Mood Disorders and LDN:
Clinicians increasingly use Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) to manage challenging medical health states like chronic pain or autoimmune diseases. Even though investigations on LDN as a treatment option for certain conditions remain inadequate, several clinical studies are conducted to assess the effect of LDN on treating these conditions, and trials have shown beneficial influences on symptom recovery.
LDN is acknowledged to be highly safe and well-tolerated, particularly when compared to the medications typically used to manage these conditions. That’s the reason LDN is considered a practical option for scientists and is an essential focus of current research.
Researchers have recently found that the combination of naltrexone with other treatments for mental illness can assist in reducing symptoms. However, the proof showing the effectiveness of LDN use in mental illness treatment is still lacking, though the investigation is ongoing.
Low Dose Naltrexone
The anecdotal evidence in various trials has proved that LDN has advantageous mood effects in many conditions. Following the RLS study, a random, double-blind pilot study was started based on past information. Experts researched to assess the hypothesis that people undergoing depressive breakthroughs would show more remarkable improvement in their condition when adding LDN to their current antidepressant regimen.
In the investigation, 12 adult patients of recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD) taking dopaminergic antidepressants (stimulants, bupropion, dopamine agonists, aripiprazole, or sertraline) were given naltrexone 1 mg and placebo augmentation for 21 days. The study discovered that combination with LDN decreased the severity of symptoms in 12 patients on dopamine-enhancing antidepressant drugs.
The study’s key result is that if a person is experiencing depression and has undergone a relapse while using a primarily useful and previously active antidepressant, adding LDN could possibly decrease the depressive symptoms when supplemented with the original antidepressant regimen.
However, the main limitation of this research is that the sample size is small. It might be important to re-conduct this investigation with a greater sample size to validate the significant difference among the placebo and Low Dose Naltrexone groups.
Moreover, the research involved only antidepressants that use dopaminergic pathway mechanisms. Therefore, additional considerations should be carried out to conclude how efficiently it would work with different classes of antidepressants.
Chronic Pain and LDN
As stated above, it is well recognized that LDN produces beneficial impacts on chronic pain and autoimmune diseases. This observation led researchers to carry clinical researches to evaluate the impact of LDN on specific medical states like fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis (MS), or Crohn’s disease. LDN has remained the topic of many debates for decades. Despite several clinical studies performed, these studies are vital clinical trials showing how LDN significantly improves symptoms.
Fibromyalgia is a disease distinguished by extensive musculoskeletal pain accompanied by weakness, sleep, and mood problems. Therefore, people with fibromyalgia are often given antidepressants. A single-blind crossover study examined the effectiveness of LDN in fibromyalgia treatment.
The research was based on the theory that LDN can decrease fibromyalgia symptoms by blocking the action of microglia and therefore reversing central and peripheral swelling. In this experiment, ten females having fibromyalgia participated and filled daily reports of symptom hardness during placebo (2 weeks), baseline (2 weeks), low-dose naltrexone (8 weeks), and washout phases (2 weeks).
Fibromyalgia Symptoms
Additionally, the same study participants visited the lab every 14 days for mechanical, heat, cold, and pain sensitivity tests. This study revealed that LDN decreased fibromyalgia symptoms in the entire cohort with more than a 30% decrease over placebo.
The participants displayed improvement in heat and mechanical pain thresholds throughout the laboratory visits. Furthermore, participants stated that side effects such as insomnia and vivid dreams were infrequent, minor, and mitigating. The study deduced that low-dose naltrexone might be adequate. Highly endurable, and less costly treatment option for fibromyalgia.
Changes in the mood of fibromyalgia patients might be connected with the sharpness of pain that the sufferers experience. Hence, it is possible to suggest that improving pain symptoms
may reduce symptoms of depression in people with chronic pain. In simple words, LDN might positively impact mood disorders by exerting helpful effects that reduce the pain severity felt.
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Conclusion:
Doctors are becoming much fascinated with LDN use for several medical conditions as it is well-tolerated, safe, and cheap. Plus, many key clinical trials have confirmed that LDN might be encouraging for managing recurrent or hard-to-treat mental disorders.
Still, more research is required to ensure the efficiency of LDN for such medical conditions. But, researchers stress that low-dose naltrexone must be used in combination with other medicines to treat mental illnesses to improve the therapeutic effects of other regimens.
As a result, LDN can effectively treat mood disorders with current drugs, although additional investigations with greater sample sizes are required to create more reliable data.
The Harbor Compounding Pharmacy in California has specialized in custom compounding medicines in different dosage forms. Our pharmacists are well-trained in dosing low-dose naltrexone.
LDN prescriptions can be custom-tailored into numerous dosage forms for various autoimmune disorders and health conditions. Please get in touch with us if you wish to learn more about low-dose naltrexone.
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