What Adverse Effects Have we Seen From Long-Term  Immune Modulation with LDN?

What Adverse Effects Have we Seen From Long-Term  Immune Modulation with Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN)?

What adverse effects have we seen from long-term immune modulation with LDN, particularly in the setting of chronic recurrent infections, blunted immune response, etc. And in this vein of which cautions and contraindications should clinicians be aware? Great question.  LDN modulates the immune system so it doesn't necessarily boost it, but it doesn't necessarily suppress it to the point where we see issues of recurring infections. 

One thing that Dr. Sherman talked about in the 2021 LDN Research Trust Conference is that sometimes chronic infections can bloom and we've seen that from time to time, especially when you reduce inflammation and you're trying to modulate the immune system and the way she described it,  I thought was really amazing. She says, “Okay,  so here's your immune system, and it's working on ten things. It works on those ten things equally, so ten percent in each spot.  Now, with LDN  or other issues three of those have now been stopped, or they're no longer an issue. Now you're using 100 percent of that immune system twenty-four seven on only seven things.”

Now you have concentrated the immune system on those issues, and that's where we can see flares because the immune system is trying to modulate and reduce some of the issues, but at the same time we can have a bloom.  That's also because, depending on the source of the infection and the type of infection, you may have some of those spores in cells in different stages of maturity.  I wouldn't say the LDN will blunt the immune system. I'm not sure I would use that term. When I look at the use of  Low-Dose Naltrexone I don't look at it as linear. I don't. As a pharmacist for 35  years, I look at almost every other drug linear I do not look at LDN linearly. And what  I mean by that is drug dose response it's completely linear. LDN is not like that. You can see similar responses at smaller doses rather than larger doses, and it can be just as significant.  We have to get away from the thought of what is a homeopathic dose. I don't think there's anything such as homeopathy when we're dealing with Low Dose Naltrexone. The only contraindication I think we need to be careful of is if you do have somebody on a biologic, we  need to be very careful about when you introduce  LDN because you don't want the immune system to go haywire you certainly don't want to cause more harm than what you're trying to help with. And that was also addressed in some of the previous  LDN research trust seminars by a variety of providers actually. There's a lot going on in this question, and I think it's a huge huge  

topic and I would love for Steven and Sam to chime in because there are probably things that  I haven't thought of that perhaps you can add to this. I think the issue with  I think the issue when try to answer a question like this not knowing the case history for the patient is that we don't know the case history for the patient. Right. I think that's the,  you can't really make a general a general topic a general forum. I've actually answered some questions and texts that we just couldn't have answered in this forum because it's too specific.  

But bearing in mind, while I think really what the patient here might be worrying about is if they're on other immunosuppressants like biologics that you talked about and then you take LDN are we going to put you know the immune system and nosedive?   Are they going to be open to infections and like long-term fungal infections or et cetera et cetera? I think the difference is that with LDN  you're closer to affecting those two different systems that we talked about earlier on and while you might be suppressing one,  one might be getting unsuppressed because you're stopping it; we're stopping something that's causing that to be already suppressed.  As you said, it's a very non-linear drug and you really need a case history before going  

into this in too much debt. Agreed, I kind of call it an immune modulator sometimes because it's not always  ..it kind of goes up and down.