The Low Dose Naltrexone story is simple.
Briefly.
Normally, when a new drug is discovered, one of the big pharmaceutical companies, if they feel it’s worthwhile, takes out patents on it, then spends the money, (which can be considerable,) to have it thoroughly tested to the point where it gets the approval of the FDA, (the Food and Drug Administration in the US,) or it’s equivalent in countries other than the US, to treat a particular health problem or particular health problems, and having got this approval, with the patents they’ve got on it, they can have a monopoly on it’s production and sale for something like 20 years, during which they get the money they’ve spent and more, often much more, because, by and large, health care professionals only advise on and prescribe drug/medications that have this official approval.
Naltrexone was discovered in about 1965 and went through all this until FDA approval was granted for it to be used to treat certain addictions in 50 mg tablets, in about 1985.
BUT, from about 1985, i.e. for the last 35 years or so, it’s been discovered that taking small doses of Naltrexone, often only 5 mg, on a daily basis, can bring all sorts of health benefits, AND, by far the most significant claims for it is that it PREVENTS you from getting more health problems – which, of course is hard to prove, because if someone has been on LDN for 15 years and not got cancer, it can always be said that they wouldn’t have got it anyway. BUT, Naltrexone has been out of patent since 1985, so none of the big Pharmaceutical companies are ever going to outlay the money required to have the testing carried out to obtain FDA approval, because they are never going to able to enjoy the monopolies normally available to compensate them for their troubles, AND so health care professionals who only ever prescribe mediations that have FDA approval are never going to prescribe LDN – so far, despite extensive searching, we’ve only found 3 doctors who do, allegedly – 2 in Queensland, and 1 on the South Coast of NSW, more than 200 miles from Sydney.
Fortunately, there are three websites readers can go to for help with all this – www.ldnresearchtrust.org and www.ldnscience.org, which includes this section, www.ldnscience.org/patients/ldn-buyers-guide, for those who want to be on LDN, but who haven’t been able to find any doctors or pharmacists to help them, which, in our experience, is mostly the case.