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Summary:
Mary-Louise Condon is a pharmacist from Brisbane Australia, and an integrative practitioner. She heard about low dose naltrexone (LDN) over the last 8 years, first at an anti-aging convention in Melbourne, as a treatment for autoimmune diseases. After the conference she met with local prescribers to talk about trends in healthcare and how best to support patients on their journey to better health. Several were interested in LDN for patients with Crohn’s disease, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, who were not doing well on dietary modifications or medications. Being able to offer LDN brought profound improvement in the quality of life of patients, including those who had been housebound, those who couldn’t find items on menus that would agree with them, those losing weight.
They compound LDN as a capsule generally, and at times are able to add a supplement into the LDN that the patient needs, such as magnesium, or alpha lipoic acid for a patient with autoimmune disease. They are considering sublingual and transdermal forms for patients who can’t tolerate capsuled LDN. Most common side effects noted are sleep disturbance, with upset stomach as second. For some sleep disturbances they recommend taking LDN in the morning
The use of LDN in Australia is in its infancy, and the best way to gain acceptance is through networking among patients, prescribers, and pharmacists. Pharmacists can help network patients with LDN prescribers, or help their prescriber understand LDN. A wide variety of prescribers write for LDN, not just general practitioners.
Generally, sleep issues or gastric upset are the common side effects. They did discontinue LDN for one older woman who developed some sort of neuropathic pain on LDN that may be from the NMDA receptor analog blocking effect, but regardless, Mary-Louise would not hesitate to recommend LDN for that or any relevant condition.
When instructing patients about LDN she stresses the time to see improvement can take 3-6 months. It might take that long for a patient to be able to tolerate even 1 mg. Linda Elsegood commented that they have found that it’s not always that a higher dose is better, but what suits the patient. It may take weeks of months to titrate up the dosage of LDN. In England, liquid LDN is used to titrate the dose up. Mary-Louise noted that they can go lower than 0.5 mg in capsules, but haven’t had the need as yet.
To contact The Compounding Lab go to https://compoundinglab.com.au/. They post throughout Australia, and Mary-Louise consults out of Brisbane. Their email is enquiries@compoundinglab.com.au. This information and more is on their website. They can answer questions about LDN, and help patients find a practitioner who is open to prescribing LDN; or they can make appointments with Mary-Louse or one of their other doctors.
Keywords: low dose naltrexone, LDN, antiaging, integrative, autoimmune, Crohn’s, Hashimoto’s, thyroid, alpha lipoic acid, compounding, side effects,
Summary from pharmacist Mary Louise Condon, listen to the video for the show.
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