LDN Video Interviews and Presentations

Caron - England: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Sarah from England shares Caron’s Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) Story on the LDN Radio Show.

Caron was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) when she was 40 years old. Karen was a college lecturer and mother of two teenage children before her diagnosis. Her symptoms included pins and needles, blurred vision muscle spasms and fatigue, which forced Caron into an early retirement.

“Since Caron started on Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN), she has felt the benefits in her everyday life and suffered zero side effects. She’s now able to participate in family activities and get involved more which is great.

To anyone contemplating trying LDN, it could change your whole life; you could take control of your condition and take your life back. What do you have to lose? If you don’t try it, you will never know”

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

Carole - England: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS/ME) (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Carol from England shares her LDN story for ME/CFS. She started showing signs around 15 years ago. She had swollen glands and terrible muscle and joint pain. She also has difficult time making words out when she spoke. She found LDN through one of her friends through Facebook and decide to give it a try.  After she got LDN her pain levels went down and she had way more energy to get through the day. Her Quality of life improved drastically.

To listen to her story click the video link.

Any questions or comments you may have, please contact us. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for joining us today. 

Carol Petersen, RPh, CNP; Pharmacist; 17 June LDN Radio Show (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Carol Petersen, RPh shares her Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) Experience on the LDN Radio Show with Linda Elsegood.

Carol Petersen is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison: School of Pharmacy and holds a certification in nutrition. She is a member of several professional organizations, including the American Pharmaceutical Association (APhA), the American College of Apothecaries (ACA), the International Association of Compounding Pharmacists (IACP), and board member at International College of Integrated Medicine (ICIM). She is also active with the Integrative Medical Consortium (IMC) and a member of the Association for the Advancement of Restorative Medicine (AARM). Carol currently serves as president of her local Toastmaster’s group.

On behalf of Women’s International Pharmacy, Carol attends and speaks at conferences across the country. She is a primary contributor for Women’s International Pharmacy’s educational outreach by writing, editing, and reviewing articles for monthly newsletters.

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

Carol - US: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Carol from the United States shares her Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) Story on the LDN Radio Show with Linda Elsegood.

Carol was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) when she was 26 years old. Prior to discovering LDN her symptoms included skin irritation and a dragging sensation in her left leg, limiting her ability to walk.

Once she began LDN, the improvements in her health were immediate. The spasticity in her legs was lessened, allowing Carol to walk again.

“I would say that LDN has definitely improved my quality of life and I’m continuing to improve in terms of my health.

I suffered a bad relapse when I accidentally left my LDN out and it was exposed to extreme temperatures during the winter and summer months. The batch was then ineffective, unbeknownst to me, which led to the relapse.

As soon as I had a fresh batch of LDN, I was back on track.

To anyone contemplating trying Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN), you should try it. It can’t hurt you; it can only help.”

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

Carol - England: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Carol was diagnosed with MS about 20 years ago aged 45. On her way to the shop her legs gave way and two years later she was diagnosed with MS. It had a huge impact on her previously active life working with children. She used to help her husband with boys' and girls' clubs; even taking them abroad on activity holidays. To suddenly be unable to continue this had a great psychological impact. She became quite depressed. 

Physically she was no longer able to walk properly; her legs would jump and she felt very weak. She also experienced occasional bladder problems.

She first heard about LDN at the hairdressers after reading a magazine article by Linda Elsegood. She was able to acquire LDN easily online.

She has taken it consistently for about five years.  Her legs no longer jump, she feels less week and has a more positive attitude to life. Her life is far more productive and she would recommend anyone with her condition to try Low dose Naltrexone.

This is just a summary. To hear the full interview please click on the link. 

Brittany - US: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Linda Elsegood: I would like to introduce Brittany from the United States who takes LDN for Vasculitis and Multiple Sclerosis. Thanks for joining me, Brittany.

Brittany: Thank you.

Linda Elsegood: Could you tell us when you first started to notice that there's something wrong with you?

Brittany: I was pregnant in 2006 with my second child and he appeared to me to be an exceptionally large baby.

The doctors had said: "Second children always feel larger. He's not that big. That's something you're just worried about." Because my first child had gotten stuck for several hours, and so I was nervous going into the delivery. My first child had been an eight-pound baby, and so towards the end of the pregnancy, they did aside for dates ultrasound and told us that the second baby, my son was only seven pounds.

And so they didn't feel that there would be an issue with getting him out. When the delivery date actually came and he came out he was actually 10 pounds half, and It was delivered vaginally which apparently is not a safe way to deliver a child that large. So in the delivery, obviously,  there's quite a bit of push and pull going on between the doctor and me.

The baby was severely injured and  I apparently had suffered three dissections, a swelling of my vasculature in the brain, multiple pseudoaneurysms. I was just very sick and was bleeding in my brain.  During the delivery, I had told them I have a headache and they said: "You can't stop pushing because his head is delivered and if you stop now, you're going to have a brain-damaged or dead baby. So you got to keep going." So I keep pushing at the advice of the doctors and ended up being released just fine, went home and that headache just persisted, would not go away. And I call the doctors, they say to take Advil, drink diet Coke, caffeine. "You're probably tired because you have two babies." About two weeks after the delivery the headache had gotten so bad that I was having visual disturbances, vertigo and nausea. We called the doctor and they said he needs to go right to the emergency room.

They ran a CAT scan and came back and said,  "You have a spot on your brain. We can't let you go home. We don't know what it is." So I was admitted to the hospital. They did a four-vessel cerebral angiogram and found significant stenosis feeding all through the vasculature in my brain. I had dissected both carotid arteries at the neck level, going into the base of the skull, and I was transferred and admitted to the ICU at Barrow's Neurological Institute, which was one of the premier neurological hospitals here in the States. They essentially told us:" We're doing everything we can." I was on massive blood thinners and massive doses of steroids. They essentially said, "We're doing absolutely everything we can to save you.

It might not be enough." And at the time I had a two week old and a two-year-old at home. I was a stay at home mom. We just have to sit there and hope for the best. We asked what else we can do? And they said to pray. And after several weeks in hospital as they were working on anticoagulation to make sure that the dissections didn't clot and end up in a stroke. They came to me and said, "At this point, we've done all we can do. So you can either go home and spend whatever remaining time that you may have left with your babies, or you can stay in the hospital where if you do have a stroke, we're more likely to be able to catch it."

And I felt that if death were in the cards, I wanted to be home with my kids. I left the hospital, went home. My husband's father is a physician, so I asked if they would allow us to move in with them. In case I did have a stroke, at least we would have a medical professional on-site that could help.

 I was released to my inlaws house where I subsequently had three strokes and was very sick. At that point, they felt that this was simply a postpartum complication. They weren't sure what they were treating. They just knew that the swelling and disturbance in my brain was significant enough that I needed to be on steroids longterm.

I needed to be on various neurological drugs to, you just be able to cope. There were tons and tons of pain from that injured area in my head, daily chronic headaches. It was really awful and slowly over a period of probably six to eight months, I began to recover, but I was still just a little off.

My husband described it as. You know before you were wicked, wicked smart. Now you're just wicked smart. So I lost a wicked by my husband's estimation. Life is really tough. I had very little energy. My thinking wasn't there. It was difficult to be the caregiver for two children.

I was kind of slowly working toward trying to get to my previous baseline. After about a year of recovering, suddenly I started to just not feel well. There was a node that had developed behind my ear, a solid lump feeling. I was exhausted all the time, sleeping a ton, not from depression, just because I was exhausted. I had some skin lesions that had come up. We were really trying to figure out what, what could this be? I went back to the doctor. My neurologist thought perhaps MS. Another team of neurologist said, no way MS and I was sent to a rheumatologist to ran another full battery of tests and said how we found it. "You're actually testing positive for a very rare autoimmune disorder, a very rare form of vasculitis called polyarteritis nodosa." And I began a two year treat the course of treatment with Methotrexate and steroids. By the end of that two year period, I no longer tested positive for it. They considered me to be in remission, but I still didn't feel well.

So I went through probably two more years of just feeling unwell. Like I had the flu all the time, constant body aches, headaches, exhaustion to the point where my kids would get home from school at the end of the day and I would be sitting there trying to help them with their homework, and I would fall asleep sitting up on the sofa.

Eventually, I was not doing housework, not making dinner. I was a walking zombie. Finally came to a head when I had gone to pick up my kids from school, was driving home, and I fell asleep at a red light with my kids in the car. When that happened, I called the doctor and said, there's something wrong with me. I am not okay. I might be in remission from Vasculitis, but I am not okay. Something is wrong. I was concerned about my kids' safety. I was concerned about being able to be an effective mom.  I went back in for another full battery of tests, and at that point, they found a lesion that was suspicious for Ms, and they had already seen a lot of the myelinated spots in my brain.

Because I had no symptomology of MS, my main team of doctors wasn't ready to call it MS. When I went back in for that, next set of MRIs, they found that  I had a new lesion in my spinal cord, and so they said, we are now ready to make a definitive diagnosis of MS on top of the vasculitis, which is in remission.

So we elected to immediately go on MS therapy on Copaxone, which is a daily injection. They put me on Ritalin, and on antidepressants to try and get the energy levels up. And even with all of those pharmaceutical interventions, I was still sleeping 12 to 14 hours a day, just exhausted.

And after I would sleep an entire night, felt like I hadn't slept at all. So it's a very frustrating period of time. I kind of resigned myself to, I guess this is the new normal and life is not what I thought it was going to be.  I'm never going to be able to do the things that I wanted to do.

I had a career in television news. I was a presenter. Giving all that up was a lot of my identity was very difficult. I was constantly looking for things to help. We had tried diet and exercise and all kinds of different interventions that were sort of more along the natural side of things because that's kind of where I naturally align and nothing was working. My husband was exhausted. We were all exhausted. We went on a vacation to Seattle to visit my brother and his family. We went to get a manicure and in the salon, it was a rainy day in Seattle as it often is.

And we live in Arizona, which is the desert and very sunny all the time. I was sitting in the salon and getting my nails done. There was a woman sitting next to me, and she made a comment about the rain, and I said, "I love it. I bet you know if I live here, I probably don't. But I love it because I'm coming from Arizona where it's eternal sunshine, and it's sort of nice to have some different kind of weather."

We started chatting and I said: "The only thing I really get bothered about with the rain is it makes me so tired." And she said: " Oh, why?" And I said: " Well, I had a mass." And she said: "Really? Have you heard of LDN?" And I thought, who is this crazy woman in the salon who's trying to pitch me on?

I thought multilevel marketing or something ridiculous. She started telling about it, and she said: "My naturopath just prescribed this for me. I've been on at three days, and I feel great. I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis and it has completely turned my life around. It's only been three days, but it's night and day, the difference. "And I thought, here's one more thing that somebody tells you about and it gives you false hope.  I can go and ask the doctor, and it's not going to make a damn bit of difference because nothing works and nothing helps. I was very pessimistic and hopeless.  She said: "Please give me your email address right here, and I will email you information about it." I thought that's odd that this stranger is so in passion about this medication. If I give her my email address, I figured I have nothing to lose.

I came back to Arizona and looked over her email and started doing some research and found the information from the UK and thought, wow, if this really does all it says it does, this could be amazing, and this could be the answer. So I called my naturopath and said: " Would you be willing to talk about this?"

And she said: "Sure. Come on him." And we sat down, and she said:" I have a couple of patients who are on. If you're willing to try it, there's no risk. And you can take it with the capacity, and it's not going to hurt you. So let's go ahead and try it." So she prescribed it starting at 1,5 mg, and she said: " Take it slow because you don't want to rush into it."

I started taking the 1,5 mg, and I was just at the cost of a charity event that I had volunteered for and had taken on entirely too much. I had volunteered prior to the Ms diagnosis and thought that  I would have enough energy for it, and I did not have enough energy, and I was tired to the point of tears every night because there was no way that I was going to be able to get it all done. I was so stressed out and worried about letting my kids, friends and the school down. I took that first dose and I noticed right away the next morning I popped out of bed.

And I was like:" That's probably placebo because I'm so hopeful. It's going to do something."

 She had told me you have to take 1.5 for the first several weeks so that you don't overload. After maybe four days, I felt better than I had felt in years. I had energy. My mood was better. I was less irritable.

I just felt like I could cope like I could do things, I could get up in the morning,  take a shower,  get dressed. My shower didn't completely wear me out for the rest of the day. I could do the dishes again, make dinner again. All of a sudden I was a person.

I was human again, a mom and a wife. I thought: "Could this really possibly be this drug?" I called the doctor, and she said:  "If you feel that good, go ahead and increase to three. Like I'm fine with you taking it at your own pace." And I increased to three, and it only got better.

Suddenly I had my whole entire life back. I was able to go back to work.  I work with my husband and in our family business. So I'm back to work now,  a contributing member of my family and my household and our income.  I'm able to care for the house and work and care for my kids and volunteer.

I run a girl scout troop.  I'm like an Uber mom the way that I always wanted to be. And the one thing that made the difference was 3 mg of this little drug. It's been powerfully life-changing for me because I felt like I had lost myself and who I was.

Then all of a sudden this little pill that I take every night is..

My pain is a far decreased. I was daily narcotics from headaches and body pain daily. So I had my narcotics prescriptions came in, doses of 120 at a time because otherwise, I was unable to move sometimes and I haven't taken narcotics in a year because that's when I started taking the LDN. The moment I started taking LDN within maybe three days, any pain that I had was treatable with Motrin. My chronic headaches, I still get them daily, but they don't stop me in the way that they used to. I don't have to retreat to a dark room and put ice on my head and cry and pray.

I can work through my headaches now, whereas it was impossible before. I have almost zero brain fog. I'm a productive person at work. In fact, I was just hired an as independent consultant for another company. All of these things that I thought that I had to give up because of my brain just didn't work anymore.

It's back, and I can communicate, and I can write again and I can earn money and I can be with my kids and my husband and keep the energy level up. And the pain, like I said, is decreased. My mood is not hopeless anymore. It completely gave me energy and hope and less symptomatic pain.

And everybody, I talked to now who has any kind of autoimmune disorder I'm like: "Please go talk to the doctor about LDN." I turned into that woman in the salon now because it made such a huge difference for my life. I'm so grateful that I ran into a stranger who wanted to share that.

Then we had that kind of random conversation. I don't really believe in coincidence. I was very fortunate to have that woman in my past that day because it made such an enormous impact for not only my life but my kids' lives and my husband's life, our life as a family.

 I will never give up my LDN forever and ever because it just completely changed my life. I'm grateful. When I was asked to do the patient testimonial, I felt, you know what? I want to pay this forward because of it's inexpensive, and I have no side effects from it whatsoever and the benefit, it's all been upside, and it's just made an enormous difference. I feel like I can be the mom that I wanted to be, the wife, the person that I wanted to be, and I don't have to compromise because I have an illness. That is a true gift and a true blessing.

So that's my story.

Linda Elsegood: It's fantastic. I mean, most of the story. Are you still on 3 mg? Did you try going up to 4.5?

Brittany: I am still on 3 mg. We have talked about going up to 4,5 mg. I do have some muscle spasm activity, so we've been holding at the 3 mg. It's pretty good.

 If there were ever to be some exacerbation that was to be difficult, I have room to go up. But I don't really feel the need to. I will also say though, that since I started taking the LDN, I have had three lesions completely disappear off the MRI. What I've been told by my neurologist is that it is unusual that the Copaxone certainly is not doing that.

They don't expect Capaxone to take care of lesions, they expect it to prevent new ones. So they were very enthusiastic about the fact that I've had three lesions disappeared. I'm pretty into the answer about that too, because you only have one brain, so you want to preserve that if you can.

It's not only my subjective experience that I can speak to, but it's also the objective image from the MRI that tells the doctors that I'm in fact getting better. That's pretty awesome.

Linda Elsegood: Wow. Well, thank you very much—you sharing it. I mean, wow, just amazing.

Brittany: It really is, and I just feel so fortunate, and I wish that this were more mainstream.

I really wish medical doctors were using it more and considering it more. If I had been given the option at the beginning to try LDN rather than going on Copaxone, life could have been different so much earlier, how lovely that would have been. Do you know?

But in the meantime, I'm just incredibly grateful for what I've gotten back because it's been a life-changer.

Linda Elsegood: Well, thank you.

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.

Bridget - US: Ankylosing Spondylitis, Fibromyalgia, Insterstitial Cystitis, Depression (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Bridget from the United States shares her experience of LDN for ankylosing spondylitis, fibromyalgia, cystic cystitis and depression. 

Bridget first noticed symptoms when she was  ten years old. It was 1994, and she started having problems with her left hip and she ended up on crutches for 3 years, then it started to speed to other joins and the other hip.

By the time she finished high school, she was half-crippled.

When she was 21, 11 years later she was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, fibromyalgia, depressions and interstitial cystitis, she was on a lot of medication which wasn't helping.

Before LDN, her quality of life was 3 or 4 out of 10. on a good day. And now it is a 6 to 10!

To listen to the full story click the video link.

Any questions or comments you may have, please contact us. I look forward to hearing from you. 

Bob - England: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

I'd like to introduce Bob from England who takes LDN for multiple sclerosis, and Bob was originally from America. Thank you for joining me, Bob. 

Bob: Okay, thank you for calling.  

Linda Elsegood: Could you tell me when you first started to notice MS symptoms?

Bob: Uh, it was back in 1999. I was playing tennis. I came off the tennis court and only could walk in the circle, and the guy I was playing tennis with said, you very well should see a doctor about this. So I went and saw my doctor, uh, just changed, and he said, you gotta go for an MRI scan now. So I went for a specialist, 70 frame eye scans. And I came off the scan. He showed me lesions. He said, do you know what you have now? This kind of clown? I said, no. Why do you think I'm here?

He says, you have MS. and I said, what's an MS? I didn't know a thing. He didn't tell me a thing. So I had to go to the library in the town where I live and find out what it's all about. That’s how low I came to be and, uh, was stopped work in 2000. Was all of 50 years old then, and pardon? 

Linda Elsegood: Had you had anything throughout your life that you thought was a bit strange that came and went?

No. 

Bob: No. I was a, uh, when I was young. Maybe drink too much beer? I don't know. Uh, just, uh, the above up there. This says, this is what you're going to get, and that's what happened.

Linda Elsegood: So how did that impact on your life being diagnosed? 

Bob: Terrible. Uh, I went on the half-days for six months at work. I just had to stop and just my side that could, my side, uh, didn't go, but the lights burned my eyes so I couldn't stay in bright light very long, so bad.

I went on a Copaxone trial up in Nottingham, so was, and uh, I was on Copaxone for eight years, cause then they ended the trial. But then the. Copaxone was, it didn’t do me any good. So he said, you're not taking her anymore. So I thought, well, there's gotta be something else. So I started looking at the LDN, and I've been on that for six months now. And at times I notice that I walk around the house on a three-wheeled trolley type thing. And, uh. I forget to use it. So it's slowly, it's not perfect, but it's making my life livable for, until I just, you know, I, it's, it's prolonging the inevitable.

Linda Elsegood: Let’s talk about your symptoms before LDN. 

Bob: Um. Some were. I can't walk very well. Uh, I take a nap every day from like say one, one to two, and I have life till about eleven o’clock at night. Otherwise, I couldn't make it. 

Linda Elsegood: Mmm. 

Bob: It's mainly, you can tell my speech isn’t very good. As you can tell. Uh, it's just.

Uh, walking is basically the main thing I'm really not happy with, but it goes with the territory. It doesn't that a thing. LDN has been, uh. For the price. You crazy enough, try it. You got to try this cause what are they called for? These pills are out now. They are supposed to be some pills off 30 quarter pill that's supposed to be for primary PPRS.

And, uh, Sam Bareburger Rezo there's some pill out, and uh, it's just. It's got to try it. It lives. Yeah. It's helped a little bit. I mean, some mass of, I'm not going to run down the street tomorrow, but it has helped. I believe it's helped. 

Linda Elsegood: Yeah. So you've only been on it for six months, so I was, I continued to improve for about 18 months.

Um, I know you said you were primary progressive on secondary progressive. 

Bob: Yeah. I got a friend down at the pub that's got secondary progressive and he’s going to try the LDN as well. 

Linda Elsegood: So, 

Bob: uh, it's, uh, it's getting the word out. It is getting the word out to more people with MS to try this. It might work and it might not, but you gotta give it a try.

Linda Elsegood: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much for sharing your experience with us, and it'd be interesting to hear what your condition is like in a year's time. 

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.

Bill - US: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Linda Elsegood: I'd like to introduce a bill from the United States who takes LDN for multiple sclerosis. Good morning, bill. 

Bill: Good morning. 

Linda Elsegood: Really nice to talk to you again. And I'd also like to take this opportunity of saying thank you for being such a great advocate of LDN and for the fundraising that you do it is appreciated.

Bill: Thank you and you do a lot more than anybody else that I know of. 

Linda Elsegood: Thank you, now you have got multiple sclerosis. When did you first start to notice symptoms? 

Bill: Well, I had some symptoms probably as far back as the light seventies but they didn't stay with me long enough to really worry about it.

I lead a pretty active life, so I figured it was something that I probably overdone or something like that. But finally, in 1998. My whole left side went numb, and it wouldn't wake back up, that's when I really felt like I had a major problem, and when I started looking into what might be wrong.

Linda Elsegood: And how old were you then, bill?

Bill: I was 49 years old. And to put it bluntly, when I was diagnosed with MS, I was absolutely shocked because I have a sister that also had MS and I'd always been told it was not hereditary and two people in the same family can get it,, that was all wrong.

Linda Elsegood: how did having MS impact on your life bill? 

Bill: Well. As a full time paid firefighter, it impacted my life immediately in that I could no longer do that. Once I was diagnosed with MS, I had to come off the fire line, so I had to make arrangements to try to do some more training or something in order to stay with the fire service.

So I had to go back to school and become certified as a Fire Marshall. 

Bill: And at the same time, try to figure out how to deal with MS, it was very traumatic. Once I was diagnosed, the symptoms started to happen and I progressed very rapidly. Fortunately I had very good insurance, so I was able to do a lot of things that some people might not be able to do.

But to make a long story short, I went through every treatment, every approved treatment that you could take for MS and a number of treatments that weren't approved for MS. But everything I've tried seems to speed up the progression of the MS, or has it slow it down?

And so from 1998 to 2002 I went from a relapsing-remitting MS to secondary progressive MS. And by 2002 I was completely wheelchair-bound on oxygen, 24 hours a day. Catheterized, I had to wear a bib to eat, and I was given in 2005  14 months to live, and I've been on everything from chemotherapy to all the ABC drugs to plasma exchange, and it was about that time that I read about LDN. I started looking into it, and I found Dr Gluck, and I called him, we talked for maybe four hours and, oh, what a special man. I got all the information I needed and went back to my neurologist and he would not even consider prescribing it for me.

So I went to another neurologist, and she actually wanted me to go back on chemotherapy, and I told her I would, but that I've already been on it and I almost died from it. So I would like to try LDN before I did that, and she said, well, I've never prescribed it before, and it's not approved. And I thought, here we go.

But then she said, but since you've already been on everything, I'm going to prescribe it for you. But you've got to agree that if after three or four months you haven't seen any positive results, you'll go back on the chemotherapy,  I said I agree 100% 

so I started at 1.5 milligrams in July and in October, I went back to my neurologist, and I walked into her office with no assistance. I had no braces on my legs, and I had not had a problem with my MS in the whole three months. It just blew her away, she called all her nurses, and everybody was chattering. I said let me go back a little bit too before I started the LDN, I was having an episode with my MS every month and would lose more abilities. 

Once I started taking the LDN, I went over five years without having any episodes whatsoever. I've had three minor episodes since 2005, nothing that slows me down from doing what I wanted to.

Uh, it's just been absolutely incredible. My pharmacy bill went from just under $3,000 a month to less than $50 a month. And, I actually, the full price for LDN here in my hometown without insurance was $36 a month. And my insurance actually pays for all of it, but $6. The rest of the pharmacy bill is mostly vitamins.

I did have some problems with my kidneys and bladder because of chemotherapy. So I do have to take some medication for that, and I have to take them for the rest of my life. But that was not for MS. it was for the damage caused by chemotherapy. 

Linda Elsegood: You said that you were characterized, were you able to have that removed?

Bill: I don't have to have that anymore. I have kept the oxygen, apparatus and stuff at home just in case as I didn't want to have to buy it, if the time should arrive, and I needed it again, but I haven't had to use anything since I started taking the LDN.

Linda Elsegood: Do you have any symptoms at all now?

Bill: I do have a few symptoms. I have some tingling. Uh, I do have to be careful about overdue things. Uh, I actually run a community garden here now, I have a five and a half-acre garden, and we grow everything, and we give it all away. Well, naturally, a garden is a pretty physical operation.

Bill: I have to be really careful. I have overdone myself a few times,  I'll be the first say LDN is not a cure, but it has allowed me to do so many things that I thought I'd never be able to do again. And I'm kind of like you, I look at every day as a gift and an opportunity to do something for somebody else.

And so. That's why I run this garden. I do a lot of volunteer work here in my hometown. I'm on a lot of boards and stuff. In fact, I just got back from Florida. I'm on the board of directors for our local housing authority, and I had to go to a five-day conference down later. Well, with MS, you can imagine the stress and stuff that was put on you if you were really suffering from MS, and I had no problems while I was there. 

Linda Elsegood: Fantastic. It's just such an incredibly inspirational story for other people to go from somebody who was so very, very sick to be able to lead a normal life. I know you still have boundaries that you can’t cross, but it seems as though you're able to carry on with your life, providing your care.

Bill: Well, I do. And, and I'll tell ya, I'm a lot more open with people now than I was, 20 years ago I was kind of a shy person. Now if I see any person that's having problems walking or has a problem with anything, I'm the first one to go up and say look. I'm not trying to be too personal, but let me tell you my story, and I tell him about me, and then I ask them about themselves and, and if it's something that is wrong with them that I think LDN we will help with that. I jumped right into it, it's good that I've been able to at least introduce people to it, I don't push it on anybody. I'll just introduce them to it and say, look, here's the information and give me your email address and I'll send you websites and stuff, and you can look at it and decide for yourselves. And I do know that my neurologist now prescribed it for over a hundred people, a compounding pharmacy here in my town.

Which is a small town? We have about 12,000 people here and about 70 people, get their prescription filled at our local pharmacy. They had actually never heard of naltrexone before. I asked them for it, and they actually had to call Skips in Florida to find out about it and now they have like 60 or more people.

Linda Elsegood: So what does your neurologist actually say about your health now? 

Bill: Uh, she said it's amazing and, and one of the things that I think that is a big plus, I give her name and telephone number to people from all over the world,if their neurologists have a problem with it or don't know anything about it, they can call her and ask her and the very first thing she's going to tell. Any medical person is that LDN will do no harm. Yeah. And that is such a big deal. I've had doctors say, well, it's an opiate, you don't need to be taking it, well, it's not an opiate, it's actually an opiate blocker.

Bill: But the biggest thing doctors need to know is that it will do no harm. But chemotherapy I took was not approved for MS, and I almost died from it. And they were ready to prescribed that. And I thought, well, why won't you prescribe LDN? Because they're all no side effects to it, I mean, not any major ones. And you know, the only one I really know of is dreams. I kind of enjoyed the dream. 

Linda Elsegood: I didn't have any side effects whatsoever. 

Bill: I've had absolutely no side effects from, LDN. In fact, I was looking forward to the vivid dreams because at the time I started taking it, I was getting less than an hour sleep per night and if I had vivid dreams, that meant I was sleeping. And that was really one of the reasons they said I only had 14 months to live. I had a kind of sleep apnea. The Mayo Clinic told me that they had only seen two other cases like mine and both those should already be dead.

Uh, when one hour in 24 hours, I mean. I've never slept for more than five minutes at a time, and then I would go two and three days with no sleep, and my kidneys would shut down. My heart would start acting up. I couldn't swallow. Uh, there were just so many frightening things, and the breathing got to be a severe problem, and there's nothing more frightening than not being able to breathe.

I mean, it is scary, but once I started taking the LDN, for whatever reason, that just kind of went away. And I've really had no problem with the sleep apnea, I've had no problems with breathing. 

Linda Elsegood: How long would you say, bill it took before you noticed any improvements. 

Bill: I was completely wheelchair-bound when I started taking the LDN. Well, our bathrooms were not handicap accessible, so I would have to go in my chair to the bathroom door, and I had a wall bar inside the door and I would transfer from the chair to the bar and slide over to either the toilet or the tub or the sink.

Well, as I got into trying the LDN, I started noticing a little bit more strength in my legs and in my hands. And rather than having to sit on the bar and shuffle my feet. I could take a few steps, and I actually have a, have a bench that straddles the bathtub, and I would sit down on the bench and slide over into the tub I didn't have to do that anymore, I could step over. I had to hold on, of course, but I could step over into the tub. And so all of those things were definitely improvements. And then I was able to take the chair to the door and, and do everything I needed to do in the bathroom without the bar.

And then I got to where I was doing a little bit of walking in the hallways and stuff and just a little bit more, a little bit more. I was really fortunate we have a pool, and so I could do a lot of stuff in the pool, but I couldn't necessarily do outside the pool. So then I was walking, and I got my cane back out and got to put the wheelchair up, and then by the time the three months I had to put it up, and this was leaning up against the wall.

Linda Elsegood: Thank you very much for sharing your story with us. I really appreciate it. 

Bill: I look forward to telling it to anybody that'll listen.

Bill - Ireland: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Linda Elsegood: I'd like to introduce Bill from Ireland who has multiple sclerosis. Welcome, Bill could you tell me when you first started noticing your MS symptoms? 

Bill: Well, going a way back, I had optic neuritis in my eye, that was when I was a student, uh, in the early seventies, but those days, the diagnosis wasn't so easy. But then it was in 1990 when I have a final diagnosis of MS remitting and relapsing. 

Linda Elsegood: Yes. What were your symptoms at that time? 

Bill: At that time severe fatigue, weakness and slight slurring of speech, which my speech still isn't perfect. It's still a bit affected.

Linda Elsegood: And how did that affect you being diagnosed, having that MS label? Bill: Well, I knew all along in a way because I mean, the indication from the early days was I had MS so the confirmation in 1990 didn't really affect me too much, but I was really conscious of the fatigue, especially, it was getting worse and worse, and impacting on my job, I was very concerned as to how long I would be able to continue.

Linda Elsegood: How did you learn about LDN?

Bill: Well, I was attending a national health consultant and my GP for years, I'm sure they were tired of hearing me complain about fatigue and asking what might be done about it or that could anything be prescribed.  I was getting no real assistance and I decided, really out of exasperation, to make a private appointment with another consultant. He was much easier to talk to, obviously more time to talk to me because it was a private appointment, and it was he who said, after we had chatted for a while, it was he who said, Oh, I thought maybe you were here looking for LDN as I stared back at him a minute in amazement because I've never heard of LDN. I asked him more about it, and he said, well, this, this has worked for some people. Um, coincidentally, a good friend of mine, just at the same time, asked me about, had I come across LDN, the trend is a retired vet and it was actually his GP who's mentioned, I think a sister-in-law has MS and the friends GP who mentioned LDN was prescribing it to some of his MS patients. So, naturally, I, when I returned home from the consultant, I got on the computer and found out a lot more about LDN. 

Linda Elsegood: So when did you start LDN?  

Bill: I started at the beginning of December last year. 

Linda Elsegood:  Did you notice any initial side effects? 

Bill: Yes.  I was waking up, to some extent still am, having taken the LDN at 10:00 PM, I was waking up at 3:00 AM roughly. I would stay awake for an hour or so and then get back to sleep. But for me, that was a small price to pay, because the very day after I took the first tablets of LDN, and I know this sounds a bit extreme but the very day after I first took LDN the severe fatigue that I was feeling every morning when I woke up was no longer there.  I still had a certain amount of tiredness, but it's not the fatigue that I've been having for years. 

Linda Elsegood: That's good. 

Bill: I was really astonished to be quite honest with you.

Linda Elsegood: So what impact would you say LDN has had on your life overall? 

Bill: Well,  it's given me my life back. I'm able to do things that I’d long since ceased doing, yeah, I appreciate the MS I had on it and still have, it's at the lower end of the scale, but it was preventing me from going out in the evenings.  I was relying entirely on my wife to do everything around the house and then the garden. It's made a huge difference to me. 

Linda Elsegood: What would you say to other people with MS that are thinking of trying LDN?

Bill: Well, I would say, what have you to lose. You're probably not getting anything that's really, in the way of medication that’s life-changing. If you try LDN, my understanding is that the side effects are minor. They certainly were in my case, my understanding is no suggestion of serious side effects, what have you to lose. And I couldn't endorse it strongly enough.

Linda Elsegood: Well, that's wonderful. Before we finish, is there anything else you'd like to add? 

Bill: No, I think that's, well. I would just say that when I first learned of LDN, I was astonished, and I continue to be astonished at the lack of information that is available. to, not just MS patients, but doctors.

My own GP had never heard of it and was very sceptical initially, but was won over reasonably quickly. Perhaps the consultant, perhaps he had a  word with the consultant, I don't know, but it really astounded me. And naturally, I've spoken to two friends who have MS and some of those I know are taking up LDN.

One friend in particular who unfortunately is in a wheelchair rang me recently and said he had only been on LDN for a week. Perhaps hadn't been any great changes, but his wife had remarked that he seemed a great deal sharper and he couldn't be more grateful to me for mentioning it. It just seems an absolute disgrace that this reasonably inexpensive drug is not being made more widely available.

Linda Elsegood: Yeah. Well, thank you, Bill, very much for sharing your story with us.

I really do appreciate it. 

Bill: You're very welcome.