Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) is one of the few allopathic medicines that seems to be rather popular in functional medicine circles.
I have heard of people taking it for interstitial cystitis and therefore wanted to investigate the why and how it could be used and whether its use makes sense for this condition.
Hippocrates already said over 2000 years ago that ‘all disease begins in the gut’. Today, we’re understanding more and more how right he was.
For me personally, gut issues preceded the onset of chronic cystitis and interstitial cystitis. When my gut was at its worst, so was my bladder. I have no doubt that, similarly to many other conditions, the gut is implicated in bladder problems.
I’ve recently come across an info-graphic on Twitter, claiming that interstitial cystitis (IC) is an autoimmune condition where the immune system attacks the bladder lining, causing the painful symptoms of IC. This reminded me that it’s about time that I explore this question further: Is interstitial cystitis an autoimmune condition or not?
The short answer is: maybe sometimes.
There are different forms of Inflammation, ranging from acute to chronic. Inflammation plays an important part in the immune response and is designed to help us survive – it is the immune system’s response to infections and injury.
The inflammatory response has helped us to survive in the evolutionary environment. Throughout evolution, the inflammatory response has stayed the same – our environment however, has changed drastically in the past couple of centuries (not a long time in evolutionary terms!).
The changes in our environment are thought to parallel the rise in chronic disease. Could inflammation be one of the reasons?
I was in shock this week after a private blood test finally revealed what may be the cause of my lingering health problems: Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis.
While I should feel relief for finally having found this root cause of my health issues I grieved…a lot!