A Review by Burt Berkson, MD, MS, PhD
The Power of Honest Medicine: LDN, an Inexpensive Alternative to the Costly, Toxic
Medications Doctors Prescribe for Autoimmune and Other Diseases
By Julia Schopick with Don Schwartz, PhD.
Innovative Health Publishing, Oak Park, Illinois
www.HonestMedicine.com
Softbound; 2018; 292 pp; $16.95
The Power of Honest Medicine: LDN, an Inexpensive Alternative to the Costly, Toxic Medications Doctors Prescribe for Autoimmune and Other Diseases is an intelligent tour through the science and day-to-day use of low-dose naltrexone (LDN) by doctors and patients.
Well-respected author Julia Schopick (with Don Schwartz) describes an effective way to control several examples of autoimmune disease with the use of LDN in this well-written book. Through personal stories by patients and effective explanations by the author on the use of this amazing agent, I found this book easy and captivating to read.
Naltrexone was first approved in the 1980s as a prescription drug to reverse the effects of opiate poisoning. Low-dose naltrexone is a very low dose of naltrexone and has been found to be effective in treating several diseases including systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, certain cancers, etc.
I first learned about LDN about 20 years ago when a man presented to my clinic, using a walker, and who appeared very ill. He told me that he had rheumatoid arthritis and prostate cancer metastasized to his bones. He said that an oncologist at a well-respected cancer hospital in Texas told him that there was no effective treatment for his disease and that he should receive palliative therapy at a hospice.
The man asked me if I would prescribe some narcotic tablets to help him with his pain, so he could get his wife with senile dementia admitted to a nursing home. Then he asked me if I had ever heard of Dr. Bihari in New York. I answered no. He told me that he had heard that Bihari was effectively treating metastatic cancer and autoimmune disease. I advised him to go see Dr. Bihari. Maybe he could help him. He answered that Dr. Bihari was just in a little office. “If he was any good wouldn’t he be associated with a large medical center?” I answered that if he could cure cancer, he might put a large cancer clinic out of business since they treat cancer and do not often cure cancer.
I did not see the gentleman for three years. I thought he had died. Then one day he appeared in our clinic complaining of a sinus infection. The man looked healthy and was standing straight and did not have the use of his walker. He told me that he saw Dr. Bihari and that his rheumatoid arthritis and prostate cancer became under control with a drug, that at that time cost only $15 a month: LDN.
I was very skeptical, but curious, and prescribed it to myself and several patients. It had no side effects and helped me sleep comfortably. Many of my patients reversed their lupus, dermatomyositis, autoimmune hepatitis, rheumatoid arthritis, and other autoimmune diseases with LDN.
Then I started prescribing it for cancer with the addition of intravenous alpha lipoic acid and observed the same remarkable results with several stage 4 cancer patients. Check “Berkson BM” in Google Scholar or PubMed, and Google “Berkson, National Cancer Institute.” You will find some very amazing information there. My colleagues and I published the first peer-reviewed publications on the reversal of stage four cancers in patients using LDN plus alpha lipoic acid.
In this exceptionally good book, Ms. Schopick describes the remarkable results people with autoimmune disease are having using LDN and the problems that many patients have persuading their doctors to prescribe this efficacious agent. The book is logical and methodical and provides a plan for the use of LDN for several autoimmune illnesses.
I genuinely enjoyed reading this book, and I would recommend it to doctors, patients, and anyone who wants a good read about a drug that is effective and almost completely ignored bythe medical establishment.
Burton M. Berkson, MD, MS, PhD
Founder, the Integrative Medical Center of New Mexico, Las Cruces
Adjunct professor, Oklahoma State College of Medicine, Tulsa
Former professor, Rutgers University, and Chicago State University
Author: The Alpha Lipoic Acid Breakthrough
Co-author:
—Syndrome X (the first book on metabolic syndrome)
—All About the B Vitamins
—User’s Guide to the B-Complex Vitamins
