Acarbose for healthy person? WHY?

Yikes!..return of the headless horseman/headless clone…hope he’s not one of the 4 horseman…but aside from that tangent, great discussion!

I agree that blood glucose control is critical. My top 5 systems to optimize for longevity would be 1) Cardiovascular 2) Blood Glucose Control 3) Inflammation 4) Mitochondrial Health and 5) Epigenetics with maybe Microbiome as runner up.
**I need to do more research on glycation and AGEs (and extracellular matrix). I am taking metformin and acarbose in low doses and still looking at GLP-1 and SGLT2 for longevity in perfectly fit and healthy individuals.

That sounds a lot like lipids and plaque formation, that starts early, accumulates over time and then is very difficult to reverse.

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:point_up_2: 100% on all accounts

We also have this dynamic

  • If body replacement becomes widely used, there will be much less need to study most non-brain disease processes - as most of them can be solved by a body replacement. Perhaps that is too extreme, but it would absolutely shift the incentives and funding and market dynamics to reward work focus on neurological health and neurological aging - probably by several orders of magnitude!!!
  • Think about it…. no need to invest in liver, pancreas, colon, breast, prostate cancer… no need to invest in type 1 and 2 diabetes…, no need to investment organ impairment of kidney, liver, pancreas, lung and heart…, no need to invest in things like Crohn’s or any other digestive tract type of disease…, no need to invest in thing like sarcopenia, osteoporosis…, and so on and so forth…
  • Above is further accelerated by the fact that people will (a) be living longer lives and (b) care much more about their brain specifically, so the willingness for both the government and individuals to invest in brain health would go up by a lot
  • So beyond a mass shift in resources, government founding, investor and industry funding to Alzheimer’s and other dementia, etc, etc, any of the other longevity therapies that show promise, like partial reprogramming, CRISPR editing - your stuff - can now in a more focused way target brain health and rejuvenation without having to be diluted towards every other system and disease process in our body
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Yes, is very interesting - that seems to be on the path to some good funding, see for example

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Still not sure I follow @ng0rge - what is the issue?

Sounds very similar to people who felt that it was Frankenstein to transplant bone marrow or an organ from one human to another or to use a defibrillator to bring back from after their heart stopped?

Would love to hear what you feel or think any actual issues are so I can understand and perhaps reply with some thoughts if I have.

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No serious issues scientifically or theoretically…but remember that we are still also emotional creatures ( at least I am) with dark irrational fears - like spiders and snakes, poisonous or not…and deeply repressed superstitions. You act like everyone should be perfectly comfortable with images of headless creatures…I think that’s far from reality. That’s why I feel like the “headless clone” concept will face many social/political obstacles. In no way is it in the same category as bone marrow or organ transplants or defibrillators. We’ve already seen the social resistance to head transplants in monkeys and dogs…let’s see how the public reacts to mice ( apparently on the near horizon).

The US island ruled by alien snakes and spiders

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241030-the-island-ruled-by-alien-snakes-and-spiders

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Interesting. Wasn’t aware that wine lowers glucose levels.
I’ll try a glass and see what it does to my glucose level. This could be my newfound “metformin” LOL.

Watch out for the placebo effect.

I actually have a glucose monitoring device, and if the placebo effect is that significant (so it can change the device reading) clearly then it might be worth trying for a while. In all seriousness though, I am very surprised to hear it might lower the glucose level. I would have thought the opposite is more likely, since alcohol in general is made of fermented sugars.

Alcohol generally drives down glucose levels, but it is only temporary. It is because it affect’s the livers ability to release glucose from glycogen.

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I am not sure you will see much from a glass. Today I have had 3 pints of Doom Bar (a type of bitter) a bottle of red wine and am now on a can of lager. That does have an effect. I do have a couple of CGMs with me, but am planning to implant one next weekend to track the drop in glucose as a result of the effective 77mg dose of rapamycyin (22mg plus Grapefruit) that I took yesterday.

I am visiting a new lab tomorrow, but am not now doing blood tests twice a week and have reverted to once a week.

I have done a couple of blood tests having had a few pints. It does have an effect on other markers.

holly molly that is a HUGE dose, no side effects?

I have posted the details of what happens on another thread (second high dose).

Remember I bolster my immune system with an increase in cytosolic acetyl-CoA. That enables my cells to fight invaders without bringing in the WBCs.

There are side effects. The effect on glucose is really interesting. So far I have had one 16mg plus GFJ and two 22mg plus GFG. However, I leave many weeks between dosing.

I do not suggest that others should try what I do without understanding it in the round.

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"According to the American Diabetes Association, drinking red wine — or any alcoholic beverage — ***. Because of this, they recommend checking your blood sugar before you drink, while you drink, and monitoring it for up to 24 hours after drinking.

Who knew? I certainly didn’t.

Now we need to test rapamycin with a glass of wine versus rapamycin and metformin for life extension. :sweat_smile:

Pinot noir is generally considered one of the healthiest red wines:

Resveratrol: Pinot noir has high levels of resveratrol, an antioxidant that may help with heart health, brain health, and cholesterol.

Maybe I’ll add it to my stack. Really, IMO moderate wine consumption, i.e one glass a day, will not do any great harm.

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I track the effects of alcohol and take view itbis important to have zero alcohol days and not to drink every day.

@Olafurpall @Neo @RapAdmin @DeStrider

Any option about this one?

Dietary glycation compounds – implications for human health

For each adverse health effect considered in this assessment, however, only limited numbers of human, animal and in vitro studies were identified. While studies in humans were often limited due to small cohort size, short study duration, and confounders, experimental studies in animals that allow for controlled exposure to individual glycation compounds provided some evidence for impaired glucose tolerance, insulin resistance, cardiovascular effects and renal injury in response to oral exposure to dicarbonyl compounds, albeit at dose levels by far exceeding estimated human exposures. The overall database was generally inconsistent or inconclusive. Based on this systematic review, the SKLM concludes that there is at present no convincing evidence for a causal association between dietary intake of glycation compounds and adverse health effects.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408444.2024.2362985

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This article speaks of dietary AGEs. While they are certainly harmful in their own ways (they can cause inflammation when ingested), that has no direct relevance to glycation and AGE accumulation in the body.

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Question about timing of taking acarbose…

I know it says take it with the first bite of food, but alas, I often forget to take it.

I’ve wondered if it has any positive effects if I take it at other times, or just skip it at that point?

And, is there a guesstimate on the amount of time leading up to a meal, or post meal that you feel there is still a reasonable window where it might have the intended effect?

Thank you

Also, @DrFraser

Are you saying that it has been proven that there is no direct evidence or that there is no evidence that dietary AGEs result in AGEs in the body? I’ve interviewed scientists who say dietary AGEs do accumulate in the body.

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It’s better to sprinkle acarbose powder on the meal instead of taking it with the first bite. And it will have some effects if you take it in the middle of the meal or the end of the meal even though the effect will probably be a bit delayed that way compared to taking it at the beginning of the meal.

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There is a clear distinction between AGEs created in your body from glycation of your body’s proteins, and AGEs created in foods that you then ingest. AGEs created in your body represent proteins that have become damaged by glucose. That’s damage to your body. AGEs in foods represent proteins in the food that have become damaged not damage to your body. Eating such damaged AGEs doesn’t result in your body’s proteins becoming glycated or in them forming AGE products. It’s much more important to prevent glycation of your own body’s proteins than to reduce intake of AGEs. That said, AGEs that you ingest can cause inflammation and can very indirectly increase AGE formation in your body to a small degree, but that’s a very indirect effect.

As far as dietary AGEs accumulating in the body. I haven’t seen evidence of them doing so, not in tissues at least. Perhaps the scientists are talking about their presence in the blood after ingestion. They do accumulate a bit in the blood but they are excreted by the kidneys so I don’t think there is any long term accumulation going on. Their presence in the blood is harmful however. Dietary AGEs that have reached the blood cause inflammation in various tissues by binding to the AGE receptor and I think that’s a main reason why they are harmful.

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