Make Digestion Your Friend
We sat down with Dr. Arnold Brizuela, Neurophysiologist, with West Coast Neurology. He specializes in neurophysiology, but as a generalist, he sees everything on the spectrum of neurology from epilepsy to neuromuscular conditions.
As a neurologist Dr. Brizuela is always looking for ways to best help his patients, he has been prescribing Low-Dose Naltrexone (LDN) for his patients since the Covid-19 pandemic. He initially heard about it from pain management practitioners who were prescribing it to their patients for pain management. Dr. Brizuela started seeing pandemic neurological manifestations after infection from Covid-19 that he was trying to treat. He admits, he and his medical team did not have much to offer by way of treatment and that’s when he turned to Low-Dose Naltrexone as an option.
For some background, Low-Dose Naltrexone was introduced in 1984 to reverse the effects of opioid drug overdose in high doses, but in the 1990’s doctors began using it in much lower doses to normalize the immune system, inflammatory and neurological conditions as well.
That said, Dr. Brizuela was first prescribing LDN for patients experiencing long-haul Covid, who were experiencing symptoms like brain fog, fatigue and peripheral neuropathy. He explains to us one example of a patient who was experiencing this very thing. She was a middle-school teacher and was having a hard time concentrating and was fatigued. After taking LDN she started to have less brain fog and better concentration and today her cognitive function is back on track.
In regards to pain management, he also let us know that there was another patient who was experiencing chronic pain who he prescribed LDN to who was also seeing a gastroenterologist for irritable bowel syndrome (IBD). This patient started seeing improvement in their IBD symptoms as well, and the gastroenterologist was amazed because the improvement was not coming from any treatment that he was administering on his side. This concept of LDN being able to treat one area while helping others is a common phenomenon for patients. If you can lower the inflammation in one area, it most likely is decreasing inflammation in other areas too.
Finally, Dr. Brizuela discussed the area of migraines with us too. Often once a patient is experiencing a migraine, that is when they try to treat it, as opposed to any prevention. Most of his primary headache syndrome patients have been experiencing migraines over a period of years, since they were young. The pattern of migraine frequency and pain tends to get worse over time. He has seen incredible results from what are called CGRP blockers, yet, these can be quite costly. Not all patients respond well to CGRP blockers and that is where he introduces LDN as a secondary line of treatment.
He reminds us that when it comes to LDN, one size does not fit all. It is important to start low with the dose for each patient and titrate slowly until the benefits are felt. More is not better. He continues to learn more and more about how Low-Dose Naltrexone can help his patients and is continuing to receive positive results for patients.
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