Brain Restoration: ‘Too Good To Be True’ for Addiction and Disease?
Could megadoses of energy-giving NAD—which allegedly relieves withdrawal symptoms, flushes out stored drugs in the body and replenishes balance in the brain—really be the cure-all for addiction as well as many other diseases and mental health disorders?
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When Paul decided again it was time to do something about his drug addiction, he knew the usual routes wouldn’t work. While using a variety of substances for at least two-thirds of his life – injecting heroin in the last 20 years of it - he also became a veteran of just about every traditional rehab/detox program in the book. Twelve to be exact; with no permanent results or positive outcomes to speak of.
Hearing the remarkable claims from a Brain Restoration Therapy outpatient clinic immediately sent him into skeptic mode: This is too good to be true. How can I kick drugs with just an infusion of some concoction? What about withdrawal? Side effects? And, if it really works, will it last? Sounded far too simple for this jaded, somewhat cynical, pushing-60 drug addict.
Figuring he had nothing to lose, he called and arranged a free consultation. After listening to details of their success rate and impressed with assertions of little or no withdrawal symptoms, he signed up for the treatment - albeit with some reluctance. His wife’s divorce threat had something to do with enrolling, but it was more about life hitting bottom one more time.
Groggily arriving at the crack of 9 am the next day, a warmly friendly nurse in navy blue scrubs hooked him up to an IV. Told that all he needed to do was relax, he settled into the oversize leather lounge chair. If nothing else he’d be able to listen to music, watch a few videos, and read a bit, he thought. Observing the slow drip of clear liquid entering his veins, he listlessly wondered what he would do next if this latest treatment failed.
At the end of the first eight-hour treatment, Paul says he already felt different. He couldn’t quite explain it, he recalls, but his mind was clearer. He felt energized. More alive. And definitely more present.
Returning daily for nine more treatments, he noticed a growing list of undeniable and rather dramatic changes. His outlook was more positive and he was optimistically able to imagine a future for himself, one he’d stopped envisioning years ago. His mind was as sharp as it had been prior to years of drug use.
The best part, he says, true to the claims, there were few or no withdrawal symptoms therefore no need for a replacement drug to get him through yet another grueling detox. He also realized he had no cravings, the primary cause of his continued bouts of relapse. His disbelief completely gone, he recalls, he concluded he was drug free.
But would it last?
Ann Rodgers, the Director of Brain Restoration Therapy, meets me at the door of the Center for Health and Wellbeing in San Diego, CA., where the clinic operates under medical supervision. It’s difficult to not get caught up in her animated explanation of the benefits of this program. “The treatment utilizes a megadose of NAD [Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide is a co-enzyme of niacin that is the key fuel for energy production in every cell of the body] in an IV form, and it’s clinically proven with a 90% no-craving statistic,” she excitedly offers.
Listening quietly as she rapidly fires glowing statistics in my direction, my skeptical mind revs into full gear. “With literally no reported side-effects," she says, “the protocol reduces withdrawal symptoms by 70-80% without using replacement drugs, and restores the patient's clarity and well-being to pre-use levels. Six to ten days of treatment is like a seven or eight month jump-start to recovery.” All this expounded with the tone of a bragging parent.
Rodgers tells me that although relatively new to America, NAD treatment has been successfully used in South Africa since 1961, with centers there reporting more than 22,000 people treated. [Rodgers could not provide any research report from South Africa to confirm this, only a report from individual clinicians who treated patients with NAD. Separately, I could not confirm the 22,000 figure.]
The first NAD clinic to open in the States was in Springfield, Louisiana, founded by psychotherapist Paula Mestayer, M.Ed, LPC, FAPA, along with her psychiatrist husband Richard. The couple discovered the treatment when their 16-year-old adopted daughter became addicted to alcohol and found her way into NAD treatment. Thrilled to see her positive results, they conducted their own research and in 2001, putting aside their cumulative years of treating addicts with therapy, they opened the Springfield Wellness Center on a private 500-acre estate. They claim to have treated more than 1,000 patients since then with NAD.
Springfield Wellness Center's ten day addiction detox, Mestayer asserts when I contact her, has been used successfully on people hooked on prescription drugs, alcohol, opiates, benzos, stimulants, cocaine, marijuana, suboxone, and methadone.
Mestayer noted in our interview that “like a thumb print, all brains are unique, so this protocol is more like an art than a science.” Each patient, she pointed out, responds differently to NAD, with one factor being their type of addiction. She therefore adjusts the dosage and prescribes booster NAD treatments when necessary, especially when a patient feels vulnerable or if any cravings return. “I always emphasize that there may be a period of time where they need maintenance, either by an occasional booster or other means of support. Some patients have gone nine years without needing a booster, but many do.” Mestayer generally prescribes oral NAD as a supplement to the IVs, on the grounds that the more NAD that builds up in an addict’s system, the less prone he or she is to succumbing to cravings
Mestayer emphasizes that the treatment is “not a cure, but rather maintenance,” and notes that it remains a mystery as to why NAD works more successfully on some addictions than others. “The highest success rate is on alcohol and opiate users,” she says. “The only failures are people who were using during the treatment or not committed to their maintenance.” Even so, she like Rodgers encourages all patients to seek therapy and support groups to address underlying psychological issues.
In California, I asked Rodgers if the treatment is just a substitute “high.” Rodgers countered with “it’s a state of well-being that allows the client to feel content with their life, so many don’t even consider going back to being an addict, no desire for that miserable life anymore. It’s as if they become themselves again, back to their natural state, seeing themselves as a different person, separate from being an addicted person. It’s not just a detox; it’s a total state of sobriety."
With only a handful of other U.S. clinics in existence, the technology has yet to become familiar to most of the recovery community. Even so, Ann Rodgers says she is certain that once knowledge of NAD spreads, it will be seen as a revolution in addiction treatment. “[Members of] the AA community have been resistant to it at first, but once they read the evidence and witness the results, they embrace it,” she claims.
Her San Diego clinic is modern, serenely comfortable and well-appointed. Located on the first floor of the larger health center, it’s been open for over three years and has treated nearly 40 patients. Rodgers recently opened another facility in Los Angeles, CA, at the Center for Optimum Health.
HOW THE TREATMENT WORKS
Dr. Janette Gray, a California licensed internist and a pioneer in combining allopathic and holistic medical approaches, is the center’s medical director. Board certified in Holistic Integrative Medicine, she worked for years in the prison system helping inmates get off drugs and has extensive experience with the agonies of drug withdrawal. “Seizures, nausea and vomiting, intense sweating and physical pain are standard, but that is greatly minimized with this program,” she tells me. “The most common withdrawal symptom is feeling a little bit flu-ish…[which] passes quickly.”
Gray rattles off to me a scientific explanation behind the BR treatment. The protocol, she says, employs a proprietary NAD formula administered by IV. NAD is an element that reacts with oxygen in the cell’s mitochondria in order to create energy for movement, breathing, heartbeat, blood pumping, digesting food, brain functions, and generally living life. It is available in low doses over the counter.
Studies have found that those with extremely low NAD levels (which can be present even at birth) are far more vulnerable to addiction as well as other diseases and to chronic physical conditions. There is a preponderance of low levels of NAD present in Western society as it is mostly lost in cooking and food processing. What little remains is broken down by stomach acid, degraded before it’s absorbed from the digestive tract.
When the clinic’s all-natural NAD is received directly through an IV, the nutrients bypass the stomach and go directly to the receptors in the brain, Gray tells me. According to Gray, this immediately produces palpable positive results as the nutrients bathe the brain in a continuous pool of natural and highly therapeutic co-enzymes.
Since NAD is a detoxifier, it takes days (rather than weeks or months), to flush out stored drugs from the body and its organs, replenish balance in the brain, and reverse damage. Results can be mental clarity, cognitive function increase, focus and concentration returns, more energy, better mood, positive outlook. And this happens cold turkey.
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