@minkeygirl
I started in early November and was up to 2.5mg by December 1st, 4.5 by the end of December, then bounced around a little to find that 3mg works best at the moment. Maybe the dose is weight dependent? (I'm approx. 120 lbs, 5'10" male.) The benefits I get from LDN are mainly sleep improvement (most of the time), mood normalizing effects and moderate reduction in light sensitivity. I consider it an essential med for me now. I can wake up at night and actually feel sleepy/groggy, for the first time in a decade. It's amazing.
Maybe other supplements or even foods will cause variable effectiveness with LDN. I know that dairy and gluten are recommended to be avoided:
"In some cases, people do best with LDN when on a gluten & dairy-free diet. Some of us don't completely digest gluten & casein. The incompletely digested peptides are natural opiates (glutomorphin, casomorphin) & work against LDN in the same manner that certain meds do."
I'm experimenting with my usual yogurt and sourdough bread (staple foods for me.) For a few weeks when I ate bread I would become exhausted. I seem to be better with it now. And my body doesn't seem to want yogurt in the way it used to.
Some quotes about dose from
this interview with Chris Kresser:
One of the disadvantages of LDN is that there’s still not standardized dose, and really the patient and the prescribing physician just kind of have to figure it out through trial and error. From our experience, we’ve seen most people end up around 2.5 mg to 3 mg; 4.5 mg tends to be too much for people. I’ve seen some patients settle on as little as 1.25 mg or 1.5 mg, but anywhere in the 1 mg or 1.25 mg to 4.5 mg range could be the optimal dose for a given person.
And the dose can fluctuate, depending, of course, on the background level of immune dysregulation. If maybe someone is gluten intolerant and they don’t know it and they’re eating gluten and they’re taking LDN and they need the full 4.5 mg dose because they kind of have their foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time, but then they take gluten out of their diet and maybe 4.5 mg is unnecessary or even starts causing some side effects, so that’s possible.
A sample of
reasons why LDN may be less effective, or ineffective:
3. We have also seen a number of cases where people were not feeling better with LDN and then they get checked for Candida (overgrowth of yeast in your body - many times stemming from use of antibiotics). If they find they have a high concentration of Candida and they go through the process of getting it under control, LDN tends to work much better for them.
7. Doctors running clinical trials have discovered that low vitamin D levels can hinder the effectiveness of LDN.