Dr Bruce Berman, LDN Radio Show 2016 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.
Linda Elsegood: I'm joined today by Dr Bruce Berman from sunny Florida in the US thanks for joining me, Bruce.
Dr Bruce Berman: My pleasure.
Linda Elsegood: Could you tell us how long ago it was when you first heard about LDN?
Dr Bruce Berman: Yes at least five years, I read an article about it. I'm an addiction specialist, so I was very intimately familiar with naltrexone, and I know that the side effect profile is very negligible. And when the hypothesis came up concerning low dose, I said, it makes perfect sense to me. The benefits certainly outweigh the risks. So I started using it. Hashimoto's disease, any autoimmune disease, cancer, depression, fibromyalgia. It's sometimes miraculous. I had a 29-year-old woman with ulcerative colitis who was having 15 bloody bowel movements a day that nothing in medicine could stop. We started LDN and in two days her bowel movements were down to two, and they were normal its great for the joint pain in rheumatoid arthritis.
I use it as I do integrative cancer therapy. So I use it as part of an overall program in cancer. Cause as you know, it's the endogenous opioids that have the antitumor ability. Plus, they help balance the TH1 to immune cells. So it's a double whammy against cancer cells, it's just amazing.
The worst side effect I've seen and really not that bad. It's just bothersome, is vivid dreams and sleep may be affected. You may have an early awakening. We've now tried giving patients the LDN in the morning. And it still works, and it doesn't affect their sleep then.
So I'm, I'm a satisfied customer. A lot of patients are coming to me cause they do research on it and they see it. They go on the cancer tutor website and a lot of other websites and just do alternative therapies and my name comes up. And I'm happy to give the service because it's so innocuous. It's such a benign treatment, and the effects can be dramatic.
Linda Elsegood: And how long would you say, if pushed on average, it would take a patient to notice that there are benefits of taking LDN?
Dr Bruce Berman: I'd say anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks, usually within a month. You see some dramatic results. I start low.
I start at one and a half milligrams and work up from there. Usually around three milligrams, you're going to see effects, and if you need to push it to four and a half, patients respond. But usually within a month, sometimes within days, patients respond.
Anything you want to treat for, it's safe. It's inexpensive. It's easy to obtain. It has almost no side effects. It's like the perfect drug. Most conventional doctors are so pigeonholed that they will say, Oh, I can’t prescribe that. It's not indicated. When, of course, as you know in the States, if you have one indication for a drug, you could use it for anything called off label use, but they don't want to do it because most conventional doctors are, they're hamsters on a wheel. They don't know they're spinning. They think they're going forward. That's why I had to do functional medicine.
Linda Elsegood: Well, he says he taught this like you who think outside of the box.
Dr Bruce Berman: Well, I was on the hamster wheel, and all I did was give patients drugs to placate symptoms. And now, I mean, yeah, when you address causes the results are dramatic. Really, really dramatic. And it's, that's why I'm here. To find out what's in my patient's highest and best good.
Linda Elsegood: So, in your practice, you mentioned Hashimoto's and cancer. Do you do all the autoimmune conditions? Do you know ms?
Dr Bruce Berman: Yeah. We use LDN on all of them. We also use bee sting therapy in autoimmune, quite dramatic the way they work together. They work together to balance the immune system. But here in the States, the LDN is so inexpensive. It's under $40 a month.
Linda Elsegood: And I'm always being asked by patients who can't travel. Do you do any online consults?
Dr Bruce Berman: Skype I do. I do phone counsels as long as they can get local blood work if they need to just have a doctor on hand for any conditions that might need local attention. Why not? I do it a lot. I have a couple of patients from England. I have one from South Africa.
Your listeners should go to the website, the LDN summit 2016 was just held in Orlando last month. You can download and watch the videos on all the presentations on LDN. It was tremendous. And there's also a book about LDN now. I know some of the speakers, Marty Gaydon, is right near me in Miami. In our field what we do in functional medicine, people are few and far between. I'll give you an example. Martin is a hundred miles south of me. And the next closest doctor is 150 miles North of me. Nobody in between.
Linda Elsegood: Wow.
Dr Bruce Berman: pretty sad.
Linda Elsegood: It is. And it's a shame. I didn't know about you before.
Dr Bruce Berman: Well, that's okay. I’m happy just to be able to see people. I had a woman, I just saw her yesterday for a recheck. She came to me last July, so we're coming up on a one year anniversary, psoriatic arthritis, so bad that the inflammation was affecting her joints. Her skin was horrible. Her dandruff was horrible. She's been on it now for ten months. She's about 90% improved.
Linda Elsegood: wow.
Dr Bruce Berman: The lesions are going away. She can make a full fist. There's almost no dandruff. Now we did other things. Besides that, you know that I don't know if your readers know readers or listeners know the most common cause of the autoimmune disorder is dairy products, reaction to the casein protein in milk and gluten. Yes. So all my autoimmune patients have to go off that, or I can't promise they're going to get better, but this one has been really, really strict. I have a patient who just told me she found out there's gluten in her Chapstick so who would think, wow, but gluten is everywhere. So you really have to investigate. If you want to take care of yourself because no one's gonna take care of you. The corporations aren’t going to take care of you. They're just going to give you something that's easy to use and appears to work and tastes good. They have no concern about whether or not it's beneficial.
Linda Elsegood: And how sad is that.
Dr Bruce Berman: I'm over the sad part, I'll tell you why I understand it. Because corporations have one job to do, their stock price goes up. Truly they don't have a humanistic component or anything else. My patients need to be educated on what to do.So it's a lifestyle change for all of this. For cancer, for autoimmune. I mean, we've reversed three cases of MS. Well, they are reversing. They're not normal yet, but they're getting better. That doesn't happen in medicine. I had an ALS patient, Lou Gehrig's disease, actually got off a ventilator off a wheelchair onto a Walker.
Linda Elsegood: So
Dr Bruce Berman: it's not me. We're just reversing the toxicity of this world. So I'm a, as we say, I'm a satisfied customer.
Linda Elsegood: Wonderful, and thank you so much for sharing your experience.
Dr Bruce Berman: Of course, my pleasure. And please have your readers, if your listeners go to their doctor and say, can you prescribe this? And the doctor says no, I can educate them. It's innocuous. And if they have any questions or concerns, they can go to my website. All my contact information is there.
Linda Elsegood: Wonderful. Thank you very much.
Dr Bruce Berman: Wonderful. Have a great day.
Linda Elsegood: Do you have LDN experience to share? If so, please email me at contact@ldnresearchtrut.org I look forward to hearing from you.