I don't believe in LDN

When I have first heard about LDN I was really interested and I thought wow this could be a great treatment with low side effect for the rest of the body. Until I had found this article that explains why LDN is not really the answer.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/low-dose-naltrexone-bogus-or-cutting-edge-science/

Be very, very careful with sciencebasedmedicine. I once relied on the site for medical information, but now I find that the authors are generally biased towards pharmaceutical drugs and other conventional therapies. The very fact that some of the staff have patients on statins, despite strong metadata showing poor benefit and something like an apple peel having the same results, makes the site very, very uncredible and lacking any semblance of authenticity.

It's almost feels like the doctors on that site are paid off in some way by pharmaceutical companies to slam anything that goes against big pharma. Go through the Marshall protocol article and you'll find other doctors slamming the site as well in the comments section. The fact that they closed off comments makes the site very suspicious.

I also went through the article denouncing the GAPS diet and did not like it one bit. Obviously, I'm not a big fan of the diet as seen by my posts here, but the guy who wrote the article didn't even bother to read the book before critiquing the diet. That's like reviewing a movie based on the preview. Further, I don't think they know how to write proper critiques and I find their writing style very amateurish.

LDN should never be taken in isolation. The people who have the best results with it use it as an adjunct therapy, not as a "cure". It's part of an anti-inflammatory regimen. I am not big on LDN as much, but I don't think 90% of the people who speak about it know how to use it properly or titrate the dose accordingly.

I like to believe in what I wish was true.

I'm 6 foot 3 and a male model...with tons of girlfriends.

....wait a sec.


lol

I gave LDN a try because I didn't have anything to lose. I had the worst flare ever.

It's ridiculous to completely shun science based medicine and then believe hook, line, and sinker the underworld extremist websites as if they were total fact. All sides can cherry pick their facts to prove their points. Just as one side can have hidden agendas of people trying to hock their goods for their own personal benefit, so to can the other. One should question everything.

Actually, that's just a feeling you have, there is no data saying how many people LDN has helped versus how many it has not. My feeling is that it hasn't really helped many people at all - but I have no data to support that.

Ease up there Guardian and why don't you read my posts all the way through before you fly off the handle. When you do that you will see I did say that it is "worth a try". I accept your apology in advance.
And, again, read my posts all the way through before you fly off the handle. Tell me where there is data showing the number of people who have taken LDN and how many it has helped and how many it has not. There is none, it's all anecdotal, that's all I'm saying.

LDN is a drug, a prescription drug. I find it hilarious that just because "Big Pharma" doesn't make it that there are those who really build it up so much. If "Big Pharma" did make it (it IS a drug), using the exact same forumula, and presented their facts and commercials to stimulate sales, these very same people would rail against using LDN because it was made by "Big Pharma".

Lawl.

LDN can be obtained without prescription if you know where to look for it. The reason pharmaceutical companies aren't on it yet is because the data on it is scattered for all conditions, and they need to market it for a specific condition. If it lowered blood sugar, they'd market it to diabetes patients. Actually, there is one company trying to patent it, but they are for low cost solutions of it:

TNI Acquires Bihari’s Patents; Phase III Trial Planned. Dr. Nicholas Plotnikoff, Chairman of TNI BioTech, recently announced that his company has acquired all of Dr. Bernard Bihari's use-patents for low dose naltrexone. This will enable TNI to proceed with its plans for a phase III clinical trial within the next 12 months, as well as plans to manufacture and sell the drug. Dr. Plotnikoff, quoted on the TNI BioTech website, said:

“I worked with Dr. Bernard Bihari for many years. I believe acquiring all of the technology of Dr. Bihari will allow the company, we hope, to move forward to Phase III clinical trials in both the United States and Africa within the next 12 months. In our opinion, LDN holds great promise for the millions of people worldwide with autoimmune diseases or central nervous system disorders or who face a deadly cancer. It could prove to be the first low-cost, easy to administer, and side-effect-free therapy for cancer, HIV/AIDS, MS and Crohn’s disease.”

Keep trying, guy.

I tried low dose Naltrexone a few years ago at the same time that I was trying many other things and ended up getting better. However I didn't start the LDN until after I was already getting much better and had tapered off of Prednisone. I don't think the LDN did much except cause terrible insomnia if I took it at night, which surprised me. Taking it in the morning or mid day seemed to solve that problem.

I think Bupropion was way more effective and seemed to be the missed puzzle piece for my treatment. Thankfully I found a discussion thread right here on HealingWell.com about the use of Bupropion (Wellbutrin.)

But what other options do people have really? The state of UC medications is dismal as it is, with many medicines having just enough points over the placebo. If the researchers @ Takeda admitted that combo therapy option is more effective with vedolizumab than monotherapy, we have a serious issue. The same pretty much applies to all the other biologics on the pipeline. Barnsbury, a user here who was in the experimental trial for it had to take imuran to get it to work. Given my terrible experience with imuran, it wouldn't be an option for me (and this also would negate any possible benefit of V).

Again, I am not on LDN, but I will definitely advocate for the right for people to get the correct information on it and for people to get low cost access to it. The people thinking that it's a panacea are going to be severely let down. This applies to basically all the other medications for UC as well - biologics, mesalamines, steroids, etc, etc. As Dr.David Newman of theNNT often preaches, there is no free lunch in the realm of medicine.

However, the people thinking that it's a tool to get into remission and ultimately promote mucosal healing via beta-endorphin production will have better results with it. I still want to know how 67% of patients in the pilot study were able to achieve mucusal healing and remission status with it. I think it's something that needs to be looked into and funded, but it's not going to be. Until then, we can only rely on ourselves and user data. Would love to set up some kind of repository tracking these kind of things. Probably one of my next computer science projects.

Post Edited (Guardian7) : 5/13/2014 3:50:03 PM (GMT-6)

Yes.

This is a major issue that's going on at the moment in the pharmaceutical industry. Many of the studies showing no benefit are left unpublished (and thus unaccessed by the general population). The idea is to basically keep doing studies until positive results are ascertained. Dr.John Abramson, a litigation attorney, basically said the only way to get accurate measure of the data is to personally go into the mainframe and steal the hard drives, mission-impossible style. Do we have an Ethan Hunt among us? Tom Cruise is just an actor man.

This is one of the major issues that people are starting to confront with antidepressant medications, as well as statin drugs. See Dr.Ben Goldacre's book detailing how elaborately this happens.

Likewise, the same could happen for LDN if a company patents it and starts marketing it for financial gain. I kind of want to to remain "underground" for this very reason.

Thanks Mike for your link. I sure will take à look at it.