adjunct. The healing community folks are realizing what it takes to create health and prevent disease, and so those types of options are coming up. Then, if you are a physician who wants to learn more about this truly innovative methodology and systemic thinking model, of how you want to apply it your own patient practice, whether you work with cancer patients or not, it applies across the board. We offer courses twice a year. Our next one is September 2022 - we offer it in September and February of every year, and then we have the same thing for our patient advocates. If you don't have a medical degree but you also want to be part of this movement, we offer a patient advocacy training as well, which we're also bringing in ways to help you monetize it and create a self-care program for yourself, but also create a career path, because we need a lot of bodies, a lot of like-minded souls to make this mission come alive.

That's really amazing, absolutely fantastic, and so needed literally across the globe. I used to think it was just a problem in my own town in Colorado, and then I realized oh no, in the US; oh, and then I realized oh Canada, and then oh the UK. It's like it expands beyond that of all my world travels and all the conferences, and all the patients I consult with globally, and their health care providers globally, this is a global issue and it's going to take a global shift, and we need to do it together.

Linda Elsegood: We wish you every success, thank you

Dr. Winters: Thank you Linda, thank you for the opportunity to talk about my passion and purpose.

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.
 

 

 

LDN Research Trust - Low Dose Naltrexone Angie Fielden, LDN Specialist shares her experience of Low Dose Naltrexone.

Please visit our website https://www.ldnresearchtrust.org, which is packed with information on Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) for Autoimmune Conditions, Cancers, Chronic Pain, Women's Health, Children's Health etc., plus we have a very active FB Closed Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/LDNRT/

Linda Elsegood: Welcome to the LDN Radio Show brought to you by the LDN Research Trust. I'm your host, Linda Elsegood. I have an exciting lineup of guest speakers who are LDN experts in their field. We will be discussing low-dose naltrexone and its many uses in autoimmune diseases, cancers, etc. Thank you for joining us.

Solutions Pharmacy is licensed in 20 states and located in Chattanooga in Tennessee. They have led the compounding industry with excellence for over 60 years, specializing in LDN, hormones, fibromyalgia, pediatrics, and autoimmune conditions. They offer an LDN program to patients who need help starting LDN. Call 423-486-1811 for a consultation.

Today we're joined by Angie Fielden from Solutions Pharmacy in Tennessee. Thank you for joining us today, Angie.

Angie Fielden: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Linda Elsegood: Now, I know that you took the Masterclass, which is totally amazing, and you did really really well, and you've been using that knowledge; and, I understand you've been holding monthly, public, free seminars. Could you tell us how well that's going?

Angie Fielden: It's going absolutely fabulous. The lowest class we had was the very first one and it was kind of a quick turnaround in that we had two people in there, both people signed up for our LDN program. We average around, I would say, 5-8 people each month. It lasts about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. The educational part is around 45 minutes, and then there's Q&A time, and then afterwards we always have our LDN books up there, and they'll usually have a few people that will buy those. We sign them up for their consultation. If they choose to go forward, and we usually have about 80 to 100 percent that sign up, and they desire to start on LDN.

Linda Elsegood: Okay! You say sign up to your program. Tell us more about your program.

Angie Fielden: When we decided to launch an LDN program, it was because we noticed that there were a lot of physicians, a lot of providers in general, that didn't know a lot about LDN. What is low-dose naltrexone? So, we thought well, let's do an LDN program where we can send this information about our program to providers to let them know we're going to offer a service for you, and this is what the service is. We do free educational seminars, or we will educate patients one-on-one. We will do a patient consultation for that provider. Basically, the patient fills out an assessment form on their medical history: what their issues are and why are they seeking help for that medical condition. We then decide if we think they're going to be a good fit for LDN: is LDN going to potentially help them with this disease issue or case that they have. Then we take all of this information with, let's say they have a disease state of fibromyalgia, we're going to pull some studies on fibromyalgia patients that used LDN and let the providers see how their condition was helped with LDN. We always send a study or two about that disease state that that patient has along with their assessment form, and along with basic information about LDN itself. Then we also provide them with an Rx prescribing form that has the starter - depending on how we were going to start that patient. There are several different starters, so we would check which one we think would be best for that patient. And then we also tell them about maintenance. We also have a patient information sheet that we give each patient as they pick up their prescription. The information sheet tells them exactly how to take it, and some what-ifs, and we also put a little encouraging thing in there: this is the reason why you want to stay with it; it's not necessarily going to be everything you need within two to four weeks; it might take a little bit longer. So, we kind of give them a little motivational in there. We also give the patients ability to call us if they feel that they need to not titrate up to the next dose yet because something is going on. They call us, so we take that time that a patient would need to speak to a professional off of the provider, and we do that ourselves. Not me, but one of our pharmacists does that. Our pharmacists are the ones that talk to the patients about any medical issue. What my job is to get the information to the providers, the correct information. I extract the information from the patient, put it on paper, and then I give them over to our pharmacist, and he conducts the patient assessment. Then I'll put all the paperwork together for the provider and get that over there. So that's kind of how the LDN program works, and it comes at a very affordable price. They use us ongoing; we do follow-ups with the patient at 90 days and at 6 months, so 3 months and 6 months we do follow-ups. And by that time, they're generally pretty good. And we send the follow-ups to the provider as well.

Linda Elsegood: Well, what a service! I mean, this is what the LDN Research Trust was hoping, you know, educate the pharmacists, get the pharmacists happy for the pharmacist to educate the providers, because I don't know how many staff you have in your pharmacy, but you know there is a limited number of hours in a week. But once you've educated one provider, that one provider could treat, you know 100-200 patients.

Angie Fielden: Yes.

Linda Elsegood: And not only do you get the opportunity to educate more providers, the provider that is using LDN can see that LDN is helping their patients. They then tell their other medical professional friends and that's how it snowballs isn't it?

Angie Fielden: Yes, and just last week I had two luncheons, so as the marketing director, what my job is is to go to providers’ offices and deliver information about what we compound. LDN was my main focus this last week, to two places. They were arthritis centers, so they can really use LDN. And it was surprising that neither of the physicians at this one office knew anything about LDN. I do come across that all the time. I presented the information - I already had everything printed out to where they could just go through it, just like this. I give a quick read, If they want to just read. Basically, I kind of regurgitate to them what's on that paper quickly, so they don't have to read it; and then usually I tell them a success story. I have a success story myself. I'm using LDN, and it has given me my life back. But we also have a patient that is a poster child. She is a fibromyalgia patient, an RN, and she'd been out of work for 20 years. Her story is phenomenal, and I love telling that story to our providers. Their ears kind of perk up, and they say, oh tell me more. They're really excited about learning about it. So, my job is so fun because I'm the first point of information for them. Then they have access to our pharmacist. They have also access to come to one of our free public seminars. We have three providers that are coming to our next seminar. It's so exciting, and you're right, it trickles down, and then they can help hundreds of patients. That's why I'm so passionate about being an LDN Specialist. I just absolutely love to see that trickle effect of helping, and people are saying “it saved my life, it's given me my life back; my husband has his wife back; things like that is what keep hearing.

Linda Elsegood: So, what conditions would you say that your patients are using LDN for 

Angie Fielden: We've had some rare conditions as well. Fibromyalgia, arthritis, and pediatrics are our top three conditions that we see a lot. But we've had some cancer patients and we had a chronic regional pain syndrome which we're just now dealing with, that provider and patient, and it's so exciting to see how this girl is going to progress in getting her life back. She had been in a wheelchair. She's a microbiologist in her college at Tennessee Knoxville, and it's phenomenal to see her be able to do everything she's doing with the condition that she has. We really feel, and the provider feels, that this may be exactly what she needs, and he's familiar with LDN. So I'm excited: she'll be starting it in about two or three weeks, when she graduates; or any time now she'll be starting it, and I'm excited to see how her life is going to change and improve.

Linda Elsegood: So, all this education that you do for patients and providers, how do you go about letting them know? I mean, obviously you can only visit so many offices in a week. Do you advertise in any which way shape or form?

Angie Fielden: In the lobby we have a pop-up banner that talks about LDN, and conditions and symptoms, and that if you're having certain symptoms, you may be interested in our in our seminar. We get a lot of seminar patients that way. We have a banner that we put out by the roadside. In fact, let's see if you can see that tall banner.

Linda Elsegood: Oh yes! 

Angie Fielden: It says “free seminar tonight”, so we'll put that out on seminar night. We do quite a bit on social media, we do our website, we have a banner on our website about the LDN seminar, we have an LDN section on our website - so we get a lot of people from our website that sign up for our free seminar because they're learning about LDN. We've had people that found us from your website actually, and have come to our seminar by seeing that there was an LDN Specialist there. Then they check out our website, and then they end up coming to the seminar. It's so cool to see how we're all working together to help any and everybody in all different places. So those are some of the advertisings we do.

Linda Elsegood: What forms do you compound LDN in?

Angie Fielden: We do mostly capsules, but we have done a liquid formula a couple of times. One was for a cancer patient, and he could not swallow, so he had a feeding tube and had to put the liquid in a feeding tube. And he remarkably made improvements pretty fast once he started. The provider wanted to start at a higher dose - and this was this is what's great about the LDN Research Trust and being an LDN Specialist - I was able to work with you, Linda, and you helped put me in contact with some of the speakers that spoke on cancer, and I was able to email them and get two suggestions from two different people about where to start with this case. This is a unique case. This guy is stage four cancer, where do I start? They both told me the exact same thing. It was phenomenal, and it's so refreshing to know that we're going to get the exact information needed. It's going to be precise. It's going to be consistent with each other. They both told us to start at a higher level. This is a case where you don't titrate up. You go ahead and start at the four milligrams. Time is of the essence, and we have to act quick. And the patient began to turn around! It's another one of those stories that the wife, when she contacted me, said he is home now, he is no longer on a feeding tube, he's still on his LDN, his seizures have stopped, his pain level is manageable. It's just phenomenal to see how well LDN is helping.

Linda Elsegood: Well, that's good! I mean, the LDN Research Trust has been going over 18 years, and we have amazing people on board who don't mind sharing that knowledge, because they realize they are one person. They can only treat so many. But if they can help educate other providers, the number is infinite, isn't it? 

Angie Fielden: Don't you see also that they all equally have the passion to help people? That's what it seems like to me, that the passion that everyone holds, and that's why they want to help everybody.

Linda Elsegood: Exactly, exactly! So, if you were going to make an appointment to see a provider, and if we have providers listening thinking “I can't dedicate hours to learning this” you know, initially how long do you need to talk to a provider?

Angie Fielden: What I would need to talk to providers and what I actually get are two different things. At one of my luncheons, I had 20 full minutes. That's a long time to have with a provider. At a luncheon you normally don't get that. You might get three to six minutes, which isn't much time. You're regurgitating as quick as possible. Thankfully, God gifted me with fast-speaking ability. That's why it's crucial that I take an information packet that is fully able to teach them what they need to know, so I'm going to give them a snippet of what I’m actually handing them. I average five to eight minutes, I would say, per provider. But where they really learn is probably the written information that I give them, and it's a packet, maybe 20 pages long, but they're in different forms, like the information packet that you guys have on your website for providers. That's a quick read. They can read that and learn quite a bit about it. We have other forms. We always give them enough information that they can learn more about it. 

Linda Elsegood: It's a balance, isn't it? Give them too much and they don't want to read it because it's going to take too long.

Angie Fielden: Correct.

Linda Elsegood: But it's got to be long enough to pique their interest to get them to want to read more.

Angie Fielden: They love the studies, so if I give a study according to what types of patients they see. it sparks their interest. Usually I will give them one or two studies and that's it, and I highlight the conclusion - they know how to find it, but I usually highlight what I really want them to read, so that it will spark their interest to want to read more about that study. I think the studies help, that one quick information sheet helps. I give them the Rx form that is personalized to them, so it makes it so easy for them. I actually give them a sample form filled out so that they see very clearly how easy this form makes your life. A lot of people e-scribe now, but what my form can do for them is tell them how to write the directions, or how many milligrams, how to titrate it up. I also give them that patient information sheet, so they know exactly how to educate their patients on what they're going to be doing so. I think it's not as much the time I’m able to speak with them as much as it is the information I’m able to give them. Doctors are busy nowadays, and they don't have a lot of time to read or to research. So I’m hoping that I am shortening that time frame for them and they can learn quickly

Linda Elsegood: I know that you ship LDN to many states. How many states is it you ship to?

Angie Fielden: We're licensed in 20 states, soon to be 21. We ship an average of 400 packages a day; and then we have a lot of local.

Linda Elsegood: I'm moving ahead here with my thoughts: for people who would like to attend a seminar who live in a state that is too far away and can't get to one of your in-person events, are you thinking later of having them as a zoom webinar, where people can participate from those states that you could ship to?

Angie Fielden: Yes Linda, that is coming. We're so excited about it. We wanted to do several live seminars to get the pharmacist, because the pharmacist does the lecture in the PowerPoints. I open this up; he does the lecture in the PowerPoint; and then I do testimony, and tell them about our LDN program. It's pretty quick like that. We will have a recorded seminar for physicians that our pharmacist in charge is going to deliver, and then we'll open up a live portion where physicians can ask questions; and then we'll also do that exact same exact thing for patients. So yes, that is coming, and we're super excited about that. We probably will develop that this summer, so within the next couple of months, I would say, we'll have that ability. There are a lot of patients that ask us about it. They'll happen to follow on our website, see it and ask about a recorded version, and so our physicians are asking do you have a recorded version. It is a need that we need to fill, and we are going to be working on that very soon.

Linda Elsegood: Well, all I can say is we wish you every success! Anything the LDN Research Trust can do to help, just ask. We look forward to interviewing you again on your next stage. 

Angie Fielden: Thank you.

Linda Elsegood: Solutions Pharmacy is licensed in 20 states and located in Chattanooga, Tennessee. They have led the compounding industry with excellence for over 60 years. Specializing in LDN hormones fibromyalgia, pediatrics, and autoimmune conditions, they offer an LDN program to patients who need help starting LDN. Call 423-486-1811

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.

 

Lynn Gufeld, AGACNP - LDN Specialist (LDN; low dose naltrexone)