heat, dosage, etc.

[Guest guest]

Many of the people here have mentioned being too hot this summer.

Without getting into global warming and fuel consumption and all

that, it might be good to understand what is going on with " our "

disease when we are hot.

I believe the worsening of symptoms when I am hot is not an

indication of the heat causing disease progress. Nor is it a

trigger to new disease progress. The nerve and axonal damage

that has already taken place has caused a slowing down of

electrical conduction through nerves and axons. This results

in the many symptoms we are all familiar with.

Fatigue is a bit puzzling but I think it is similar, since it

also worsens with heat. Head trauma causes the same kind of

fatigue and I think in both cases there is slowing down (due

to new pathways for the signals?) of mental signals across

damaged or broken pathways.

Anyway the proof in this pudding is that the problems can be

remedied, or put back to the way they were before overheating

took place, when we get cooled down. These changes happen because

of the way nerve signals conduct. Unfortunately our nerves

conduct better the colder they get. So places where there is a

conduction problem anyway, have even more of a problem when they

are hot. These places are the lesions/scars/scleroses on myelin.

I have also found that even though 90% (or is it more?) of your

body heat goes up and out via your head, the heat gets there

mainly via the blood, which has to pass through the heart. So

cooling your core is best, and that is why digestion seems to

increase fatigue (it results is some more core heating), and

ice-water cools you down. There is a device on the market for

MS sufferers that applies cooling and actually cools down your

core temperature, which once done takes quite a while to undo

(depending on your heat input and internal production -- try a

hot or cold bath). You are a liquid cooled engine.

Concerning LDN and dosage: A lot of people here have written

about trying to increase their dose to 4 or 4.5 mg., etc. I

think it is important to understand that the action of this

stuff is not like other drugs where increasing the dose increases

the effect. The effect we are looking for is almost the *opposite*

of the action of this drug, and it is due to our bodies' reaction

to the very short-lived blocking, not of endorphin production

but of endorphin reception, that occurs when we give ourselves

a quick pulse of the drug. We fool the body into reacting to

what appears as a problem with production, and the reaction is

to *increase* production. This helps because we can't produce

enough natural endorphins anyway. I would think that the closer

we can come to mimicking the body recovering from the " condition "

that it " believes " caused the block *due* *to* the immune system

reacting to the drug, the better we can train it to behave. This

mimicking occurs when the drug *stops* its blocking action. For

now, the idea is to take a small dose of this blocking drug every

day just before it was going to start its production cycle anyway.

This gives it time to start up at a higher rate of production, and

has to be soon enough that the small block does not affect any of

the " next day's " absorption of newly produced endorphins.

The bottom line being that more blocking/LDN may not help. The

dosage may be related to your weight, but more will not necessarily

give you more endorphins. You may end up producing more but

absorbing less.

Discuss it with the prescribing doctor, or if he/she doesn't know

anything about it (and I think a few don't), then discuss it through

this list with someone who does.

I also espouse patience because if this drug has any effect it is to

cut progression of the nerve damage. The rest is up to the body's

own healing processes. I have been told that nerves heal at a very

slow rate compared to other tissues. Of course if they are killed

off completely (as axons are) there is no healing, rather the signals

must find a new route. But I think I remember the figure of 1cm/month

for nerves. And more time the older you are, of course.

Also: I have recently seen information on this list about a drug company

refusing to reveal the dose they are using of LDN. If this is a low-

dose effect which stimulates endorphin up-regulation I doubt they have

much of a case for patenting it.

On another topic, why can't a drug trial be completely run by

volunteers, and through self-funding?

-Sullivan