Women Taking Rapamycin for Enhanced Fertility / Menopause Prevention?

Very interesting, thanks. Good to think about it that way - in terms of being similar to the affects of caloric restriction.

Makes sense about getting the blood test to get better insight. Is Rapamycin dosage often based on age then? Does body weight play a part?

When talking about dosing and rapamycin there are two areas to consider. Historically its been dosed for organ transplant patients and cancer patients. In those application the dosing is focused on getting the blood/sirolimus levels to a specific therapeutic range (I seem to recall something like 5 to 15 ng/mL). I’m not sure if body weight has much to do with how sirolimus dosing translates to blood levels.

Of course we are talking about rapamycin (sirolimus) for anti-aging, and we have much less data here. We really don’t know what the optimal dosing is yet. So there are no hard and fast rules.

That said, I have seen people of very low weight (e.g. 100lbs to 125lbs, 45 to 55kg), sometimes getting more side effects at a specific dose, so probably better to be cautious rather than aggressive when testing the typical dosing ranges (e.g. 3 to 10mg/week) that are common in anti-aging applications. Details see: What is the Rapamycin Dosing / Dosage for Anti-Aging or Longevity, and Life Extension?

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Related to this general topic:

and

Related Reading:

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Whitepaper: The Unspoken Truth - Reproductive Longevity and Equality Affects Us All

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My wife, with early menopause, tried with 3mg every day for 10 days for 2 months in a row. The first round she got a wicked tongue ulcer. 20 days later she did the protocol again and got swollen glands in her armpits - that stayed painful and swollen even after stopping. She also had a very light but discernable period, each month at the 30 day mark. She has stopped given how uncomfortable and swollen the underarms were…

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Wow - thats an extremely high dose level. I would expect significant side effects at that level.

I’ve found the most side-effect free approach is to start slowly, and still dose only once per week. I started at 1mg/once per week, then slowly increased by 1mg/week up to the 5mg/6mg per week. Only had one mouth sore once. I think slower, lower dosing is the best strategy, though some people have jumped right to higher dosing without problems.

Details on dosing here: What is the Rapamycin Dosing / Dosage for Anti-Aging or Longevity, and Life Extension?

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She had been on 3mg weekly for a year. The dosing was based on an anecdotal report that had worked for another woman with a similar case. Also, it should be noted, that the menses did return - at least for now - though it’s very light. I’m certainly not reporting here as a recommendation but for information to the community.

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Interesting - I’d not heard of that.

Do you have any more information on that anecdotal report? How long she took rapamycin, what the dosing was, for how long, and what the results were? Is there anything ever posted on any public forums or twitter, etc. that you can refer us to? The more datapoints we all can have here, the better we are all informed. Thanks in advance for any additional information you can share.

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As @RapAdmin stated, this is a massive dose outside of a cancer/transplant clinical setting. Although at 10 days, and barely 5 half lives, and without a loading dose, the full tissue effects hadn’t fully reached steady state. The side effects at a longer duration would probably amplify. The 2nd round definitely had stronger effects. At 20 days later post 1st round, most all of the Rapamycin would have been excreted and not measurable in blood, but perhaps some lingered in some fatty/high lipophilic tissue levels such as lymphocytes, ergo the swollen armpits side effects with re-dosing.

What data point someone would have to follow this protocol would be interesting to understand if some science based therapeutic rationale we’ve not seen before.

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Oncologists usually use body surface area for dosing chemotherapy, my gf uses the one below for dosing …

(Even for obese with water soluble chemo this apparently works well)

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Ah okay thanks that is good to know about lower weight people potentially having more side affects at a specific dose. I am 5’4" and about 125 pounds, and while that is about my ideal weight perhaps that is lower on the general scale. I will see how it goes in terms of dosage and any ramping up.

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Interesting, okay thanks

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Appreciate the link. Reviewing now.

Peter Attia has a very positive opinion on how rapamycin seems likely to help women reduce age-related fertility and ovarian functional decline. See this video below, queued up at the point where he discusses it:

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Very nice to hear that positive opinion from Peter Attia specifically on rapamycin’s potential for extending women’s fertility and ovarian health. Thanks for sharing. I think this is really a huge issue. That women are coached to be successful professionally and focus on careers and meanwhile the ovaries are aging at 2.5x the rate of the rest of the body and that doesn’t leave much time for fertility and having children. And of course in general the fact that menopause brings with it the onset of much greater health risks/issues for women. I don’t know if men consider what their lives would be like if they stopped being able to produce sperm well by around 40 and then completely by/around age 50. The relatively short window of adult female fertility is such a huge factor in the life planning of a woman. It is nice to see this issue getting the beginnings of attention and also that rapamycin is showing some potential to help.

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The problem would have been solved a long time ago if this were the case… sadly, research is dominated by men right now. The tide seems to be changing.

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I also am low in weight (~40-41kg) and experience significant side effects on a dose of 6mg per week. Even though I slowly increased my dose to get there. I experience a quite annoying rash on the two outer fingers of my right hand, each time after dosing. This rash will disappear after a week - so I started to space out my doses further apart. It looks like eczema and is itchy and scaly. I’ve had some mouth ulcers, and usually a significant headache for half a day, on day 2 or 3 after dosing. No changes in my menses the past months. These side-effects came up when I reached a dose of 5mg per week and have been persistent.

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Hi @Pat25 , given your low weight, perhaps a lower dose is better?
How long have you been taking rapamycin and have you seen any benefits?

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Thanks Rapadmin, yes you may be right that I should lower my dose.
But admittedly I tend to believe Blagosklonny may be spot on when he claimed higher doses may yield better results. I thought he also mentioned that a higher dose of Rapa may be able to cross the blood brain barrier? Looking through some rodent studies I’m just not convinced that the low doses we are taking may have any effects on lifespan. So I’m frankly considering increasing my dose, but only dosing every 3-4 weeks - and just riding out the side-effects.
I’ve been taking Rapa for almost half a year. My blood work is due soon, so that may give me a bit more insight in where I’m standing. Albeit my values (CRP, lipids, liver/kidney function and Hba1c) were great prior to starting Rapa, so I’m not keeping my hopes up too high.

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@Pat25 , I’d be very interested to hear about your results going forward.

There doesn’t appear to be that many women taking Rapa, so I’m always interested in other women’s perspectives.

I’m 20 kilos heavier than you (and female) and am only taking 3mg a week. I’ll continue this for 3 months then get my bloods checked.

If all is okay I’ll start titrating upwards.

I’m happy to deal with skin rashes/canker sores, but if my lipids or blood sugar take a hit, I don’t think I’ll be as ambitious.

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