LDN stands for Low-Dose Naltrexone.Several years ago we were asked if we would help a number of patients with MS obtain this treatment, and so we did. It would be fair to say that some of them, over 50%, improved; nobody got lastingly worse although some had short-term side-effects. For some it just didn’t work. Of course we advised them, as we are always ethically bound to, on other treatments that might benefit them; some at least saw some benfit from these also. Since then there has been surprising progress in the use of LDN, and it has been found to be helpful in several other circumstances. For me, it is definitely time to revisit and reconsider it. There are two major diagnoses in which LDN has shown success — you have to bear in mind that this does not mean randomised controlled trials of the therapy, and certainly not the systematic reviews of multiple RCTs that scientists now expect; it is “anecdotal” reports, published papers that state that it appeared to work for one patient or for a small number. The two diagnoses are:
Auto-immune disease is a growth area in medicine because we are discovering that more and more diagnoses fall in this category. They include: |
CancerThere are some surprising (“anecdotal” again) reports of cancer responding to LDN. There is a long way to go before one could say that it is definitely of value, and even further before we could estimate how much value or for how many. Because of the way that we think LDN works, plus the fact that it works in Auto-immune disease and in Cancer, one big question arises; will it work in Multiple Chemical Sensitivity? What is it?Naltrexone is an opiate-antagonist drug; it has been used for some time to block the effects of addictive drugs such as heroin and morphine. I can recall as a junior doctor dealing with patients who were admitted in a coma due to these drugs; when given the antagonist they sat up and spoke. |
LDN — Low Dose Naltrexone
June 29th, 2009Vitamin B12
June 29th, 2009|
We at the British Society for Ecological Medicine (BSEM) have been talking to the Pernicious Anaemia Society (PAS). Martyn Hooper and his colleagues there have achieved a remarkable amount, with 3,500 members after just two years, and a questionnaire that identifies several key symptoms of B12 deficiency about which none of us knew — the “strange tiredness” and “the gulps” for instance. We are looking forward to working with them, both to help sufferers and to prove that B12 deficiency is a real problem for many people. More of that on our website. Here I want to talk about my own experiences with B12, which I’ve been using for more than 20 years — although we have learnt more all the time since then. The first thing to say is that B12 is extremely safe. In all that time I have seen one instance of adverse effects, and that was back when we used cyanocobalamin — the original version if you like — and in a complicated case with other problems. Since we have used methylcobalamin and hydroxocobalamin the only adverse effect I have known is one male patient who called me from his car; he was on the way to casualty because just after the injection of B12 that I gave him his urine had turned pink! I was able to reassure him that it was simply overflow of the B12 he had received. |
I don’t know why so many doctors are nervous of B12, and reluctant to give more than the official dose, when so many medications have much more severe and more frequent side-effects. In 1991, in the Journal of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine, we published a “Classic Paper” from 1956, by neurologist Prof J MacDonald Holmes, called “Cerebral Manifestations of Vitamin B12 Deficiency”. The doctor reported that many patients experienced mental or neurological symptoms either before or without blood changes. The main symptoms were;
— sound familiar at all? In fact it was not new even then; we referenced a paper in the Lancet in 1929 which linked pernicious anaemia with mental changes, which it said may precede it by “many months”. As a point of interest, vitamin B12 was first isolated in 1946. |
Nutrition Associates Update
June 12th, 2009Our newsletter is emailed to those of our patients who wish to receive it, but you can download the pdf of issue 1 here;
Can Sunlight prevent Cancer?
June 7th, 2009|
First published on the Alliance for Natural Health website, June 2009 Last week Cancer Research UK released figures showing that cases of melanoma exceeded 10,000 in 2006, the last available figures.Predictably the media took this story and messed it up, producing headlines ranging from “More then 10,000 a year get skin cancer in quest for perfect tan” (Times Online) to “Recession linked to skin cancer” (The Herald). What Cancer Research UK actually advise people to do is mainly sensible, but it does go one step too far; “Most melanoma skin cancers are caused by over exposure to UV rays given off by the sun and sunbeds. But, crucially, if people are careful not to redden or burn, especially if they have fair, freckly or moley skin then most cases of malignant melanoma could be prevented. “We advise people to enjoy the sun safely by spending time in the shade in the middle of the day, covering up with appropriate cool clothing and sunglasses and applying plenty of sun cream of at least factor 15.” So what are the facts?Melanoma rates are rising, but you can’t explain it all by UV exposure. For a start they have been rising for too long; a study in 1970 found that, beginning with those born at the beginning of the last century, every successive cohort of people of the same birth year develops more melanoma, and developed it at an earlier age. That’s not just sunbathing or sunbeds. |
Sunlight protects us from other more serious cancers — probably all of them, but certainly the big ones such as colon, prostate and breast. William Grant, formerly a climate scientist with NASA, has shown that the more sunlight there is where you live (in the USA) the less your risk of developing these cancers. He estimated that 23,000 Americans died unnecessarily each year from these cancers due to lack of sunlight. Sunburning,when the skin goes red and perhaps sore, contributes to all skin cancers (but in a complex way) while suntanning probably protects against both skin cancers and cancers of internal organs such as bowel and breast. On balance the sun probably prevents many more cancers than it causes. Environmental pollution is emerging as another likely cause of melanoma. After the Seveso incident in 1976, when large amounts of dioxins were released into the atmosphere in northern Italy, the local melanoma rate rose more than 10-fold. |
The Allergy Epidemic
March 20th, 2009|
This item originally appeared in the March 2009 issue of Lifescape magazine EpidemicThe developed world is in the middle of an epidemic of allergies. The rate in the UK has been rising for at least 50 years, and rising steeply for the last 20. A large study in 2007 found an increase of 27 per cent over just four years; in 2005 one person in nine in the UK had a recorded diagnosis of “any allergic disease” (who knows how many haven’t bothered to get diagnosed). Hospital admissions, not the most reliable indicator, but most liable to underestimate, for food allergy rose, in the period 1990-1 to 2003-4, 5-fold in adults and 6.5-fold in children (Chart 1). The same pattern prevails for asthma, hay fever and every form of allergy. Anaphylaxis admission rates have risen even faster — 7-fold over the same period. Why?Each succeeding generation or birth cohort has more allergies than the previous, and each cohort has more allergies as they get older. While we know that allergies in general do have genetic components, our genes cannot change perceptibly over 50 years, so that can’t explain it. Why then such an increase? One explanation that has become popular is the “Hygiene hypothesis”; this suggests that exposure to lots of infections in childhood is healthy for the immune system, and that we have all cleaned up our homes too much, and we should let our kids eat a bit of dirt now and then. |
Nobody has really tested this theory, and there is one big problem with it; dirt just isn’t what it used to be. When I was a medical student, long ago, we were taught that indoor dirt was made up in large part of human skin debris, plus stray food, bits of soft furnishings etc. That’s no longer true; we think of dirt as dusty dry stuff, but the dirt inside our homes has a large enough oil component that it forms an oily film on any surface, made up of oils from us, from cooking, from exhaust pollution and so on and on. And because most of the environmental pollutants around us are fat-soluble (that’s why the first step in the body’s detoxing and excretion process is to make them water-soluble), they will absorb into that film. Every time someone touches the surface they pick up a bit of both the oil and the pollutants. Some recent studies looked at this and in particular at the levels of PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ether flame retardants). You can find a good summary of all this at Rachel’s Democracy and Health News, http://www.precaution.org/ — an excellent subscribable newsletter. Flame retardants must be put in soft furnishings by law, and some of the boards in your computer may be as much as 40% flame retardant. No surprise then that the US researchers found levels of PBDEs were 20 times higher inside the houses than outside. |
Vaccine choice
February 20th, 2009|
first published at www.anhcampaign.org Measles is back! 1300 cases last year! Irrational behaviour by parents! And all because of the MMR scare, which has been categorically disproved. Balanced reporting? Definitely not. We only hear one side in this story, so what’s the other side? Read on to find out;
Millions of parents every year face a grave dilemma; should we give our child the usual vaccines and risk autism, or refuse them and risk meningitis and other complications, plus increasing pressure to vaccinate from the authorities? How to evaluate the evidence? Who can we trust? Government policy, in the UK and USA, is clear; all your children should have all the vaccines. If they don’t you may be prosecuted (New York), and they may be barred from school (UK). And year by year the list of vaccines just grows. Because vaccines are the new Pharma. While most of the big-earning drugs are nearing the end of their profit cycles, vaccines are just selling more and more; over $10 billion per annum worldwide, not a profit centre any company wants to abandon. |
The pharmaceutical multinationals not only have preferential access to government circles via lobbyists and other less transparent links; they are the ‘jewel in the crown’ of industry, so successful that governments dare not threaten them lest they take their jobs and taxes elsewhere. What should you do? Should you give your child the MMR? Should your daughter have the cervical cancer jab? Should you have the flu jab yourself? The first principle is that, in a democracy, it should be your choice. We used to be a democracy until recently, but now, in a Europe where the Lisbon Treaty is still being pushed through although whenever any country has voted on it they have rejected it, they talk about post-democracy. Post-democracy is a system where most policies and laws are made not by elected representatives voting according to the wishes of the electorate, but by regulations, establishing quangos, and presidential-style decrees that all bypass democracy. Where countries go to war despite the will of the people; where indeed the elections are not representative. And where compulsory vaccination, alongside compulsory medication of our children for their putative ADHD, is imposed against our will. And where nutrients that can provide cheap, safe and effective treatments for many problems are being outlawed on the basis of dodgy evidence. The second is that you should be provided with the information necessary to make an informed decision. |