Naltrexone. Mixing your own!

[Strawberry]

I finally got a pill form naltrexone to compound my own. Most people talk of distilled water, but my compounding pharmacy mixed with olive oil. So my question is olive oil vs distilled water! I’ve never had to refrigerate, so benefits of either form is appreciated.

if I don’t get much advice, I’ll stick with the olive oil I guess.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Ah, so nice to see you here, @Strawberry.

Mine are capsules cut with a lactose powder.

Sounds like a Does it Dissolve in Water or Oil question. And probably it dissolves in water.

do pharmacists have opinions? You'd want to make sure it disperses and you can probably shake it before use....

 

[marcjf]

In general, we dissolve in oil compounds that are liposoluble, and also why we take certain drugs with meals.
I do not think it is a concern with naltrexone, which has good water solubility.

 

[Strawberry]

I do like the thickness of the oil…. I’ll play around and do both and report back.

Sounds like a Does it Dissolve in Water or Oil question. And probably it dissolves in water.

If I remember right, naltrexone is a salt. It dissolves easily and you are left with the binder. Some people filter out the solids, some people leave them in. My compounding pharmacy leaves it in.

One pill to 50 ml of liquid. Easy peasy! I think?

 

[Wishful]

When I used LDN, I found that I needed only 2/3 the dosage if I took it sublingually (I try to minimize drug dosages, to avoid negative effects). Sublingual absorption requires water solubility, so mixing with oil would hamper that. It might affect where it gets absorbed in the digestive tract, so if you're swallowing it, you won't know which carrier is better until you try both. ME is all about self-experimentation.

 

[Strawberry]

so mixing with oil would hamper that

Dangit! All that time I thought it would be fine under my tongue. Water it will be. I have distilled, so I think it’s time to make it.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

I just succeeded in getting my new LDN pills (50 mg) cut down to 3.5 mgs.

Or I think I did.

Living in this exotic place, we managed to locate compounding services: at the local college, its the Chemistry Professor. The charge for this service? Zero, but donations accepted, and in this case, the chemistry lab needs some dish soap. So we paid with Dish Soap. And I'll have to repeat this every 30 days. (a bit time consuming (or every 41 days, it seems).

It looks like they ground up the tablets, and then just divided it into 41 doses (3 pills produce about 41 doses. That is close to the 42.87 pills I calculated using math). I was not there to ask questions. I assume they weighed them out on proper chemistry scales. But I don't know that. You can see some pink bits from the factory coating.

They did not cut it with anything. I guess I assumed that something about cutting it with, say, lactose, helps in distributing the low LDN dose.

So I guess I am: wondering if I will live trying these pills?

See illustration below

Does not look like its ground up super consistently if you ask me.

 

[bad1080]

liquid dosing is much easier and more consistent than this imo

edit: it is called "volumetric dosing" but i couldn't think of the word

 

[pamojja]

It looks like they ground up the tablets, and then just divided it into 41 doses (3 pills produce about 41 doses.

That's what I usually do, by cutting it in half with a knife. 1st cut down to 25 mg , 2nd 12.5 mg, 3rd 5.25 mg, 4th 2.625 mg, and started with a 5th cut with 1.312 mg.

Though dosing this way isn't very precise (mine are round tablets), it worked for me this way. And is probably the easiest.

Crushing it in a cheap pill grinder (as the chemistry professor seems to have done), and halving the resulting powder by volume, would be more precise, though.

 

[Viala]

Does not look like its ground up super consistently if you ask me.

By the look of the capsules it seems they did a bit lazy job, but if weight of powder inside is ok it should be fine.

If you have the whole regular tablets you could grind them yourself, I use a regular kitchen mortar. It takes maybe a minute at most, you can add lactose or flour if you want to, mix and then divide the powder into smaller doses manually, put in capsules. I've been doing this for a long time since I often use much smaller doses of supplements.

The only thing when it comes to tablets is that it has to be thoroughly mixed, a pharmacist told me that the active ingredient is not always equally distributed in a tablet, that's when I asked them if I can take only half of a tablet and it didn't have that line in the middle.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

a pharmacist told me that the active ingredient is not always equally distributed in a tablet

I've heard that as well.

That's what I usually do, by cutting it in half with a knife. 1st cut down to 25 mg , 2nd 12.5 mg, 3rd 5.25 mg, 4th 2.625 mg, and started with a 5th cut with 1.312 mg.

I struggle to cut my BP pill in half. The latest brand I'm trying is now even worse: it just crumbles (and no scoring).

But it's good to know this method has worked for you. I may order capsules in case I should at some point need to do this myself.

_Irony Update: the chemistry professor who made my pills, just left for a month long vacation. I just lucked out, getting down there.