DUBLIN LDN Meeting

There will be a talk and Q&A session with Dr Edmund O’Flaherty in the Ashling Hotel (beside Heuston Station) in Dublin dealing with the subject of Low Dose Naltrexone. This meeting is in addition to the regular Dublin Self Help Group meetings which take place in the Davenport Hotel on the 2nd & 4th Saturdays of each month.

Venue: The Ashling Hotel, Parkgate Street, Dublin 8

Date: Saturday 21st November

Time: 2.00pm

All are welcome.

About LDN: (article by Cort Johnson on cortjohnson.org)

Full article HERE

Low dose naltrexone is cheap, readily available and safe…
but does it work in FM and ME/CFS?

Low dose naltrexone (LDN) seems, at first glance, like a strange drug for people with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) or fibromyalgia.  Usually used in high doses to combat alcoholism and narcotics withdrawal, naltrexone  blocks the opioid/endorphin receptors in the brain. LDN has the advantage of being cheap, easily produced in compounding pharmacies and safe. But why would a drug used to get people off of narcotics benefit people with fibromyalgia, ME/CFS and other disorders?

There are couple of reasons….For one LDN is a ‘feel-good’ drug and some studies suggest ‘feel-good’ agents such as endorphins are low in pain disorders like  fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).  By blocking the receptors for endorphins low doses of naltrexone appears to trick the brain in producing more of them. Given that endorphins are known as ‘natural pain relievers’ more endorphins might be a very good thing for people with these disorders to have.

The following is from Dr Edmund O’Flaherty:

I have for over 10 years  been using a a drug called naltrexone in small doses (low dose naltrexone) and have found it to be extremely useful in some cases of cancers, auto immune diseases, MS, Chronic fatigue/M.E.,poorly-functioning immune systems, psoriasis, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn’s Disease to name only some indications. I have got considerable experience in its use and have prescribed it for several hundred patients.  It costs 55 euros to see me and  a prescription for 6 months is issued if I think it might work. I am one of the few doctors in Ireland who prescribes it but the knowledge of its value in numerous conditions is slowly spreading around the world. Conferences have been  held about it in America and elsewhere in recent years. You can get more information at www.lowdosenaltrexone.org, 

In Feb 2013 I was interviewed here in Dublin by a team from TV2, the largest commercial TV channel in Norway about LDN. The film they made was seen by almost 1 in 10 of the entire population of Norway. I probably did more useful work in that film than I did in  my entire career  for most of my work is similar to what doctors do routinely but LDN has the potential  to utterly change the lives of many people and practically no doctor knows anything about it.  LDN  is very cheap, has been around for nearly half a century, has minimal side effects and works for many people  in dozens of different conditions. From now on if somebody in Norway has some condition that is not responding to the standard treatment there is a reasonable chance that the GP will have heard about it or a  friend will ask him to look up LDN in case it is  on the list. I have had numerous phone calls  from doctors and patients in Norway already and have even seen a few patients who came over to Dublin to see me.The number of Norwegians on it has gone from 300 to 14,000 since the film was shown and the number is increasing still.

As a GP I see many different problems. A 30-year old English woman came to my office for a routine problem. She had come to work in Ireland  and somebody suggested to her  to have  me as her GP. I took a full  medical history too and she told me about her  Interstitial Cystitis.  It started when she was 15 and basically it felt like her bladder was on fire all day every day. She tried to have intercourse for the first time at 17 but the pain was so bad she decided never to do it again. She told me that she had attended numerous specialists in London and was in fact due to have her bladder removed soon after she came to see me. LDN, is  excellent for chronic pain without having to use opiates and also has a powerful anti-inflammatory effect. I suggested that she should go on LDN, increasing the dose very slowly to a maximum of 4.5 mg  daily. 

She came back to me recently for the contraceptive  pill. The pain was long gone and she was in a regular relationship. She was still on the LDN and had no side effects at all. The cost is about a euro or a dollar a day. She may relapse and indeed she would be almost certain  to relapse without  LDN. It may not work for anybody else but that is very unlikely.  I found out since that some cases of this condition did not do well on LDN but if they increased the dose over weeks rather than days it should be effective in many cases. That situation arises too in fibromyalgia where it is very effective in many cases by increasing the dose very slowly. I have dozens of successful cases there.

I thought it would be worthwhile to put this information on Interstitial Cystitis websites.I put it on four and expected it to be gone before long. All the information was gone within 24 hours . I am not surprised  as successful treatment for this condition could make the staff unemployed.

I could be resting in the sun in the south of France or Florida but seeing cases like this give me enormous satisfaction and I will keep going  as long as my health lasts.