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Martha Grout, MD - 10th April 2019 (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.
Martha Grout, MD has an integrative medicine center in Scottsdale, Arizona, dedicated to natural treatments of cancer, Lyme disease, diabetes, metacarbolic, irritable bowel, and other chronic diseases. She endeavors to treat the whole person, body, mind, and spirit, and in searching for the root cause to patient symptoms. She has conducted much continuing education on a variety of subjects not taught in allopathic medicine.
Dr. Grout first heard about low dose naltrexone (LDN) when she moved to Arizona in 1997, and began using it on her pain patients, and those with brain function issues – adults with brain fog and confusion and early memory loss – but not yet for children. She learned that not everyone could tolerate LDN 4 mg – some could not tolerate the endorphin boost – and she had to lower the dose, and now prescribes between 1 – 4 mg LDN. She finds it boosts the immune system, but hasn’t done controlled studies on this.
New patients undergo standard and functional testing. Standard testing provides a very gross delineation of organ function long after they have been functionally incompetent. She tries to get patients before they get to that point. For functional testing, she uses labs like Genova diagnostics and Doctor's Data International, Hygenics, and DNA Connections and several labs like that that do more specialty testing, particularly for immune system dysfunction. Thyroid testing is an example, where patients have symptoms of low functioning thyroid but normal conventional test results. So she looks for other means, and in such patients LDN is helpful.
Linda Elsegood asked about unraveling all the issues that a Lyme disease patient has getting a diagnosis, being told it’s all in their head, and how Dr. Grout treats it. Dr. Grout responded that first is to get adequate testing, typically not through conventional testing. Many that have had Lyme infection or any of the varieties of co-infections, have been sick for a long time, and many are also nutritionally depleted, their brain and immune system aren’t working well. Often they have such gut dysfunction and microbiome dysfunction or abnormality that they can't even absorb nutrients very well through the gut, so IV nutritional therapies help get them filled faster so they can begin to function better faster. She also uses IV antibiotics if they can’t take them orally; but orally they take longer to reach the effectiveness of IV therapy. They promote healthy probitics and healthy diets - non genetically modified, basically organic when possible.
As to IV antibiotics, Dr. Grout relates that they may be needed for a long period of time, and relates Katie’s story (video on Dr. Grout’s website). Katie was on IV antibiotics for 18 months virtually every day. This is an unusual case, but she has had no relapse. Other people require much less.
Dr. Grout wrote a book with Mary Budinger, An Alphabet of Good Health in a Sick World, using a lot of information from her website. The book is available on Amazon, and through Dr. Grout’s office, and she’s happy to inscribe it. The book is about nutritional status being paramount. It's when our nutrition goes off the rails that things start to go south and it can take many years depending on where we started out. If our mothers were healthy, we started out with a better base. If our mothers ate junk food, then we started out with a less good base, and it probably won't take us as long to get sick.
A person low in vitamins may feel fatigued, without energy, have poor memory, and sometimes insomnia. Testing for vitamins is done through Genova Diagnostics, using both urine and blood, and measures functional levels of vitamins, fatty acids, and chemicals that are produced by the gut. It measures if there is an unhealthy gut, if there are products of protein in the stool, or if there are markers for unusual and unhealthy organisms in the blood. So long as the patient is doing well the test is not repeated; and it’s quite expensive, but a useful test.
Summary from Dr. Martha Grout’s LDN Radio Show from 10 April 2019. Listen to the video for the show.
Keywords: LDN, low dose naltrexone, brain fog, early memory loss, pain, endorphin vitamins, nutrition, integrative medicine, Lyme disease, thyroid, microbiome