LDN Video Interviews and Presentations

Dr Julia Ward - April 20th 2020 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Dr Julia Ward shares her Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) experience on the LDN Radio Show with Linda Elsegood.

Dr Julia Ward is a champion for the healthcare of busy stressed out moms. Her own issues with hormone imbalances and chronic fatigue spurred her to com- plete a study of functional medicine. This is a more holistic way of approaching health that looks for the root causes of symptoms rather than just treating a diagnosis with a prescription. 

As a working mom with five kids she knows what it feels like to be overwhelmed with fatigue, stress, and other changes that happen with age. Dr Ward has been able to bring balance to her own health as well as to those of hundreds of her patients. 

She graduated medical school from the University of Southern California and has been practicing medicine for over 25 years.

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

Dr Elizabeth Livengood - 22nd April 2020 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Dr Elizabeth Livengood shares her Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) story on the LDN Radio Show with Linda Elsegood.

Dr Elizabeth Livengood offers exceptional in-person treatment, full service lab and medicinary resources, the most advanced injection procedures, and convenient telemedicine services. 

The point of Natural Medicine is to cultivate a sound mind, body, and spirit. As a naturopathic physician, Dr. Livengood establishes the foundations for health in your life, customizes the most effective yet safe and natural treatment protocols and collaborates with you to help you reach your health goals. 

Natural healing modalities may include: diet changes and exercise plans along with the coaching to help you implement them; nutritional supplements or prescriptions; acupuncture, cupping and electro-acupuncture; IV therapy, homeopathic or vitamin injections and many more.

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

Pharmacist Brad White - 15th April 2020 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Jill Brook, MA - 8th April 2020 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

LDN 2018 Conference - Q&A Session 2 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Dr Sarah Zielsdorf, MD, MS - 1st April 2020 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Dr Sarah Zielsdorf shares her Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) experience on the LDN Radio Show with Linda Elsegood.

Dr Sarah Zielsdorf is a relatively new prescriber of Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN), yet her knowledge of autoimmune diseases etc. is certainly convincing throughout this interview. 

Having Hashimoto's and Hypothyroidism gives her the perspective of the patient. Her “extra" education in Functional, Integrative, and Holistic medicines makes her very qualified to treat a host of illnesses. She prescribes LDN, but does thorough tests to arrive at the best combination of treatments including diet, exercise, detox, and proper medications.

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

Dr Phil Boyle - Women's Health and Low Dose Naltrexone Part 1 - 04 Feb 2020 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Dr Phil Boyle shares his Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) story on the LDN Radio Show with Linda Elsegood.

The interview will be about women's health and will be in two parts. The first part discusses menstruation, painful and heavy periods, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), premenstrual tension (PMT), and endometriosis.

Dr Phil Boyle is a General Practitioner with a special interest in infertility, miscarriage and women ’s health. He is the founder and Director of NeoFertility Clinic, Dublin Ireland. He is currently president of The International Institute for Restorative Reproductive Medicine, a doctors' group that aims to publish and scientifically validate Restorative reproduction.

He has helped over 3,500 couples achieve successful pregnancies since commencing practice in 1998. Dr Boyle has published papers in peer reviewed medical journals on restorative reproduction to treat couples with infertility, previous failed IVF and recurrent miscarriage.

Dr Boyle has prescribed LDN for infertility patients since 2004, safely treated over 500 women with LDN during pregnancy.

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

Shauna - Endometriosis and infertility - 25th March 2020 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Linda Elsegood: I'd like to introduce my guest today, who is Shauna from Canada, and Shauna, you use LDN for endometriosis and infertility. Thanks for joining us today, Shana. 

Shauna: Thank you for having me. 

Linda Elsegood: So, in your words, how about telling us your story? 

Shauna: I first heard about LDN from my mom, who has been taking it for a few different reasons: fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue and pain and things like that. And she had kind of read up about it through the LDN Research Trust website. And she kept on trying to push me towards taking it to see if it could help with our infertility problems. I kind of pushed back against her because the drug is just not well researched. There's just not a lot of studies that have been done. I asked my fertility specialist, and I asked my GP, and they were firmly against that. So I kind of continued to say no to my mom over a year or so. 

And then we kind of hit a roadblock for fertility treatments. I had tried other types of fertility drugs and treatments over the last three years, and nothing was working, and we couldn't afford IVF. We couldn't afford IUI. There was just no other option. So I went again to my fertility specialist, and I begged him to let me try LDN, just to see if maybe it could alleviate some of my endometriosis and then maybe potentially help with getting pregnant. He firmly said no again. So then I went to my GP, and it took quite a bit of arm twisting. 

I came at it from the point of helping with my endometriosis. I didn't really touch too much on it helping me to get pregnant.  I asked if he believes that LDN helps with inflammatory diseases, and he said, yes. And I said, well, endometriosis and PCOS, I also have PCOS, those diseases are inflammatory, so don't you think that this drug would potentially help me feel better? And he kind of crumbled: we can try it, he said, but I'm putting this all on you, and you're taking responsibility for anything that happens on this drug. So I said, okay, that's fine. And he wanted to prescribe me four and a half milligrams at first, and I tried to tell him that the pharmacy I go to is a compounding pharmacy, they can make lower doses. And he said this is as low as he’d go. The pharmacist said they can make it as low as wanted, so they called the doctor and he took it down to two and a half. I said we need to go down lower, to start like really low. But he ended up not going down any further than two and a half. My mom helped split the two and a half to even lower.

So I ended up starting at 0.5 and then working my way up to five milligrams. And the first thing I noticed back on the drug was that my immune system became like a hundred per cent better. I was getting colds every other week before starting the drug, and I haven't had one single cold since starting it in November. And the only side effect I felt was that when I increased my dose, I got migraines for a couple of days, and I got some nausea. But I was also on other fertility drugs, so really I have no idea whether it was the LDN or not. 

But when I got to five milligrams I found that I wasn't quite adjusting to the dosage and I was feeling quite nauseous, so in December I went down to two and a half milligrams, and I've stayed at two and a half. And then a few weeks after Christmas, I found out I was pregnant. So I had only been on the drug.

Linda Elsegood: Oh, congratulations!

Shauna: Thank you. So I'm six weeks pregnant, and it was the combination of the fertility drugs that stimulate ovulation - that's a separate problem, endometriosis that I have. I don't know if maybe I stayed on LDN for longer without the fertility drugs, it would potentially help me ovulate naturally on my own. I don't know. But for me, I needed the fertility drugs to help me populate and then used the LDN to decrease the inflammation and calm my immune system. Cause I think those were the two things that were getting in the way of the fertility drugs actually working and pregnancy to actually stick, because I had been on them for nine months, and the ovulation was happening, just no pregnancy. 

I did feel that there was a decrease in inflammation in my pelvic area, and I was able to do activities that used to completely wipe me out physically, where I would come home and just have to go lay down because I would be just exhausted and in so much pain. I'm a photographer, so sometimes my newborn photo sessions are three or four hours long, and after those sessions, typically, I come home, and I'm a wreck physically. But when I was on LDN or while I'm on LDN, I found that I could do new sessions and not come home completely in pain, which was really nice.

Linda Elsegood: Oh, wow. That's awesome. That's something. So are you still taking LDN? 

Shauna: Yes, I'm still taking two and a half milligrams, and I'll stay on it until the end of my pregnancy, and then probably continue on it afterwards. It's the only drug that I've been able to find so far that successfully alleviates some of the endometriosis symptoms, without having a crazy list of side effects, which is really wonderful.

Linda Elsegood: Dr Phil Boydell uses LDN in his infertility clinic, and you can see on our Vimeo channel, some of the videos we have of him where he uses it to help ladies get pregnant, during pregnancy, after pregnancy, during breastfeeding; and I interviewed him the other day, and he was saying how the babies are a good weight, they are less likely to need antibiotics on follow-ups. The moms say they're very happy, contented babies. I mean, it just sounds too good to be true. 

Shauna: There was an article I read about LDN, about they're looking into whether or not LDN can potentially help stop endometriosis happening when you're pregnant with a girl, because of the speculation about endometriosis and how it develops, right? Like, does it happen when your baby is growing in utero and you just always have it, like for some people endometriosis doesn't come out of the woodwork until their forties; or for me, it got way worse after I became sexually active.

You know, there's, there are lots of different theories about endometriosis and where does it begin, so I'm hoping that this pregnancy is a girl, and it would be wonderful if I stay on the LDN during pregnancy, if there's a potential of me not passing on endometriosis. There's just not very much good understanding of endometriosis and whether it's genetic or not. And why does it start? How does it start? And so anyway, I mean, that's all speculation. It's all theory, but it just kind of would be nice if I could spare my future baby girls if they did not have to deal with this disease because there's no cure for it. And there are not very many well-known treatments for them.

Linda Elsegood: With your polycystic ovaries, did you find it painful? 

Shauna: Yes. My cycles naturally are 50 days apart. It's like my body just tries and tries and tries to ovulate, and then it just finally gives up, and I sporadically ovulate naturally. And so the months that I do are really, really painful. But then, even the months that I don't ovulate it's very painful because I think my body's just trying its hardest to ovulate and then it just doesn't happen. I've been on fertility drugs for the last two years, so, um, I haven't had those super long cycles as often because the drugs have been regulating my cycles.

Linda Elsegood: Well, it's just amazing that you got pregnant so quickly.

Shauna: I took the pregnancy test because some months I just wanted to get it over with the fact that I'm not pregnant that month, and just kind of. move on. So I ended up taking the pregnancy test at day 30 thinking it's just going to be negative. And I'm just going to be waiting for my period to start and then I can just be depressed and eat some ice cream and then move on.  But it came out positive and I just started freaking out and hyperventilating. The first person I called was my midwife because the midwives’ schedules fill up very fast here. Trying to get under their care is pretty hard. And she's asking me to calm down, that we don't know if this is real, and we’ll recheck the pregnancy test, to be sure it's actually correct. 

Linda Elsegood: How many times did you take it. 

Shauna: I ended up taking two pregnancy tests, and then I went to the doctor the next day, who ordered blood work to check, and then they've been checking me every few days to make sure that my HCG level is going up. And it's more than doubling. So that's really good. Um. Yeah. 

I was blessed with a son, he's three and a half. He'll be four in April. And when I was trying to conceive him, it took a year and eight months of trying to get pregnant with him. And I felt like I had endometriosis back then, but I hadn't been diagnosed yet. Doctors were still kind of just telling me I was crazy. I ended up going on hormone cream, a bioidentical hormone cream from my naturopath and got pregnant within two cycles. I tried those creams again two years ago trying to get pregnant. This time around and it didn't work the same way. So my problems changed after I had my son. My endometriosis I think got worse after pregnancy. I had until about ten months postpartum that my symptoms were pretty well controlled and my cycles were regular, which has never happened in my entire life. And then once I hit ten months postpartum, things just went crazy. Again. I think my uterus settled back into a very tilted position towards my sacrum. And then all the endometriosis came back, like way worse. And my cycles went back to 50-55 days apart. It was a lot worse. I definitely needed the LDN this time to calm all that inflammation down.

Linda Elsegood: So, what did your mom have to say?

Shauna: When I called my mom to tell her that I was pregnant, she was over the moon and I think she was trying to hold back the, “I told you so”.

Linda Elsegood: Yes, that's why I asked that question.

Shauna: The thing is, I could tell over the phone that she is holding it back. She wants to tell me I could have gotten pregnant way sooner. Thankfully my mom has learned a lot of grace. She has seven children, so she's used to asking kids pushing against her. You’d think by now after how many times that she's been right and we've been wrong, we would just trust her.

Linda Elsegood: You'll learn soon enough what that's all about, 

Shauna: Yeah. It's a circle of life. Exactly. 

Linda Elsegood: Exactly. Well, we wish you every success, and maybe you can come back and tell us how the pregnancy went and how the baby's doing and everything afterwards. Yeah. So it is your little boy looking forward to having a baby brother or sister.

Shauna: He likes the idea - he's been talking about wanting a sibling for the last couple of years, but I think he's actually forgotten and I haven't brought it up again with him. Mostly just 'cause I'm a little bit scared  - there's still a chance of miscarriage - so I don't really want to bring it up again with him until I'm a little bit further along. But I think he's really hoping for a little sister because anytime he talks about wanting one, he talks about having a little sister. So we're hoping for a girl too.

Linda Elsegood: Okay. Thank you. Bye 

Shauna: Bye.

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

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.

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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.

Ginevra Liptan, MD Talks about Fibromyalgia (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Summary from Dr. Ginevra Liptan LDN Radio Show August 2020

I am Dr. Ginevra Liptan and have worked hard and tirelessly with people with Fibromyalgia, and I have written a book.

Fibromyalgia is becoming more accepted as a diagnosis. Many more physicians and healthcare providers feel comfortable making the diagnosis and starting the initial treatment.

There's a lot less stigma around it. Now people are really getting much more quickly into the treatment regimen. So that's hugely positive.

I've actually seen Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) being used more frequently. It used to be only specialists or naturalpath, but I've actually seen at our Academic Pain Centre in Portland, the Oregon Health and Sciences University Pain Clinic, they're starting people on LDN now.

There's more of a sense of there are things out there that can help. There are people that are understanding more about Fibromyalgia.

There are celebrities now with Fibromyalgia. Lady Gaga coming out of saying that she has Fibromyalgia has been huge. I hope, what patients are feeling like that they're not feeling as alone in their struggle. I'm hereby declaring my intent to bring lady Gaga to the LDN conference.

The negatives I see now are using opiates for any reason whether it's acute pain, whether it's chronic pain, opiates are sort of the scapegoat.

I feel like, for the average Fibromyalgia patients, there are so little options in our toolbox that are really accessible to people. For example, cannabis and marijuana-based medicines have great potential but they're not accessible to everybody.

I hope that we can get back to more of that middle ground where opiates have a lot of problems, and we're learning that they really aren't good for longterm daily use, but do have some benefit for short term do use for flares only. That's how I prescribed them because Fibromyalgia is not a steady-state.

There are times where people have huge spikes of pain, and during those times opiates can be hugely effective as a short term kind of rescue option to help bring things back down, and then you go off of them again.

So maybe taking them five days out of the month, five of your worst most intense pain days.

I've anecdotally experimented, and I've found that for some of my patients a little bit of Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN), like 0.05 milligrams seems to limit less than some of the negative side effects from opiates.

I've also found it helps to limit some of the dependence or tolerance issues. If you've been on high doses of opiates over time, sometimes within a few months they become less effective.

Some found Ultra dose Naltrexone helps them titrating it down opiods whilst titrating the LDN up. It eliminated all side effects and withdrawals.

But alongside the opioids,  I use things like Gabapentin, Lyrica to kind of calm down that angry, overactive nerve signalling. I use muscle relaxants for some people, muscle relaxation, and it's like Baclofen can be really helpful for both reducing pain and improving sleep quality. And in Fibromyalgia, sleep is the area that I really work on the most.

If we can get people getting better quality, more deep sleep, their pain levels will automatically reduce because sleep deprivation itself is part of what generates a lot of the fatigue and pain and inflammation of Fibromyalgia. So I use a lot of alternative pain treatments, but I'm usually using ones that also have the added benefit of improving sleep and Gabapentin and Lyrica and Baclofen all have that capacity.

If I'm usually trying to get kind of a two for one benefit, some of the muscle relaxing, like Cyclobenzaprine and also can relax the muscle tension and helps the brain get into a deep sleep and also that gives some pain relief. ...

So I'm trying to reduce the painful nerve signalling, let's say with Gabapentin, but I'm also trying to help people soften their muscle tightness with maybe something like a muscle relaxants. ...

Some people said they benefit from anti-inflammatories like Celecoxib,  Antifa moratorium. That's something that we add into their toolbox.

Wiith Fibromyalgia, we have to have as big a toolbox. That was my motivation for writing the "Fibro Manual" book.

I wanted people to kind of know every possible option out there that they could consider, talk with their doctor about some things they could try on their own to find that right combination that really helped ease their symptoms because there is not, unfortunately, that one magic bullet that works.

I have people that use Low Dose Naltrexone plus maybe a different type of anti-inflammatory or Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) plus Gabapentin. It seems like we have to approach the brain from multiple different pathways, multiple angles and push it down into a  more conducive to kind of less pain, less inflammation. ...

This patient population tends to be more sensitive to drugs. Now we starting with one milligram, and I'll have people do that for a month, and then two milligrams for a month and then three milligrams for a month.

I don't always need to get somebody up to that 4.5 milligrams, and I saw that a lot of my folks don't tolerate the 4.5-milligram dose.

It seems to maybe generate more sleep disturbance or more anxiety.

That's the biggest issue I've had with particularly I think in the fibromyalgia population. I know that anxiety is a side effects that can occur with LDN, but I've seen it much more frequently in my patient group then than kind of what the literature reports as far as the frequency.

And I think that maybe has something to do with kind of the underlying fight or flight response over activation that's going on in Fibromyalgia.

I've had a few people that I started at 0.5, and I have some folks that even with 0.5, they get some side effects.

Pain reduction, fatigue reduction, sleep improvement. So what I found is that it really can be helpful to have people, either keep a diary, track their symptoms.

I have one patient that she's at 0.25 milligrams, and when we go up to like 0.3 she notices worsening of symptoms. If she's at 0.2, she doesn't get a benefit. Literally, she is that sensitive to 0.25 that is we've, but we've only been able to fine-tune it to that level because she's so good at tracking her symptoms.

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