UPDATE 5 JULY 2009 Mary Boyle Bradley of blogtalkradio.com is a fantastic site to listen to the many interviews of people deeply involved with LDN: Drs. Zagon, Gluck and Lenz as well as many good citizen advocates that report their personal successes with LDN. Visit Mary’s site linked above for some very important information about LDN.

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Where do I start.

Is low dose naltrexone and alpha lipoic acid (LDN/ALA) the new wonder treatment of the medical world for various cancers and autoimmune diseases, but left to blogs, meetings and conferences to “get the word out” about this marvelous protocol? As you read the information below you will sense the frustration of the medical doctors quoted as they try to alert the world about LDN/ALA.

First, I have no training whatsoever in the medical field and report health information on these pages from authors that I personally trust. As anyone would recommend, consult your doctor before starting any health regimen especially when reported by a medical non-professional and unimportant site as libnot.com. Further, we receive NO financial benefit from any of the health information reported herein.

Regular readers of this site will know that we frequently print with permission, articles by Dr. Joseph Mercola, so when his 26 May newsletter hit my email inbox, titled: Could This Powerful Breakthrough Beat Cancer and Auto-Immune Diseases? Needless to say, I was intrigued.

Dr. Mercola included a fascinating audio interview with Dr. Burton Berkson (please see four linked videos with Dr. Berkson near the bottom of this page) regarding his treatment of patients with various auto immune diseases as well as the dreaded pancreatic cancer. As Dr. Mercola notes in his comments:

Naltrexone (generic name) has been an FDA approved drug for over 20 years. It’s a pharmacologically active opioid antagonist that is conventionally used to treat drug- and alcohol addiction, normally at doses of 50mg to 300mg. However, more recently, researchers have discovered that at very low dosages (3 to 4.5 mg), naltrexone has immunomodulating properties that may be able to successfully treat cancer malignancies, and a wide range of autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson’s, fibromyalgia, and Crohn’s disease, just to name a few. Added benefits include its low-cost, and few, if any, of the detrimental side effects you normally experience with pharmaceutical drugs.

There is much information that I want to include in this article, but I have resisted the temptation since most can be linked for reading and learning about this very promising treatment at a time convenient to the reader. A quote sent to a family member last night included information from Dr. Jeffrey Dach’s web site, wherein he posts the following, albeit not unexpected information:

The Greatest Medical Discovery of the Century

No doubt, future medical history books will look back and comment that the greatest medical discovery of the 20th century was the discovery of the opiate receptor system in the brain, and endogenous opioids called endorphins. Playing a key role in this discovery is the beneficial effect of Low Dose Naltrexone, an opiate blocker which can produce a rebound-like increase in endorphin production.

This largely ignored and inexpensive off-patent drug called LDN has been used with great success over the past 20 years by various renegade physicians to cure or induce remissions in a host of seemingly unrelated diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis, Crohn’s, Systemic Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Pancreatic Cancer and Lymphoma. LDN has also been found useful in Autism, and halts progression to opportunistic infection in AIDS patients.

Criticism from Mainstream Medicine

Paradoxically, LDN’s ability to benefit so many seemingly unrelated medical conditions has been the greatest criticism from conventional mainstream medicine. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. However, since LDN is an FDA approved drug, off label use is perfectly legal, and is a common practice in mainstream medicine. LDN has virtually no adverse side effects, and based on my own short clinical experience prescribing LDN for Multiple Sclerosis, Crohn’s and Ulcerative Colitis, I can report that it is amazingly effective. Even though it may sound too good to be true, in the case of LDN, I can assure you that, yes, it is all true.

Domination by Pharmaceutical Industry

The medical system’s domination by the Pharmaceutical industry is clearly apparent by the scandalous and outrageous manner in which LDN has been ignored. Mainstream neurologists refuse to prescribe LDN for multiple sclerosis, instead using prednisone, and other useless medications. Mainstream gastero-enterologists refuse to prescribe LDN for Crohn’s and Ulcerative colitis, instead using prednisone, methotrexate and newer drugs like Remicade to inhibit the immune system, all with horrendous adverse side effects. Conventional oncologist refuse to prescribe LDN for cancer patients, preferring the more traditional chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, modalities which have changed very little over the past 60 years and although effective for a few selected cancers, largely ineffective for the vast majority of cancers and their relentless spread as metastatic disease.

In all of the information that I have read over the last several days, I cannot recall ever reading or seeing the word, “cure.” Help, comfort, remission, longevity, hope are terms that the reader will find as most common and certainly very encouraging.

Read as much as you can, watch the videos – write to the organizations at the links provided. And, don’t take “no” as an answer from anyone with a closed mind. The LDN/ALA protocol treatments are not something that one will pay thousands of dollars for in a Mexico health clinic. One writer suggested that low dose naltrexone made by a reliable compounding pharmacy costs about $1.00 per day! I’m afraid I do not know the cost of the intravenous application of alpha lipoic acid, but I suspect that it’s a lot cheaper than chemotherapy.

Useful links:

Yahoo news group -The LDN Yahoo Group is an announcement and discussion group for those interested in LDN, and who wish to be notified about updates to this website. We expect that official announcements to the group will be fairly infrequent, typically not more than one per month. Group members not wishing to receive general discussion e-mail from other members may set their message delivery option to “Special Notices” when joining, or by logging on to the LDN Yahoo Group site and clicking on “Edit My Membership.”

The long-term survival of a patient with pancreatic cancer with metastases to the liver after treatment with the intravenous alpha-lipoic acid/low-dose naltrexone protocol. Also linked here.

There is a wealth of information at the web site Low Dose Naltrexone.org - many links, studies, Q and A’s and most of all….hope.

Low dose naltrexone.org

“Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) may well be the most important therapeutic breakthrough in over fifty years. It provides a new, safe and inexpensive method of medical treatment by mobilizing the natural defenses of one’s own immune system.

LDN substantially reduces health care costs and improves treatment of a wide array of diseases. Unfortunately, because naltrexone has been without patent protection for many years, no pharmaceutical company will bear the expense of the large clinical trials necessary for FDA approval of LDN’s new special uses. It is now up to public institutions to seize the opportunity that LDN offers.”

— David Gluck, MD

Videos

Dr. Berkson #1, #2, #3, #4.

You may also search Youtube for many other videos which include interviews by health professionals and testimonials of those treated with LDN.

Bernard Bihari, MD, as well as other physicians and researchers, have described beneficial effects of LDN on a variety of diseases:

Cancers

* Bladder Cancer
* Breast Cancer
* Carcinoid
* Colon & Rectal Cancer
* Glioblastoma
* Liver Cancer
* Lung Cancer (Non-Small Cell)
* Lymphocytic Leukemia (chronic)
* Lymphoma (Hodgkin’s and Non-Hodgkin’s)
* Malignant Melanoma
* Multiple Myeloma
* Neuroblastoma
* Ovarian Cancer
* Pancreatic Cancer
* Prostate Cancer (untreated)
* Renal Cell Carcinoma
* Throat Cancer
* Uterine Cancer

Other Diseases:

* ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease)
* Alzheimer’s Disease
* Ankylosing Spondylitis
* Autism Spectrum Disorders
* Behcet’s Disease
* Celiac Disease
* Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
* CREST syndrome
* Crohn’s Disease
* Emphysema (COPD)
* Endometriosis
* Fibromyalgia
* HIV/AIDS
* Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
* Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
* Parkinson’s Disease
* Pemphigoid
* Primary Lateral Sclerosis (PLS)
* Psoriasis
* Rheumatoid Arthritis
* Sarcoidosis
* Scleroderma
* Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS)
* Systemic Lupus (SLE)
* Transverse Myelitis
* Ulcerative Colitis
* Wegener’s Granulomatosis

Do not be afraid to approach your doctors — physicians today are increasingly open to learning about new therapies in development. Tell your doctors about this website, http://www.lowdosenaltrexone.org, or print out and hand them the information, and let them weigh the evidence.

If your doctor resists your attempt to inform he or she about LDN then you have some personal decisions to make. Do you have a disease that has remanded you or a loved one to a life of pain, multiple medications with miserable side effects, etc.? Have you been diagnosed with a of type cancer that forces your oncologist to tell you to get your affairs in order, since treatment will only possibly forestall the inevitable? Has your skeptical doctor told you that, flat-out….LDN doesn’t work? Did you know that approximately 75% of doctors polled would not personally use chemotherapy as a methodology for cancer treatment?

Additional Information

* Bernard Bihari, MD, is the discoverer of the major clinical effects of low dose naltrexone. A private practitioner in Manhattan, Dr. Bihari is a Board-certified specialist in Psychiatry and Neurology. Dr. Bihari’s curriculum vitae.
* David Gluck, MD, is the editor of this website, ldninfo.org. He is a Board-certified specialist in both Internal Medicine and Preventive Medicine. Dr. Gluck has served as medical director for JCPenney and MetLife, and is now semi-retired, living and working in New York City.
* Ian S. Zagon, PhD, has spent over two decades in doing basic research concerning endorphins. He is Professor of Neural and Behavioral Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, Dept. of Neural and Behavioral Sciences, H-109, Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033; office phone: (717) 531-6409; email: isz1@psu.edu; website.