Low Dose Naltrexone - LDN

charlie

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Would like to get a thread going about Low Dose Naltrexone. Seems like a winner after researching it some today. Please report your experiences with it, good, or bad. What do you know about it, etc....
 
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kiran said:
Hmm, Low Dose Naltrexone helps my libido quite a bit.

birdie said:
Anyway, wanted to mention that I have been using Low Dose Naltrexone. I started mid-August with 1.5mg. First week in Sept upped dose to 2mg. Raised it to 3mg 29th Sept. Then to 3.5mg mid October.

The main benefit I've noticed is better mood. This better mood started around 4 November.

I've had some sleep problems with it only in the past 5 days. It may be time to re-evaluate my thyroid meds. But I've had this cold that's blocking rational thought. Soon, will get to it.

The other thing is that I've gotten weird, sudden pains in the limbs and the head as a side effect. This seems to be normal and subsides in a lot of people.

I think, but am not sure, that the elevated mood indicates that 3.5mg might be my best dose. I sure do like it that the sadness I've had for years/forever has lifted.

Peatarian said:
There have been lots of studies about MS and Low Dose Naltrexone. I have used it and can only recommend it. It will reduce the stress hormones and give your body time to recover. I am not saying I think you have MS (I don't) but naltrexone might be worth a try anyway. I have written about it here: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=249&start=50
One of the women I know is using progest-e-complex and naltrexone and is feeling better with every day. She doesn't see doctors anymore so I can't tell you what this would have done to her diagnosis.

Peatarian said:
I have tried naltrexone for more than a year. I will answer you tomorrow.
There is some misinformation about LDN out there. Like that you can't stop the treatment anymore once you've started it because the original disease would come back. I have used it for more than a year and stopped it more than a year ago without any trouble ever.
Do you know these:
Bernard Bihari, M.D. -- Curriculum Vitae


BTW: Ray Peat doesn't agree with Dr. Bihari with the way Low Dose Naltrexone (or Nalexone) works.


Peatarian said:
Here is Ray Peat (from an e-mail) on Naltrexone:

Ray Peat said:
"Bihari thinks naltrexone works by increasing endorphins, I think excess endorphins are often the problem, and the antagonist can sometimes be helpful. The endorphins differ in their effects on the two sides of the body, so when I knew two women (within the same year) who had been having mysterious one-sided symptoms for a few months before discovering that they had ovarian cancer (on the same side), I thought that the endorphins were probably involved, maybe to suppress pain on that side. Naloxone and naltrexone have some effects that aren't directly related to the endorphins, on estrogen and histamine."

My experience with naltrexone is that it does what Ray Peat thought it might do: It gives you a break. It holds (some of) the hormones (and neutransmitters) of stress in check while you concentrate on getting better. I don't know what happens if you use it to relieve some symptoms but don't change anything about your life. There are some testimonials on the websites I posted earlier. But I think if you have health problems and want to live your life according to the knowledge and insides Ray Peat provides you might need a little time to get things right, to understand a complex world and to realize that it's not the one you grew up with and not the one you were told it is. That alone can be stress. Someone here wrote: The more I learn the more paranoid I get and I fully agree. Tragically my paranoia turns out to be right more often than not. In that case naltrexone is the right thing for you.

It obviously has some anti-cancer effects and does help with many so called autoimmune diseases.
I never realized a big sensation while using it. No sudden stopping or starting of this or that. But it did place me in a bubble for a while when I needed it and seemed to protect me. I used the time and when I stopped using the naltrexone I noticed that some things (like travelling, stress situations like talking about health and nutrition with Non-Peatarians, darkness, not enough sleep, bad food) started to take their toll as they used to do before the naltrexone. But I just use a little more progest-e-complex and that helps me cope with it.

On the more practical level: It is cheep because you only need a very small dose. I have known of people who just tried it to see if it made a difference and when it didn't they didn't use it. I believe it's really safe. I haven't heard of any adverse effects but trouble to fall asleep. I used naltexone in the evening and never experience anything like that.
 

kettlebell

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I find this very interesting. As a part of learning this stuff I spend a lot of time reading about this, ondansetron and other drugs that Mr Peat has mentioned.

Someone said to me that it gives your body a break for a while to allow it to reset, time for hormones to normalise. I was told it was like being in a "Bubble" where outside stress suddenly doesn't cause a stress response. If that is true I imagine that it would have little benefit if stress hormones are not elevated or if you respond positively to stress situations. But most people do likely have unnaturally elevated stress hormones even if they aren't aware of it.

I haven't used it but have heard good things about it too and for the most part negligible side effects with such a low dose.
 
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charlie

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KB, that was Peatarian who said, I quoted it up above.

kiran, are you still taking LDN? How long till you noticed the libido increase? Any other positive or negative effects?
 

kiran

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Still taking it, I noticed it after a couple days maybe.

I think the other effects from LDN are somewhat subtle.
 
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charlie

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I really need to try this stuff. Going off of what KB said, I really think it would give my body the break it needs.
 

Ray-Z

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I've been experimenting with LDN for a few days. Some of those days have been pretty good, but no obvious effects yet. I am big and tend to be unresponsive to medications unless I up the dose a bit.
 

nwo2012

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Are you sourcing it through a doctor or can you get without a script in USA?
 
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charlie

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Ray-Z said:
Charlie: Did you see the recent LDN thread at the RP Fans page?

Yes, I just went and checked it out.


nwo2012 said:
Are you sourcing it through a doctor or can you get without a script in USA?

I thought my Dr was going to be helpful, but it looks like that is not the case.
 
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Nothing chemically. LDN is just basically using a really small dose of N.
 
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Another good link:

http://www.solasclinic.com/wordpress/th ... exone-ldn/

Increasing endogenous opiate production is important because it can help to improve immune function, regulate mood (with both anxiety & depression), and reduce pain. There are many anecdotal reports of significant improvements and even reported cures of cancer, AIDS, auto immune conditions (colitis, arthritis, Parkinson’s disease, MS, etc.)14
 

narouz

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Interesting sites, Charlie.
One I liked was this long one, below, from the "Low Dose Naltrexone for Longevity" site.

http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/18073-low-dose-naltrexone-for-longevity/page__st__210

The poster, "golgi", discusses his theory that even the "low" doses commonly suggested
may be way too high.
He links to an article he says substantiates his idea
(you may need to go to the website to get a clickable link to that PDF article).

golgi1 Re: Low Dose Naltrexone for Longevity

Posted 15 October 2011 - 04:58 AM
See the attached paper in PDF.

Essentially, it seems that I may be right.
At least if one accepts the premise that LDN likely works against all indicated diseases through "upregulation"(a non-specific over-generalization for what is likely going on, I know). I think that up-regulation is a more likely mechanism than disease mitigation resulting from mere prolonged blocking of receptors that results in no permanent up-regulation nor permanent homeostatic change in signaling. If anyone believes in the likelihood of the same, then the research presented by the attached paper is worth considering.

While the attached paper doesn't address what is generally though of as LDN's effect on disease progression, other than the diseases of addiction and tolerance; it presents, among other critical perspectives, that ULDN is proven to work better as the dose is diminished. If the doses that were found to be most effective are to be believed, then adherents of the standard LDN protocol might be dosing as much as one billion times above the optimal dose.

in my previous post, I was assuming that microgram levels (what seems to be the standard ULDN protocol floating around on the internet) would be adequately small enough to experiment with. According to the attached research for the new opiate/naltrexone combination drug, microgram doses may be too high by up to a million times (milligram doses by one billion times). Instead, the researchers have found that picogram doses seem to have the best effect on conditioning the system to resist and rebound from opioid tolerance, especially when concurrently taking opiates (conjecture: or perhaps consuming natural opiates in food (milk) or otherwise realizing down-regulation through other means, like perhaps sun exposure). I'm not sure if research has been carried out using femtogram level doses or below. If ULDN works better with an decreasing does, as is claimed by the authors of the paper, then it seems as if further research on smaller doses is warranted.

A last worthy question is if any meaningful research or experimentation has been done with nanogram level doses, or lower, for the broad range of indicated disease states that LDN treats (other than addiction and opiate tolerance). If not, then in light of the success of picogram level ULDN treatment of opiate tolerance, further research into picogram dosing for other disease states shouldn't be ignored. It is very possible that LDN patients are taking over the optimal dose by many orders of magnitude.

I would say to those (no one specific) who might have a knee jerk reaction to such low doses as being "homeopathic" or "too low to be effective" that many people appreciate your comments, but we didn't know that you had such omniscient knowledge of the mechanisms behind neuro-hormonal fitness. In other words, try it. These are not homeopathic doses. When receiving a picogram dose, you are still receiving a dose that contains molecules of the chemical. Anyone's perspective as to how large milligram, microgram, nanogram, or picogram level doses are, relative to the desired effect of the medicine, is based on a learned model of pharmacology that likely doesn't apply here. That is, it likely doesn't apply in a therapy which is attempting to introduce a stressor that will coax the body into finding a new homeostatic baseline. According to the attached research, extremely small doses of potent antagonists seem to work best. I'm looking forward to the further experimentation of others and my own experiences with ultra low doses. While I realize that the same mechanism may not cross over with other drugs, I think that ultra low doses of other antagonists are worth a try. Perhaps, in the future, some of us will try and report back on ultra low doses (nanogram or less) of memantine, other NMDA antagonists, or other monoamine antagonists.

I highlighted what I thought were the relevant sections of the attached paper (although the entirety of the content is instructive). I realize that some might find this annoying, but it draws the eye of others who would otherwise skim the paper. Enjoy.
Attached Files

Attached File ULDN.pdf 280.09K 20 downloads
 

narouz

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Actually, my last post will make more sense
if the following post is read first--same poster.
The previous post was a follow-on to this one:

golgi1 Re: Low Dose Naltrexone for Longevity

Posted 12 October 2011 - 07:41 PM

View Postviveutvivas, on 30 October 2010 - 05:41 PM, said:
An update:

So I have tried LDN a few times now, dosing down from 3 mg to as low as 0.5 mg.

I am ending my experiment.

All it does is make me abjectly, utterly miserable for a period depending on dose, with no subsequent benefit.


I just want to offer an opinion on the experience put forth in the above quoted post.

First, it sounds like you have moderate withdrawal symptoms at low doses, with no "rebound" effects in the endocrine nor opioid systems that are ostensibly the objectives of the therapy.

Let me offer that .5 mg, for many candidates, is not as low as you might believe that it is.

In fact, with 'ultra low dose naltrexone' therapy, users take does that are down to 1/500th of the .5 mg "low dose" that this poster describes. When looked at through this lens, "low doses" of 1.5 mg, and even .5 mg, seem very high compared to what could be taken to effect the desired therapy. Perhaps, between 500 and 1500 times the amount that the poster should be starting with.

It's all about perceived / relative scale, and .5 mg only seems like a small dose when compared to a 1.5-4.5 mg dose. However, it may not be low in reality to this poster's actual needs or what may be effective.

I choose to look at rebound type antagonist-facilitated reactions as similar to the model that is used for the testosterone rebound effect that is effected through anabolic exercise.

That is, higher volumes of the stressor that is facilitating the effect that you want can actually be counterproductive to that effect. For example, over-stressing the system with 30 reps of 200 lbs may not have as an acute a testosterone rebound effect as 10 repetitions. There has to be a sweet spot that is found between intensity and volume to maximize the rebound effect. In weight lifting, the highest intensity, lowest volume (repetition) exercise generally triggers the best testosterone rebound. Fortunately, in weight lifting, intensity and volume directly regulate one another. The more weight (intensity) that you add, the less volume you will be physically able to do.

Hypothetically, when attempting to trigger a rebound effect through antagonist supplementation, the intensity should equal the chemicals ability to fully block the receptor, and volume would equal the dose, with higher dose weights equaling higher volume.

Therefore, hypothetically, a dose that surpasses the users opioid system's ability to rebound (fitness level) may actually just suppress all rebound action. Someone who has a lower opioid fitness level won't be able to tolerate higher doses (relative) and may need to start at much lower doses, similar to a new weight lifter starting out with a less stressful regimen. If a new weight lifter over-does his first workout, he will realize a net testosterone suppressive effect. Similarly, a new LDN user, with compromised opioid fitness, may need to start at microgram (1/1000 of a mg) levels and work his or her way up to higher levels, if necessary, to avoid suppressing his natural opioid reception without realizing a beneficial rebound effect.

The above poster may well have realized the positive rebound effects that he was after if he had started at a much lower dose.

Try mixing up a solution where 1 dose will be equivalent to 1 microgram, and go from there. You can also mix another "macro" solution where one dose will equal .050 mg, and perhaps anther that equals .5 mg. Just be sure that when you do the math, keep in mind tht the calibration of the dropper is the most important component in deciding how much liquid to use. For the mcg solution, you will likely have to use 25 uL micropipettes (1/40 of a mL) to take the correct 1 mL amount. As you go higher in terms of the drop volume, you will need more liquid to keep the dose as low as you need it to be. The lowest calibrated dropper that I was able to find was .1 mL, before needing to resort to pipettes to get lower volumes.

Edited by golgi1, 12 October 2011 - 07:54 PM.
 
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charlie

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Yep narouz, golgi stood out the most to me and I plan on doing super duper low doses if I can get my hands on some.

Here is the PDF you are talking about:
 

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