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Fibromyalgia sufferers know how hard it is to find a medication that can help manage their symptoms. But the thing is that with so little research on fibromyalgia, new drugs aren’t exactly coming along every day. Here’s the thing though: it turns out an old drug that’s used to treat opiate addiction may be the best treatment yet for fibromyalgia.
What Is naltrexone?
Naltrexone is a medication designed to help people who were addicted to opiates avoid a relapse. It works by targeting and deactivating the opioid receptors in your brain. Opioid receptors are the cells that respond to the presence of opiates and produce the pleasure that people taking these drugs feel.
Drugs like naltrexone shut down those receptors so that if someone on naltrexone took an opiate, they wouldn’t feel any effects from it. And so people who take naltrexone have no reason to take opiates anymore. After all, they wouldn’t feel it if they did.
How Can It Treat Fibromyalgia?
Naltrexone has shown incredible promise in treating fibromyalgia. Dr. Jarred Younger has studied fibromyalgia for years. He ran tests on the efficacy of the opioid dependence drug at Stanford university and concluded that it was more effective than Cymbalta, Lyrica, and Savella, which are the three drugs doctors use to treat fibromyalgia in the US.
And in those tests, he found that an astonishing 65 percent of patients reported a significant improvement in their symptoms.
Naltrexone therapy for fibromyalgia involves using a consistent low dose of the drug to treat symptoms. Larger doses are given to people to help them manage opioid addiction. But low doses help people manage chronic pain. And doctors are testing the use of low dose naltrexone (LDN) as a treatment for fibromyalgia.
It’s not yet understood why this drug would be so effective in treating fibromyalgia. But Younger believes it has something to do with the way that the drug can pass through the barrier into the brain. Younger believes that the cause of fibromyalgia rests in over-active immune cells in the brain. So the drug may be able to deactivate these cells.
Ian Zagon is another professor at Penn State University. He believes that the reason might actually be the way naltrexone blocks the opioid receptors in the brain. This causes the body to naturally release more pain-suppressing hormones which help people with fibromyalgia feel less pain.
Can Naltrexone Help You?
Currently, it remains difficult for many fibromyalgia patients to get access to naltrexone. Its ability to treat fibromyalgia is not well understood. And many doctors are reluctant to prescribe it to patients. Scientists are testing the drug. And more research will help doctors determine if LDN is an effective treatment.
But if you feel that naltrexone will help your fibromyalgia make sure to do your research. Discuss the possibility of using it with your doctor. And if they are unwilling to prescribe it, you are not out of luck just yet. The LDN research trust keeps a list of doctors who do on its website. And it may be worth a trip to meet with a doctor who can offer relief for your symptoms.
Ultimately, only you can know if it is the right treatment for you. But early trials suggest that it might offer hope for many fibromyalgia sufferers.
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