Reply #101: MS Drugs [View All]

When I read that your wife is paying so much for her MS drug I had to let you know about this option in case you hadn't heard of it. There's been a lot of success with Low Dose Naltrexone, which isn't well known or often used because it's very cheap, and wouldn't be profitable to the drug companies. Naltrexone is an opiate blocker commonly used for drug or alcohol addiction, but used in very tiny doses, it works for autoimmune diseases.

http://www.lowdosenaltrexone.org

The basis for its working is medically sound. It works by blocking the production of endorphins at night -- when your body makes the most -- between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. which tricks your body into thinking it isn't making enough thus boosting your production during the day when you need it. Autoimmune diseases are thought to be, in one sense at least, due to a deficiency of endorphins.

Depending on the person it can take months, weeks, or mere days to start to show effects. Primarily what it does it stop the progression of the disease in MS. Whether or not you will have improvement of your symptoms is not guaranteed, but an awful lot of people seem to show at least some improvement. A few don't seem to be affected at all but at least the majority do.

Last spring I found out I had fibromyalgia, and possibly MS, so I tried it for a couple of weeks to test what effects it had on me. I did notice some tingling in my wrists, like the nerves which had been bothered by carpal tunnel syndrome were starting to come to life. Kind of a feeling like after your foot has been asleep and is starting to wake up. And the best most promising thing to me was I felt I was starting to get more control of the movement of my right eye, which has felt "stuck" with no peripheral vision for over twenty years. So I started to get an inkling of what it could do for me.

I'm only taking guaifenesin for fibromyalgia right now, since that's the only illness I know for sure I have (and guai works great for that). But I plan on trying the LDN again once my migraines have improved enough. The LDN is supposed to have no side effects, since it is such a miniscule dose, but some people have headaches, or sometimes nausea for the first week or two. And the LDN seemed to make my migraines kick in.

I've read that people with autoimmune disorders often have more than one. Fibro often accompanies MS which makes them hard to diagnose, or to tell for some time if you have just one or both.

The LDN yahoo group (referenced at the top of the LDN homepage) is extremely active, and I've seen a lot of success stories over there. Also they seem to answer just about every question under the sun. Including where to get LDN if your doctor won't prescribe it. A lot of doctors are reluctant, or haven't heard of it. But then if that's the case, the doctor at the LDN website believes so fervently in this treatment that he will talk to anyone's doctor anywhere in the world, apparently, on the phone, if you ask him to.

A month's supply of LDN from a pharmacy is about $40. If you buy your pills from a foreign pharmacy (unbroken into dosages) it can cost about $100 for a years supply.