LDN Video Interviews and Presentations

Dr Darin Ingels Lyme Disease Interview (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Linda Elsegood: Today. I'm joined by Darin Ingles from California, and we have had Darin on the show before. Thanks for joining us today, Darin. 

Dr Darin Ingels: Thank you for having me. 

Linda Elsegood: Now you did a presentation for us for the LDN 2017 conference on Lyme disease. Could you tell us about your new book called The Lyme Solution?

Dr Darin Ingels: Sure. Well, you know, I had Lyme disease myself back in 2002. So I had the, uh, uh, I guess, uh, the experience of being a Lyme patient as much as a Lyme doctor. And, uh, the book was really kind of written out of my own experience of what I went through, uh, dealing with Lyme disease. And you know, I went down the typical path that most people do, use antibiotics and they helped me temporarily.

But, uh, it just so happened, I got infected three weeks before I opened my own practice. And when I opened, I was, you know, the doctor or the bookkeeper or the receptionist doing everything and working, you know, very long days. And after about eight months, I started to get symptoms again. And when I went back on antibiotics, it didn't help.

And I changed antibiotics, and it didn't help. And I went through a cycle about eight or nine months of changing antibiotic protocols and really got worse. So I was fortunate to have a handful of patients in my practice that had seen a doctor in New York City named Dr Zhang. He's a doctor from China, a medical doctor who works as an acupuncturist, and he developed a line of Chinese herbal formulas.

So I went to see him, and he started treating me. And really in about three or four weeks after starting the herbs, I was about 80-85% better. So I had a pretty significant turnaround just by, you know, going on herbs. So it was really kind of my realization that, you know, for myself, and certainly, for a lot of other people that, you know, antibiotics have their place, but they also have their limitations. And, uh, I kinda had to go back to my naturopathic roots and, you know, go back to, you know, herbs and diet and lifestyle. So what, after applying what I did to myself too, you know, thousands of other patients, I found that there was kind of a path that people could take to really, you know, try and overcome Lyme.

So, you know, that's really what prompted me to write the book. 

Linda Elsegood: Hmm. And do you start your book by describing testing because so many different tests will come back negative? 

Dr Darin Ingels: Yeah. Well, you know, the testing has always been terrible. It's never been good. And I was a microbiologist before I was a doctor, actually used to do this test for a living.

So I have a lot of experience with it. And in really 40 years of research, we've really never changed. The criteria of this test and I don't think what a lot of people realize, is that this test was never ever designed to be diagnostic. It was really designed to monitor people that had known Lyme disease.

And you know, at least in the US if you go to the CDC website, the Centre for Disease Control, um, they tell you that Lyme disease is a clinical diagnosis. And I think that's, that's. Pretty well known around the world. Yet so many doctors put stock into the testing as being really the definitive way that you diagnose somebody with Lyme disease.

And unfortunately, it's just not true. It really is based on your signs, your symptoms, particularly if you happen to live in an area, part of the world that's endemic with Lyme. And you've kind of ruled out everything else, you know, they call Lyme the great imitator, the great mimic. It looks like a lot of other things.

So you have to go through and rule out other possibilities. But you know, when we see that people have a positive test, um, you know, false positives are actually quite unusual and false negatives are extremely common. So a positive test gives you a pretty good idea that you've probably had exposure and a false negative or a negative test doesn't necessarily exclude the possibility.

And I mean, I guess on the heels of that, you know, the good news is, is that we are having new labs coming out that are testing in different ways. You know, the gold standard for years is really just then this two-tiered antibody test. And you know when the antibody test is really just measuring your immune response to exposure.

So at best all the test really tells you is you've been exposed, you know, whether you have Lyme disease or not. Really comes down to whether you ever actually expressed any of the symptoms. You know, because theoretically, you could have gotten bit by a tick that carries Lyme, your immune system did what you wanted it to do.

You never got Lyme disease, but you'll show evidence in your blood that you had exposure. Uh, so that's why you always have to take consideration, the symptoms you experience in conjunction with the test. And you know, you put two and two together. But like I said, now the good news is we do have some new labs coming out, that are starting to look at cytokine activity, which is not measuring antibodies. There's the fact. There's a lab in Germany called Armin Labs, uh, that does great testing for cytokine activity. And then there's a new lab that just came out in the US where they look at a common sequence to all species of Borrelia.

You know, the test that's been out there only really looked at Borrelia burgdorferi, which was the first strain of line that we discovered, we now know that there are 300 strains of Borrelia worldwide, and yet the test only looks at one of them. So we now have a lab that's starting to look at a sequence that's common to all Borrelia.

So I think, you know, these kinds of labs as they develop, will continue to increase our, uh, our likelihood of picking up Lyme in people.  

Linda Elsegood: And you were saying about looking at the symptoms and how Lyme can mimic other conditions. So if you had the symptoms of MS and chronic fatigue syndrome. How would you try and rule out that it wasn't MS or chronic fatigue, that it was Lyme?

Dr Darin Ingels: Well, you know, I think those two examples, particular, you know, it could be both. You know, I think a lot of these diagnoses out there are really vague. I mean, even if it's MS or chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia, you know, these are just sort of descriptive diagnoses without really an understanding of why.

And if you ask your doctor, why do I have chronic fatigue, why do I have fibromyalgia. More often than not, you're going to get kind of a blank stare. And I think, you know, Lyme can be a trigger for MS I mean, that's what happened to me. My Lyme turned into MS. And you know, if you talk to a radiologist, they'll tell you that the lessons you see on the brain with Lyme are identical to the lesions you see in MS.

Um, so, you know, I think a lot of these diagnoses that tend to be kind of you know, vague or really without a specific understanding of, you know, what the underlying causes, you know, Lyme and some of these co-infections particularly can be a trigger. And what's really interesting is if you go into the medical research, you'll find there's a tremendous amount of information about microbes as a whole being catalyst or triggers for autoimmune diseases.

So it's not really, you know, fringe medicine anymore that, you know, different microbes, you know, bacteria and viruses, uh, can cause a lot of these, you know, chronic illnesses. And I think it's something that most doctors really just aren't trained to look for. But again, there are literally thousands and thousands of articles out there showing how, you know, ms is a great example.

We know that Lyme and ms have an association. We know the Epstein BARR right. And ms have an association, and we know that chronic fatigue has been associated with numerous viruses and other bacteria and so forth. So, you know, I think it's just the process of trying to go through and identify, you know, what these potential underlying microbes might be, um, that is.

You are potentially triggering that reaction. Because if you know what the microbe is, you know, there may be a way, whether it's an antibiotic and herbs, you know, some of the way to try and help deal with the infection. And if that really is the trigger, once you deal with the infection, often we find that the symptoms get a lot better.

Linda Elsegood: And what about the different trains of thought that, um, Lyme disease can be sexually transmitted? What's your take on that one? 

Dr Darin Ingels: Yeah. You know, it's, it's been a controversial topic. And what's really interesting, you know, when I wrote the book, of course, I was doing a lot of research, and I was really surprised that in, in the research, they have not shown that it is sexually transmitted.

And I think a lot of Lyme experts, and in fact, I was at the ILADS meeting last October, and one of the gentlemen stood up and basically felt, uh, that it is very hard, uh, to acquire Lyme sexually transmitted, you know, through sexual transmission. You know, the way you get Lyme is through a tick bite.

And of course, it's specifically in the saliva, the tick, you know, that's the route of entry. Uh, so through sexual contact, you know, the research says, no, I don't think it's impossible. Um, I mean, I certainly have had partners where one developed Lyme and then months, years later, their partner developed Lyme.

Now, is it because it's through sexual transmission or is it just because they live in the same environment and that person just happened to get their own exposure? Um, you know, I think it's a bit of a grey area because it's a really a kind of bloodborne pathogen, I think, unless there's probably the transmission of blood, it might be fairly hard.

Um, however, there was an article that literally just came out last week that did find a Borrelia in the genital secretions of both men and women. Um, so I think that's some of the newer evidence that it's possible. Um, but just because it's in the secretion doesn't mean that it can still, you know, penetrate the mucus membrane and create an infection the way that we think of it that you would normally get through a tick bite.

So, you know, I guess the truth is we really don't know. Uh, I, my advice, uh, to patients with Lyme is to be cautious, uh, with, uh, sexual activity and use, uh, you know, protective measures. But, um, I think, uh, the. We're still trying to figure out, you know, what that possibility really is.  

Linda Elsegood: And what do you cover in the chapters in your book?

Dr Darin Ingels: So the book is really designed to be a patient guide. Uh, of course, it's very appropriate for practitioners who really just want to learn more about Lyme and a sort of a natural way to approach it. But I really break it down into five steps to sort of simplify the plan. And the first step is really about addressing the gut.

You know, we know that the gut, uh, accounts for up to 80% of our immune function. So if the gut is not functioning well, often, you know, the immune system doesn't function well in many Lyme patients I work with, you know, have a history of some sort of gastrointestinal problems even before they got Lyme.

And whether it was chronic constipation or diarrhoea or gas or bloating, you know, there's some evidence that they really weren't assimilating their food well. And that things weren't functioning quite the way it should. So I really talk about, you know, different nutrients you can use, uh, to help, you know, rebuild the gut, repair the gut if it's been damaged.

Certainly for anyone who's already been on antibiotics that might've wiped out a lot of their normal gut flora, or perhaps they've been on other medication that's damaged the gut, such as, you know, perhaps chemotherapy if they've been through cancer treatment. So it's really outlined and designed to give you a step-by-step, uh.

Plan on, you know, different nutrients you can use to really help, you know, restore the gut back to its normal balance. And then the second part of the plan is really about diet. So I've tried various diets on myself and certainly with my line patients, and there's paleo, and there's keto, and there's, you know, specific carbohydrate.

You know, there's just numerous diets out there that get purported to help you know, everything. And what I really found is a, what's called an alkaline diet seems to really work best for Lyme patients. And an alkaline diet is really kind of a. Uh, perhaps a hybrid of paleo in that, you know, it really kind of reduces a lot of your carbohydrate intake.

But what it really boils down to is, I think as to what we probably ate when we really were true hunters and gatherers, where it really is a plant-based diet. So you're really eating mostly vegetables. And we try and limit animal protein to less than 20% of your total dietary intake for the week. And then there are certain foods that we know are just very acid-forming in the body.

It doesn't, things like, you know, dairy products and junk food, processed foods, which of course are a huge problem here in the US and a. And even things like coffee, you know what we know is. From a chemical standpoint, you know, the more acidic your body becomes, the more prone it is to inflammation. So at the end of the day, with the diets really about is, is reducing inflammation in your body.

And inflammation could be in your joints, and it could be in your brain, it could be in your gut. It really applies everywhere. So I give you a two week, you know, plan on, you know, this is what you should be eating. And then I've actually partnered with a nutritionist, uh, at. Prep, dish.com and, uh, we put together a one month a meal plan, uh, for people who really want to follow this diet through.

And it just gives you some great recipes and easy to follow guidelines on how to prepare your food. I mean, a lot of times when people have Lyme, they're just tired and exhausted. And the last thing they really want to do is spend hours and hours slaving over a stove. So we really wanted to try and simplify it and just make it easy for people to really start.

Start eating well. Uh, the third step of the plan is about treating infection. And as I mentioned, you know, I went through both antibiotics and herbs, and I found that herbs actually work really well. So I go through a series of herbal protocols. I've used myself personally, and I've also used in my clinical practice, I find give me the best clinical results. And what I like about herbs too is that not only are they trying to go after the bug, but they're also dealing with all the other things that Lyme does to the body. So it's helping reduce inflammation and improve circulation and improve blood flow. And, uh. Help support your immune system. So it really deals with a lot of the things that Lyme does. And you know, one of my contentions in the book is that you know, Lyme initially is an infection, but at some point it really kind of becomes an autoimmune disease. And so if we really start thinking about Lyme more like an autoimmune problem than just a straight-up infection. I think, you know, we get better clinical results. So I really, you know, walk you through step by step, you know, here are the herbs to take, here's the amount to take. And you know, these herbs, at least in the US are readily available online, so it's easy for people to get access to it. 

The fourth part of the plan is really about the environment. And we know that a lot of people with any kind of chronic illness tend to have a high body burden of different, you know, chemicals and toxins, which all just makes it hard for your cells to work well for your immune system to work well. So it's really about reducing your exposure at home to different chemicals that you might be using. You know. Yeah. Window cleaner and tile cleaner and bathroom cleaner. You know, most of these chemicals tend to be fairly toxic and have a lot of things that don't do anything good for your body. And I really focus a lot in this chapter about mould, you know, certainly here in the US and then I'm guessing in the U K as well. You know, you've got a lot of mould issues, and mould is the one thing I find mimics Lyme probably more than anything else. And if you write down all the symptoms of mould toxicity and all of the symptoms of Lyme disease. There's quite a bit of overlap. So when we've had someone who's been on Lyme treatment, and they haven't been responding very well, you know, one of the first things that always pops in my head is mould.

And do we need to go through that process of trying to identify if they've got mould exposure in their environment, but mould is definitely a big part of that environmental evaluation? And that's part of the plan is really about lifestyle. And I find so many people, you know, again, when they're chronically sick, and certainly, with chronic Lyme, you know, a lot of lifestyle things really change.

You know, I mean, I used to be a very physically active person, and when I had Lyme, I was exhausted. And the thought of doing anything physical was just—a lot. So, uh, but you know, moving your body is really very important for your physical health, for your mental health. And I think no matter what your physical state is, there's something you can do, uh, just to get you moving a little bit.

And it could be as simple as stretching. It could be yoga. It could be Tai Chi. It could be Qigong. It could be swimming. You know, there's a lot of low impact activities that people can do to really try and get their body moving. And again, that's what helps move the blood, which ultimately moves the lymph. And the lymph is where a lot of these organisms like to hang out. So it really is kind of a way of cleaning out the toxic stuff in your body. Bringing in oxygen, bringing in fresh nutrients, and I think it's also just good for people's mental health. 

Um, I also talk about the importance of sleep. You know, I find a lot of people after they've been exposed to Lyme, really don't sleep very well, and sleep is, you know, when your bodies actually get the chance to restore and repair itself. So people miss out on that. Deep restorative sleep. It's just really hard to get well. So I talk about specific nutrients that people can use to encourage deeper sleep, better sleep. 

And then the last part of that is really about stress management. You know, again, when you're chronically sick, it's stressful for you. It's stressful for your family, your loved ones. And I think there are so many people out there with Lyme that have a good support network, but you know, I know how it was for myself. At some point, people kind of get tired of hearing about not feeling well, and. They ask you how you do on a day, and you're polite, and you say, great, and deep down you don't feel great at all. Um, but you know, nobody really wants to hear your truth. So I think it's important that people have that place, that space, that they can really share how they do feel and whether it's a therapist, whether it's a Lyme support group, uh, to have some avenue that's not your immediate family or friends that you can kind of unload on. And, and. It's okay that, you know, you feel that way. Um, again, I, I think that's an important part of our mental wellbeing. And you know, our, our brains and our bodies are very well connected. So if we're only taking care of our physical body and not our mental body, uh, I think that becomes an obstacle to really getting well.

So I just encourage people, and I give you some ideas in the book about, you know, different places that you can reach out and help, you know, kind of complete your support network. So, you know, that's really the essence of the book. And then I have one chapter in there is really on therapies that need to be physician-guided. And so, of course, I talk about low dose naltrexone and other therapies that need to be done during done under the auspice of a physician  

Linda Elsegood: When you get somebody who comes to you, and we have many members that are so sick that. They are disappointed. Some of them that they wake up the next morning because they have had enough, you know, they feel so ill, they can't see any way out of feeling better.

Now, if they read the book, where do they start? Where? What? Because when you're that sick to do anything is a struggle. As you were saying about following a, a diet for four weeks, what. There are many steps that you talked about there in the book. Where is the first point of starting to try and feel better to be able to do all the things that you suggest?

Dr Darin Ingels: Yeah. I think, you know, kind of what the first step in the book is, there's no kind of coming back to gut health. You know, your gut health, because that's your intestines. It's your stomach, and it's your liver. Your liver is what does the heavy lifting for detoxification. And look, I've had patients that have gone through every therapy under the sun, and nothing really works for them.

And sometimes they start, you know, dealing with their gut or dealing with some sort of detox protocol. And then, you know, that's the thing that really starts to get them feeling better. So, you know, for someone who's really kind of down in the dumps and discouraged and just trying to find something to give a little, uh, a shred of hope, uh, I think, you know, this is something, again, that's not expensive that.

Anybody can do it again, no matter what your state is, is, you know, start, you know, working on building your gut health. Start working on, you know, detoxifying your body. And I mean, I've got patients that, you know, do home enemas. I've got patients that, you know, jump into a sauna if they have access. I've got people that, you know, there are various ways that aren't, uh, you know, hard on the pocketbook that is doable, that you can at least start that, that process.

So I think that's a good place for people to start. 

Linda Elsegood: Cause many people, as you were saying with Lyme, have tried so many different therapies and it's financially broken them because, you know, they spend a lot of money and many times don't feel any better than when they started. So to have a plan that you can follow through, um.

And if you can get your gut health sorted out, so you feel stronger and more able to do other things, you know, has got to be the way. But if somebody came to you who was in a really bad way, and they asked you the question, it may as well be how long is a piece of string, but how long would it be before you know, I start to feel better.

And by following all these steps, could I put my Lyme disease into remission? What would you say? 

Dr Darin Ingels: Well, my expectation, when people start following the plan, so to speak, you know, my expectation is that you would see improvement in the first six to eight weeks. Now to get to a point where you really felt, you know, completely a hundred per cent; well, I mean, realistically, I mean, it could be a year or longer.

I mean, for me it was, you know, after I got off antibiotics, it was a little over two years before I really felt like I got my life back. But again, when I started on the herbs, you know, I felt an improvement, you know, a significant improvement in the first month. So I think just having that inkling that you know, you're feeling better.

You know, you know you're on the right track, you know, then it's easier to kind of go forward and do some of these other things. You know, where I see a lot of stuff fail. I think there's a lot of therapies out there that are very expensive, at least here in the US that is really designed to target just killing the bug.

And I think if that's the only thing that therapy's designed to do, you're going to get very limited improvement. And you know, I've seen, you know, patients that have flown over to Germany for hyperthermia treatment. I've had a lot of people here who do ozone therapy and other oxidative therapies like hyperbaric oxygen, uh, IV, you know, ultraviolet stuff.

And again, I mean, these therapies all have their place, but you know, they're really all designed in some way to kind of, you know, kill the bug. And I don't know that they necessarily address. I know a lot of these other issues that Lyme has created, and again, they tend to be very expensive, and you have to have a provider, you know, apply these therapies.

So, you know, I wanted to know the book to be really something anybody can do at home, no matter where you are in the world, pretty much. At least if you have access to the internet and you can get some of these things. But a lot of these things are things that you can really do on your own. And I mean, for a lot of people, uh, you know, it makes a huge difference.

And again, this was my journey. This is what kind of turned the corner for me. You know, I really never did any high tech anything. Um. Yeah. It really wasn't accessible to where I wasn't in the States at the time either. But, uh, I think, you know, you have to look at the the the risk-benefit of any therapy and the cost of course, and you know, what is going to give you the biggest bang for your buck.

And, um, I'm sure if you talk to every Lyme doctor out there, they'll probably have a different opinion on what that is. But again, I, I. I think the book that I've written is really a great way for people who are trying to be budget-conscious, uh, to be able to sort through the therapies. Uh, I try to talk about, you know, the price, uh, about what these therapies are.

So people have a pretty good idea about whether it's something they can do or not. But again, most of the stuff in there is pretty affordable. 

Linda Elsegood: Could I just ask you about the long-term use of antibiotics? I know you were saying, you mentioned about how it affects your gut. Um, I'm just thinking myself, when I was on a long-term antibiotic, I got, um, thrush in my mouth and I could not clear it up.

I had it for about a couple of months. It was terrible. Absolutely 

Dr Darin Ingels: Awful. Yeah. The long-term antibiotics, well, you know, even short term antibiotics are going to have a damaging effect on your gut microbes. I mean, that's just the nature of the beast. You can't kill the bad guys without killing the good guys.

So there's always going to be collateral damage when you're using antibiotics. And then we know from the research and in rats anyway, you know, when you give a rat a single dose of antibiotic, I mean, that's not what, even one day, that's one day. Dose, it takes six months for the rat, got to repopulate back to where it was prior to the antibiotic use.

So I can only imagine what happens in humans when we've been on antibiotics for, you know, weeks, months, and I mean, I've even had one patient who was on continuous antibiotics for 12 years. You know, in addition to, you know, wiping out your normal gut flora. And of course, again, we've had a, just a ton of research coming out about the importance of your microbiome and how it modulates not just your immune system, but your weight and your mood.

And you know, all these other aspects of our health are really tied into our gut microbes. The other thing about the long-term antibiotics that people really don't know about and they should, is that it's very damaging to your mitochondria. And we know that Lyme itself damages your mitochondria. And for people who don't know, mitochondria are the part of your cell that literally create energy.

So part of the reason, you know, you're sorry darn tired. When you get these chronic infections, and to a certain degree, it's that damaging effect to these mitochondria. Well, again, we know that when you're on antibiotics long-term, that compounds the problem, makes it worse. So, you know, I'm certainly not opposed to using antibiotics.

Again, I think they have their place, and certainly, with acute Lyme disease, I think they can be very effective. But you know, if you're in the state of chronic Lyme and you've been on antibiotics for months to years, and you're not feeling any better, I guess, you know, my feeling is, at what point do you draw a line in the sand and say, no, this really isn't the best path for me, and I need to find something different.

I knew that in the effort to try and kill the Lyme, you're also damaging other really important aspects of your own body. So. Uh, you know, it makes it even more confusing that you know, we don't even know if you ever really get rid of Lyme. You know, we can't measure Lyme easily in the body. And I think there's been some pretty compelling evidence that we, I've never actually done get rid of Lyme.

You know, once you get it, it's kind of part of you, but I sort of equate it to like, you know, when you get a Chickenpox when you're five years old, you can get shingles when you're 55 years old, and it's the same virus that stays in your body. You know, the difference is your immune system. Something happens that you know, it tanks, and then that virus becomes opportunistic.

I think, again, you know, we need to think about Lyme disease and how it affects your terrain. And if we can correct your terrain, correct your immune system, you know, it should be able to keep it at bay, uh, and not cause problems. You know, why is it there? Some people who get Lyme and you know, they'd get over it, and they're fine.

And other people, you know, it goes on for years. Um, I'm sure there's a lot of reasons, but I think a big part of that is certainly what was going on in the body prior to getting Lyme and then what happened thereafter. But again, I think the more we make our body more toxic, more acidic, uh, all of these things just kind of add up, and it just makes it harder to get well.

And of course, the antibiotics are also very acid-forming in the body. So again, from a chemical standpoint, uh, it's not. It's not doing the kind of things in the body we really want. So, you know, people really need to weigh that risk-benefit when they're considering doing long-term antibiotics. And you know, I've seen, you know, I, I heard from people online and said, Oh gosh, look, I was on antibiotics and saved my life.

Great. You know, I, I think anything that works, you know, again, there are some people who do really very well on it, and it changes their life. And that's wonderful. But again, I think, you know, I'm, I'm focusing more on the people who've been down that path, that haven't responded well or gotten worse, and they need, you know, other solutions.

Linda Elsegood: Great. Well, we've come to the end of the show and if people would like to go to https://dariningelsnd.com he has a lovely website there with all the information about the book he's practised. There's a blog, a store, events, absolutely everything, and you can even order the book online. So it's been amazing having you with us today and thank you so much for sharing your experience for this.

Dr Darin Ingels: Great. Thank you, Linda.

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

"Bullseye" - Low Dose Naltrexone and Lyme Disease (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

The LDN Story (low dose naltrexone documentary) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Frank Sievert, MD Audio (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Norman Marcus, MD - 10th October 2018 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Linda Elsegood: Today my guest is Dr Norman Marcus, who is a pain specialist. He has a fantastic background. Thank you for joining us today, Dr Marcus.

Norman Marcus, MD: Thank you for inviting me. 

Linda Elsegood: Could you give us your background, please?

Norman Marcus, MD: After attending medical school, I did an internship. In the old days, it was a rotating internship where I went through the various aspects of what a doctor might do. I decided to go on to do a residency in psychiatry. And when I was doing that, I, became very interested in mind, body interaction and following my residency, I did a fellowship in psychosomatic medicine.

While I was doing my fellowship, I was asked by the department of neurology at the headache unit where I was, at Montefiore hospital (they had the first headache unit in the world). I was asked to join them. They were treating patients with headaches in the department of neurology.and at that time I was interested in biofeedback because of the whole issue of mind, body interaction. So I started to evaluate patients with headaches and treat them with medication as well as the biofeedback. And at that time I was elected president of the New York State biofeedback society.

Following a few years doing that, I was asked by the department of anesthesiology to start the first pain centre in New York City in the department of anesthesiology. And I did that with a colleague, an anesthesiologist. And we together started and then ran together the pain centre at Montefiore hospital, which I did for approximately seven years.We had a multidisciplinary program where we're teaching patients how to manage their pain using nerve blocks at times and medication and psychological interventions and relaxation training. And then from there, I was asked by the department of medicine at Lenox Hill hospital to start an inpatient pain treatment program, which I did. That ran that for about 20 years. Then while I was there,  I was asked by the princess Margaret hospital  in Windsor to start a pain centre. And I started to travel to the UK, one week a month for three years. I have an appointment in Indian NHS, and I ran the pain centre there.

And while there, we got some significant publicity and we were on the BBC, BBC two, and we were on numerous television and radio programs. And  we were able to help patients who had persistent pain. And by that time, I was starting to focus on soft tissue.I was introduced to Hans Kraus, who was President Kennedy's physician for his back and France Kraus  had a.

technique and the conceptual model on assessing soft tissue pain, muscle pain, and the president at that time was being treated by another physician, Janet Trevell, and she was injecting Kennedy five or six times a day into his muscles.

When Hans Kraus came in he stopped the injections completely and said that the problem wasn't all the muscles that needed to be injected, but rather muscles that were very deconditioned as well as maybe some muscles that needed injections.But think of all muscles that are tender as a target for injection, like dry needling or something like that, didn't make any sense. And he had a conceptual model where there were four reasons for muscle pain. Tension is the number one, then a deficiency or otherwise known as weakness and or stiffness of key postural muscles. The third was the spasm, which is involuntary contraction of the muscle that you can't straighten up and it's very painful. And the fourth was altered muscle tissue called trigger points in most jargon when we're talking about these tender spots. But actually, Dr Krause's concept was more than trigger points cause he recognized that the area of the muscle.

that was causing pain, wasn't really in the muscle in the tissue, but rather the ends of the muscle where the muscle attaches to the tendon and the tendon attached to the bone is the most tender spot. It connected to that muscle, and that one needs to be identified. Therefore, the specific muscle that's finding a spot on your body isn't sufficient because the pain isn't.

generated from that spot. It's rather generated from the ends of the muscles, so you must know which muscle you're in. So he made that distinction. And his results when he would inject the ends of a muscle were dramatic insofar as he wouldn't have to re-inject the muscle. So the standard of care now in terms of people who were doing, let's say, dry needling or trigger point injections is to repeat the injections over and over again, quite often into the same muscle whereas Dr. Krause would be able to eliminate the pain by finding the muscle specifically and then going to the ends of the muscle and doing his protocol, which involved not only injections.

And what he used a lighter cane, just for comfort. He, it was the actual needle in the tissue that was doing the treatment. And following that, there's a three-day protocol, using neuromuscular electrical stimulation and exercises that were developed at Columbia University school of medicine in the late fifties, early sixties.

And  exercises were developed by studying 3,700 patients for four and a half years. And then he came up with an exercise program that he then administered to 300,000 people at the YMCA and studied twelve thousand of those patients in town who had an 80% success rate in diminishing or eliminating back pain.

And in patients who had had surgery for the back and had pain afterwards, that success rate was even higher. It was 82%. So those exercises then became the standard exercise at the YMCA called the Wise Ways to a healthy back. And they were given for many years until someone decided to change it. And without going into what actually happened, this essentially killed the whole awareness of these exercises, but we use them as a routine, part of the work that I'm doing. 

So when patients come in who have soft tissue pain, we diagnose one of these four mechanisms such as tension. John Sarno would be speaking about tension myositis.And now we know that there are mechanisms where if you are tense, it alters the neurons and your spinal cord  and makes them more sensitive to input sensitization. So we also test them for weakness or stiffness using the test that Hans Cross developed with his colleagues on your Weber called the Krauss Weber test. It's a very simple test, takes about two minutes  to implement. It gives you a lot of information.  They were palpating for tenderness in muscles to identify the muscle. And what happened was that I discovered  it wasn't specific enough that many people have tender spots throughout their body that don't necessarily reflect where the pain originates.

So you can have a tender point, and it may not be actually coming from there. It may be referred from another muscle, and it's almost impossible to know if you're pressing on a referral pattern or the actual pattern itself. I mean the actual muscle itself causing it, or where is this just a muscle that is receiving information from another muscle and all of this.

A complication of where the pain originates was explained to me by Sigfried Mensa. So I really began to understand what was going on on a cellular level, and on a biochemical level, through the work of professor Mincey and together, ultimately, we wrote a chapter together in a Harvard textbook. Carol Warfield is one of the editors of the textbook, and it came out a couple of years ago on the pathophysiology of muscle pain. In that period of time  I was elected president to the American Academy of Pain Medicine and served on multiple committees and became interested in how diverse the various treatments are for the pains that people complain of. 

I started the outcomes—movement in pain. To try to come up with some assessment where we could measure if a certain treatment was superior to another treatment, and that's been a work in progress for the whole pain community. It was something that I began  and we did our best to finish it, but it's still happening. And now it's a major goal and mission of NIH to come up with parameters to measure what is successful, outcomes and pain. And I've written a couple of chapters in neurosurgical textbooks on that.  Montefiore went to Lenox Hill hospital and then I left Lenox Hill hospital and went to NYU and became the director of clinical muscle pain there in the department of anesthesiology and taught students who were fellows in the Pain fellowship department of anesthesiology for ten years or so. In the last two years, I moved to Cornell where I have an appointment in neurological surgery and in anesthesiology, I'm the director of clinical muscle pain research, and I'm working together withmy colleagues and anaesthesia and neurosurgery to see how we can better define how soft tissue is an important element in patients who are coming in with a run of the mill back pain. And also those patients who are found to have a surgical indication for their back pain, but continue to have pain, despite a spot, an apparently successful surgical intervention.Why are they still in pain? And quite often it's because there's a soft tissue that was not identified as a source of pain. 

I was beginning  to tell you about the problems in identifying a specific muscle by pressing on it.  I've discovered that I could stimulate the muscles with a tiny amount of electricity, and I could much more accurately identify which muscle is the source of pain.I'm now working on a next-generation device with the Cornell school of engineering, the Meineke school of biomedical engineering, to develop an instrument where we can, have a software program that will show the clinician what are the various muscles in the body, in a region of which the patient complains of pain.

For example, if you have shoulder pain to 16 muscles that cause pain in your shoulder, how do you know which muscle is causing the pain? You don't, by pressing, you don't really know, but when we stimulate it with a tiny amount of electricity, and that particular muscle or a couple of muscles are painful, and the rest are not. Then we assume that those muscles are sensitized and are indeed the pain generator. And when we treat those muscles, generally we can eliminate the pain in the region of the body. For example, in that case, it would be the shoulder.  I had a patient who was coming to see me for knee pain, and this was about ten years ago or so, and he had 14 knee surgeries with the same orthopaedic surgeon, and every time she had  knee surgery, she continued to have pain afterwards, and she was given more.

opioid. In this case, it was oxycodone, and when finally she was receiving something like 3000 milligrams a day of oxycodone, a huge dose. 

She was coming in periodically for pain medication and she was functioning.although it was a huge dose and I wasn't entirely happy with it. But she was functioning and she had this extraordinary amount of medication and she would come in periodically, every month or so, and I'd renew the medication and then she didn't show up on one day. And I called her home, and her husband told me that she was hospitalized and said, well, what happened? Well, she had taken her medication and then she had taken an antianxiety drug, and she fell asleep in the bathtub and almost drowned and was admitted to the psychiatric unit of a hospital with supposedly a suicide attempt.

So I said, Oh my God, I was there and it was terrible. She was finally discharged, but spent about ten days there and then called me up, made an appointment, and she came in, and I said, how are you doing? She said I'm actually doing okay. I said, well, how's your knee pain?  She said I don't have any knee pain. Really? I said, well, you know, how much medication are you taking? She says I'm not taking any medication. Wow. You were 3000 milligrams a day.  So I said, well, what happened? So she said, well, there was this doctor who was there on this staff, his name is Hugo Franco. And he came in and  gave me some medication, actually gave me some naltrexone, and that helped me get off the medication so that I was able to go down to zero in 10 days.

So I said, Oh, would she have a lot of withdrawal? She said no, I had no withdrawal. So this is impossible. I mean, it's like one of these events saying, Oh my God, how could this possibly be? So I said, I'm going to call up Hugo Franco, and I did, which subsequently we became friends, and then he explained to me that he used naltrexone in an ultra-low dose to detox patients.

So much against what you know, was on the internet, for example, or, you know, never give naltrexone when somebody was on opioids, it was great because he explained to me that it actually made the opioids stronger if you gave it in tiny, tiny doses so that with a more potent effect, you could then start to decrease it because you were getting the same effect with lower doses and you could just keep on going down, which he did.

This was amazing for me. So I said, well, perhaps, this could be useful with other patients. So I started to use it with patients where I wanted to facilitate a reduction in dosage or to get them off of opioids completely. And I was able to successfully use it in that fashion. But I still idn't quite understand how it was working until I went to a lecture by Linda Watkins and, she explained the whole phenomenon of microglia and toll-like receptor number four and how the ultra-low-dose naltrexone wasn't blocking the mule receptor. And I hope that your audience understands that.

So the mule receptor is where most of the action is when you're using an opioid and pain pathways. The major factor when you have chronic pain, microglia become very important. And the receptor that becomes stimulated on the micro clear is called like receptor number four.

And when it's stimulated, it produces cytokines. 

 And many of these cytokines are pro-inflammatory, meaning they cause inflammation, particularly interleukin one and interleukin six. So these cytokines end up giving you neuroinflammation. It's sort of making more pain, pain on top of pain.it also gives you what's called illness, behaviour or sickness behaviour where you feel you don't want to interact with other people. You feel sluggish, you want to just retreat alone, sleep a lot. And it's like a survival mechanism. So if there was true trauma or you know, some injury in your body, the microglia respond by giving you these cytokines or producing these cytokines that make you want to just rest a lot and not interact and not waste your energy using all your energy for repair.

So I started to understand that the whole issue of central sensitization, which is what happens when patients have persistent pain. The issue isn't—all the receptors. We used to think it was that it was upregulation of the receptors so that you  needed more medication, because of the new receptor.But it was very much involved with the activation of microglia and that if we could suppress the microglia, we could suppress pain and actually reduce tolerance. That's some of the tolerance was a function of activating microglia. So I started to understand it would work for patients who had  central sensitization.t I've been treating a large number of patients for the earliest endless syndrome, and the most common complaint in that population is fatigue and pain.

When you examine them using my electrical instrument, they come up with anywhere from around 50 tender or sensitized muscles test positive. When I say the relatively normal population who just comes in, let's say with that pain, the average number of muscles, it's about five, so they have ten times the number of muscles that are sensitive to a small amount of electrical stimulation.And it would appear that they have central sensitization, because they are, sensitive to all stimuli, they do have a mood disorder and quite often they have something else that fits in the whole picture, which is mast cell activation syndrome. This is like another part of the puzzle that the mast cells, which are cells in the body that respond to trauma and to infection, to any assault in the body or to a foreign body,  they sometimes become overactive.

And the whole phenomena of overactive mast cells  hasn't been recognized until quite recently. Itt turns out that patients  understand that syndrome. A large number of them have mast cell activation syndrome, which is the abundant number of mast cells. Not too many, but rather a normal number of mast cells. But the mast cells are over-producing the chemicals that they produce, and they can produce up to 200 different molecules, and you can get many different kinds of  symptoms  but commonly would be, skin sensitivity, rashes, environmental allergies, GI problems with constipation or diarrhoea.

What’s  commonly known as irritable bowel syndrome, asthmatic like problems or rapid heartbeat, a rapid heartbeat when you're getting up quickly called POTS, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or sometimes orthostatic hypertension, migraine headaches. So we see these kinds of  symptoms and the mast cells also activate the microglia. 

So in terms of my practice, you know, getting back to ultra-low-dose naltrexone, that I would say almost all the patients I see I put on two ultra-low dose naltrexone. It takes a while to titrate up because we know that the dose to 4.5 milligrams for some patients is a total overdose and they will not be able to tolerate that. And this was actually taught to me by Dr Franco, my friend. So we start at 0.1 milligrams per day, and we go up by 0.1 milligrams every other day, in divided doses.. So it's not one dose at night, but rather four times a day dosing. So it would be 0.1 then three days on the third day, it will be 0.1 twice a day. On the fifth day or sixth day, it will be 0.13 times a day. Then a couple of days after that 0.14 times a day and then start again from the 0.1 so it would be the point to 0.1 0.1 0.1 then 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 and going up like that until we get to the maximum of somewhere between five and six milligrams a day as a maximum dose.

So we have some patients whose total daily dose is 0.15 milligrams a day. Total daily dose, and we have other patients where the total dose is six milligrams a day. So what's the dose for ultra-low-dose naltrexone? There is no dose. It's completely idiosyncratic, meaning each patient has their dose, whatever that may be. And so. I didn't stop talking for a long time.

Linda Elsegood: That is absolutely amazing, and you have wrapped it up in 30 minutes. We're going to have to have you come back and talk to us again because I'm sure you  just got started in that 30 minutes. So I'd like to say thank you very much for having joined us today. I really do appreciate it. 

Norman Marcus M.D. My pleasure.

Linda Elsegood: This show is sponsored by Dixon's Chemist, who are the experts in LDN at associated treatments in the UK. Dixon's Chemist, the most cost-effective for LDN in all forms within the UK and Europe. You are maintaining safety standards in  excess of what is required. Why would you choose to get your LDN from anywhere else?

Cool. 0141404654 five today to speak to the LTN experts

Linda Elsegood:Any questions or comments you may have, please email me at lindaa@ldnrt.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.

Timothy Schwaiger, ND, MA - 3rd October 2018(LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

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

Dr Timothy Schwaiger is a naturopathic doctor who learned about Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) from his daughter and did his research to understand how it works. Throughout his career he has adopted non-pharmaceutical approaches to blood pressure, depression, anxiety, and insomnia and has worked with all age groups.

He attended the LDN Research Trust Conference in Portland Oregon in 2017 and gained further knowledge about it’s applications. In this interview he discusses diet and nutrition, supplements, and other treatments for various conditions.

Dr Schwaiger explains thoroughly how LDN can help to solve issues such as insomnia.

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

Amber Myers, PharmD - 26th September 2018 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Dr. Amber Myers is a pharmacist from Texas and is sharing the pharmacy experience about LDN.

I was raised in Oklahoma, and when I was younger, independent pharmacy was really a big deal up there. My grandmother actually is the one who suggested it to me. When I was a senior in high school, I had to have a outpatient surgery. My tonsils had swollen and I had the surgery. And one of the things I had to do afterwards was go get this mouthwash and I had to go to a compounding pharmacy for it. I thought what they did was so neat. They made something just for me and it tasted great. And ever since then, I was really interested in it.

We do capsules, capitals, liquid and cream. We're kind of working on a LDN vaginal and also on eyedrop form.

The most popular conditions we see is thyroid problems, Fibromyalgia and GI related fibro is huge in this area for some reason.

We suggest our patients to supplement as well. We have a really great supplement company that we work with and they don't supplement with animal glandular, proteins or anything extra.

We also encourage them to change their diets and tell them that as you continue to go on this course with your new food intake, you will get used to the new taste of foods and will enjoy them. Even the same thing with vegetables, you start to taste that natural sweetness.

So, if you can stick with eating food that you think might be a bit tarter, isn't a sweet, but in two weeks time, the new tastes birds haven't got used to the sweet food so that they then are educated to think what you're eating is sweet. So just do it over a slow process. A slow amount of time to retrain the mind on how to eat, what it means to eat, train, retrain those taste buds. And it's something that you can maintain longer and people have to get out of the mindset of thinking I'm on a diet.

It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle change.  And you have to want to do it. If you're not wanting to do it or willing to do it, then now it's not the time.

I would like to talk about our pharmacy. We are located in Denton, which is just North of the Dallas is one of the suburbs North of the Dallas metroplex. And we have been in business 20 plus years. The compounding lab is sterile and non-sterile accredited.

It's one of the most amazing labs I've ever seen. And we do the autologous serum, eye drops for dry eye and we delivery and mail out all over the state.

If you are somebody who is very sick with an autoimmune disease, having your medication delivered is one less task you have to try and set it aside.

Summary of pharmacist Dr. Amber Myers. Watch YouTube video for the full interview.

Dr Edyta BIernat-Kaluza – 19th September 2018 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Linda Elsegood: Today my guest is Dr Edyta, who's from Poland, and she's a rheumatologist. Thank you for joining us today, Doctor Edyta. 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: Hello. This is such a pleasure for me. 

Linda Elsegood: Okay. And could you tell us your full name, please? 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: My full name is Polish, Etyta Biernat-Kaluza, and I’m a rheumatologist, rheumatologist.

Linda Elsegood: Okay. And when did you first hear about LDN? 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: So it was thanks to one of my patients who was a doctor. It was about, I think, three, four years ago, and she suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. She was the first person who told me about LDN.  

Linda Elsegood: I understand. You take it yourself.

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: Yes, I am a patient, rheumatological the patient and not only neurological too because I suffer from arthritis with a B 27 antigen and my main problem was arthritis, sometimes reactive, but my second problem, immunological problem, is multiple sclerosis. So now my arthritis is okay, but MS is a little bit worse. I started a few months ago to treat myself with LDN. 

Linda Elsegood: Okay. And when you first started, you know, what was your experience?

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: So at first, my first experience was as a doctor. So when I started to treat my patients, especially, yeah, women who wanted to be pregnant, but they suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, and they use methotrexate. It was impossible to be pregnant and use these drugs. So then I started to find my new solution, and then they started to prescribe them at the end, and it was a fantastic reaction for them and ease their pain and hurt much less. They started to feel better and better. And after such patient experience, I started to prescribe too much more patients. Of mine. So I have various patients with Hashimoto’s and autoimmune and so on. And they had a lot of MS patients because, uh, you do preventative medicine and nutrition not only with pharmacology but with these natural treatments. But I prescribe now a lot of LDN.  

Linda Elsegood: And what dose do you start your patients on? 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: I think it was about two years ago with my first experience.

Linda Elsegood: Yes. The dose that you prescribe for your patients when they start? 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: So I started with at one point half and millilitres generally three at first. Then these with Waynflete, five later, three milligrams and the maximum dose is 4.5 very early ACE had revealed of these principles, for example. Oh, boys times. 

Linda Elsegood: Okay. Have any of your patients ever experienced any adverse side effects?

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: Some, I think about 5% they have some adverse events. It is generally irritation or some problems with during the night and so on. If they come to sleep enough, would last. 

Linda Elsegood: Um, what has been your own personal experience. 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: I generally feel there. Well, in what I'm able to say that my reaction to stress, special life stress is much better, but my advice, it's nice to eat the word very extensive in night,  dreams, and so on. So I had to change the time of those instances before going to sleep. I take LDN in the morning, and it's okay for me, and I do everything normally  

Linda Elsegood: Some people find that taking LDN in the morning gives them more energy. Have you noticed that? 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: Generally, I'm personally with a lot of energy, so I think I'm not able to say that maybe more. I have more energy, but nevermind if I had a lot of women taking LDN too. 

Linda Elsegood: Mmm. That's good. So being a rheumatologist, what other conditions have you, um, treated LDN for? I mean, you named quite a few there. Um, do you have any exceptional cases that you could tell us about? 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: So my patient rheumatological patients, who I treat our patients with, for example, ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis, often attempt their multiple, this rheumatoid arthritis and so on. And so lots of patients with so-called collector notice, for example, she ignored the syndrome Slen so on. So it's the main mean. Because they are my rheumatological patients, but they have a lot of endocrinological patients, especially Hashimoto disease. So I observe very interesting results. The serologic is much better during therapy, and another group is MS patients because lots of people wanted to talk, want to be treated by me because that I'm an MS patient and they see that I walk very well. And I do everything's normally and so on. And generally this patient, I would like to follow along with my good conditions. 

Linda Elsegood: And with your Hashimoto’s patients or patients with, um, taking thyroid medications, do you find they have to reduce the number of thyroid medications that they take.

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: At least the BTS about as the most important for me is observing these ones. You think of antibodies, antibodies. So it's, it's very important for patients and for me. Some of them are able to reduce thyroid hormone stuff 

Linda Elsegood: And what about patients that come to you who are already taking opiate painkillers?

Um, because we know that people with arthritis and psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, et cetera, et cetera, are people that suffer from high levels of pain. 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: I, in general, it’s a problem and that it's better not to combine. And so they generally don't use opioid therapy together with LDN. So my experience is not to be who patients who use opioid treatments, and so I don't have such an experience  

Linda Elsegood: but if a patient was already on the opioids and wanted to try LDN, what do you do to get them off the opioids.

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: You see it, or you generally try to use different solutions, for example, or anti-inflammatory, typical nonsteroidal the treatments. So then I'm able to take a different solution. And with the opioid, I generally do opioid treatment or LDN but not together. I don't have such experience now. 

Linda Elsegood: And you talked about, uh, the nutritional side.

What do you recommend for your patients to, to follow? 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: Yeah. It depends on which treatment that disease for. I often will discuss diseases. It is a good solution if they had to without a little time, but without gluten and dairy. Non-gluten diet is the best solution, but we check in what's where action for lickings and I do very often, and people this we, so we call it intolerance and produce.

Um, T a G T class from and based on these eight, try to find a good diet for my patients, but generally, gluten-free, dairy-free, and without meat. Some people decide to eat all the way to me, but of course without threat.  

Linda Elsegood: Yes. That's really interesting. Supplements. Do you recommend any supplements for your patients?

I know that everybody's individual and every condition is different, so what people need to take varies, but you know, if you had to say the top four favourite supplements that you like to recommend to your patients, what would they be? 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: So the first step for me is vitamin D three, and I have peak experience with treatments with high doses. So I participate, for example, international conferences on vitamin D 3. And the dose depends on the condition. Meaning minimal level in Poland is 30 nanograms per millilitre, but for the immunological problems that theirs is 75 milligram per millilitre, but generally patients is only metabolic problems, so 50 is okay.

I had an occasion to talk with Professor Michael Holick from Boston who is guru. Even the field of my time in the free and he treating corporation was a doctor from. Patients with a nurse with MS  those are over. Those are 250, and they have good results. Me personally, my, uh, I try to. Treat patients with maximum dose and not to those, but 15 bucks in our level one, she's the size hole.

So one has it, 50 grams per litre is for ms patients, but generally, for an autoimmune, a lot of is 75, so the first is an item in the three different supplements is for example. Probiotics and it's different. I, based off my experience on the preventative and personalized for different conferences, and the nice way to use another technique, the only participants from Europe or go to a state and make it a Rosen setters during the class conference that probiotics ought to be changed every three to six months.

So I told this use probiotics generally, and I like probiotic means and so on. Sometimes I use enzymes like from Elaine and so on, the papain, and I use a lot of these natural at the same store.  

Linda Elsegood: and of course it's really important what you put in your body and microbiome in the gut seems to be quite a hot topic over here in the UK right now.

Um, they were saying that if you've got your microbiome, um, correct, that it eliminates a lot of gut issues. And um. Other conditions. Could you tell us a bit about that? Your experience of the microbiome. 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: So in Poland, a prevalent form of diet is the diet of a doctor as a number of SCA. It's based on the vegetables and some thoughts, and it lasts about a maximum of six weeks and things.

So eating only these vegetables, my biome is changing, and they may be community in the microbiome is much better. Thanks for these changes in say, for example, in the direction of the vegan diet is much better and mainstream. We use it. If my patients decide not to eat meat you, they feel much better that they're in the very, very various conditions.

Sometimes you've beat on her some gastric problem or maybe a gastrointestinal problem. Not too often I do an examination of the microbiome, but it's very difficult, and they do in different places in Poland, not in Warsaw. 

Linda Elsegood: Uh, and, uh, a documentary that I was listening to. They were saying that when somebody takes antibiotics, of course, the antibiotics kill all the bacteria, good and bad.

And they said that it was rather like a forest fire for the microbiome. It just wipes everything out and to only take antibiotics when it was essential. Um, but also things like, um, cans of fizzy drink that have, um aspartame in them that that kills microbiome as well. Is that correct? 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: I love tables to understand this last part.

Could you repeat it? Okay. Because I'm debating because I understood that the things that 

Linda Elsegood: this last part, 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: okay. Um, cans 

Linda Elsegood: of fizzy drinks. Um, I didn't really want to mention any, any brands, but you know, the cans of drinks that you buy that are sugar-free have aspartame in them. And it was saying that the aspartame, which is the sugar substitute, also kills microbiome.

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: It probably is sometimes for sending me photos, nothing to drink and not sugar drinks and so on. Then I, if my patients ask me, she ought to pick aspartame I said to know the most piece, so I will be such as. So drink water will be, for example, I'm on and so on. Or maybe from. Not to be, not to have such a low acidity in the about of course sparkling, especially sugar drinks are very bad. 

Linda Elsegood: Yes. And of course to keep your kidneys healthy and your bladder, you really need to drink plenty of water to keep flushing. Everything out that's lurking in your body. If you're not hydrated, it's a problem, isn't it?

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: Yes, it is. It's necessary to keep in mind that it's we ought to drink before going to sleep at all because you might, for example, of some cast my create some crystals and so on. So it's necessary to drink before going to sleep. Not only during the day but. He's very, very important, but it might be.

The persons with a heart problem are especially insufficiency of, of the heart or to be not often to drink too much because it might be too heavy for their heart. Mm. 

Linda Elsegood: Uh, how much would you recommend that somebody drink before going to bed? 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: Some fruits are these the one blouse, and the best thing is not, don't wake up with your ink now you'd still go to the toilet.

I sort of took try from themselves, which volume is best for them. Okay. If you run glass or half, go offload glass. So each person is different. And what 

Linda Elsegood: is your take on like tea and coffee and caffeine? Is that. Okay. To have in moderation or should people, cause I mean there are people that drink tea and coffee all day, all day long, and some people have strong black coffee.

I mean, how does that affect the system. 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: So my experience as a doctor is very varied as, because some patients, they drink coffee before night or even green tea before. Neither have they, some of them are not able to sleep, but some patients like to drink coffee, and they will sleep and say no, or a new fresh person. Generally, if the patient asked me, okay, if I can drink a lot of coffee or home and coffees, I am some that it depends on your genes. And we do special genes that we send saliva to Canada, and we take which type of gene you have and how many, for example, coffee, you are able to bring back the coffee. It means both coffee, green tea and chocolate. And so on, so on. So we know that some persons are able to. 200 milligrams of coughing. It's okay. For example, me, if there's some type of gene and the different person are able to drink much more coffee. 

Linda Elsegood: Um, what about alcohol? Where does that sit with the amounts that people can tolerate without them being, without them being an issue?

And of course, alcohol is also high in sugar, 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: isn't it? Yes, it is a, you see generally depends on the works. How do you think about alcohol and so on? Because towards the sample from an oncologic oncological point of view, generally, all alcohol is bad and each may create more cancers. For example, women with breast cancer that usually drink even acceptable amounts of one glass of red wine are, they're probably to have a recurrence of breast cancer is high.

So generally much better is not to drink, but it's very difficult to release it this way. Yeah. So, for example, a doctor or rheumatology doctor we know as a strong example of the most important or tried, this is the whole, he's gout. And for gout drinking, alcohol is very bad, but the worst is beer because it's a source of purines. I talk, so I get asked from a patient with gout, they ask me, doctor, what I'm able to drink from them. I answer it's maybe a little bit of vodka with lemon juice. Okay. And many people, even today, I had patients, and he has the, he says to me that if he even thinks of vodka, then he does well with the lemon juice.

Hmm. 

Linda Elsegood: Well, I can remember having gout years ago. I must have been. The late twenties, early thirties, and I thought it was just old people that got gout. Uh, I've had it twice, 

but it's very painful in my big toe. Um, but it was very painful, really, really painful. Um, does that come under rheumatology? Gout. Okay.

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: And now it's the most popular arthritis reaching the whole world. But it isn't always so. The patient told me it’s my ankle. It's my knee. It's made to be there, for example, herbal and so on. So it may be probably levels or try, or sometimes his problem was tendonitis. So for example, Achilles tendonitis and so on often is due to high levels of uric acid.

And how do you, that's the second issue that it's patient with how you exit? You either they, either they eat a lot of sweets and so on. Then propel is a probability of an attack of gout is higher. On the contrary, if they don't eat sugar, 

Linda Elsegood: and once you've had gout, are you, they're more prone to have reoccurring attacks of gout.

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: Yes, but you generally know, we know that the gout isn't so difficult to treat because it's very important to reduce levels of uric acid grams per litre and then become, the count doesn't exist, or these attacks are rarer Marara and so on and so on. So now it's only questioned how good the gout is treated. So it isn't a problem. Now you add Ames in such a group, do you come? So it's gout treatment that's all grown up from about 170 scientists from the whole connected in science about gout.

So we know that if the Galtee is good, three tips, so it isn't a problem. 

Linda Elsegood: Well, that's good. So if anybody is listening who suffers from gout, uh, there is, um, the good news that it can be treated. 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: Now, generally, even the popularity or the treatment in the UK too is allopurinol. I look generally know that we sell now we have new, more modern drugs and if somebody is very systematic is, so it works for awareness.

And I know Dr Doherty's from the UK, and he led such a nurse-led to take care of patients with gout. We have very good with our phones, even the doctors. This nurse curse, you said better. Wonderful. Thanks for the time explaining everything and so on and so on. That doctors hurry to match

Linda Elsegood: and anybody listening, if they would like to come and see you have an appointment to discuss the condition, how would they get hold of you? 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: So it isn't so easy. It is to see, I'm able to speak English, and I do the telemedicine so it's able to talk. They find my place of work in Warsaw. So, and right.

If, for example, uh, InMail, and then I'm able to find appointments for such patient. and 

Linda Elsegood: do you have a waiting list? 

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: Generally, in Poland, I don't even relate it to meet a person that patients who they would like to be treated by me in person. You would be seen by my assistant doctor about the IEM case of patients from abroad. Then I will find time personally for them. Well, I have a very long waiting list.

Linda Elsegood: We do have quite a few members of from Poland, so I'm sure they'd be very happy to seek you out even if they have to wait for an appointment. But it's been amazing talking to you today. Thank you very much for being such an amazing guest it was a pleasure and honour to have you on the show.

Dr Edyta Biernat-Kaluza: Terrific. Thank you. Thank you.

Linda Elsegood: This show is sponsored by Dixon's chemist. We're the experts in LDN and associated treatments in the UK. Dixon's Chemist is the most cost-effective for LDN in all forms within the UK and Europe, maintaining safety standards far in excess of what is required. Why would you choose to get your LDN from anywhere else?

Call 01414046545 today to speak to their LDN experts.

Linda Elsegood: Any questions or comments you may have, please email us 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.

Julie and Larry share their experience of LDN for Parkinson’s Disease (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Dr Jonathan Collin – 12th September 2018 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.

Dr. Jonathan Collins who's an MD, prescribes Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN), and is the publisher of the Townsend letter.

I became particularly interested in mental health in the late seventies approaching a patient with drug therapies, particularly dealing with patients with psychosis  but benefits were limited.

And there were practitioners who talked about the need to investigate these patients from a nutritional viewpoint and that did lead me to looking at alternative medicine or integrative medicine. I decided to let go of pursuing internal medicine and dermatology and instead started focusing in on this area of integrative medicine and combining that with a general medicine practice at the same time.

At that time there wasn't internet so I figured out I could take on the ability to create a magazine that would act as a forum for practitioners. And so we got involved with starting originally a newsletter, which became a magazine. It's called a Townsend letter.

Then I got involved with the Congress to do an investigation of alternative cancer treatments. And the result of that was a report that came out in 1990, that ultimately led to the national institutes of health, creating an office of alternative medicine. And several years later that became the center for complimentary and alternative medicine at the national institutes of health.

I'm involved with personally in terms of offering patients integrative types of treatments  herbal medicine, therapies of vitamin and nutritional medicine, homeopathy, which is actually been something that has been ongoing for almost 200 years.

I use with the Low Dose Naltrexone which has been something that a number of my patients have found useful and supportive for autoimmune conditions and inflammation.

I have been using The Sinclair method giving 50 mg Naltrexone for alcohol use disorder one hour before drinking.

It has been a remarkably effective treatment. I've had many individuals who have used this technique. The treatment in many ways is extremely simplistic.

 Is totally different from the approach that requires the individual to depend on willpower, like in approach using alcoholics anonymous. There is no requirement for the individual to use willpower. The medication Naltrexone is prescribed and it is taken one hour prior to drinking. And there is a slow deconditioning process that makes the individual feel less craving for drinking the typical amount of alcohol that they're consuming.

And as time goes on, that extinguishing behavior continues.

The medication Naltrexone has minimal adverse effects.

Three to six months on their alcoholism or alcohol dependency brought under control.

I use the Sinclair method, because it is something that is quite successful.

Unfortunately, the individual that has a history of a alcohol use disorder has been sustaining damage to their liver over an extended period of time and other organs in their body. And so it's always useful for that person to have a medical exam and to do your basic laboratory test.

And usually when they come in, they have other issues the same time.

We certainly don't want to use the Naltrexone if the person is having hepatitis or liver failure or if they have major kidney function, abnormalities.

Summary of Dr. Jonathan Collins interview. Watch the video for the full interview.