Blood Sugar On Rapamycin

I use 1 g Metformin on Rapamycin dosing day and 500 mg the following day. This brings my glucose back to normal low levels. I also use Acarbose 100 mg at every meal (3X daily).

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Just a suggestion here: you might ask your doctor to get your insulin level checked.
Your blood glucose level is not only determined by your food intake and exercise level. Insulin plays a big part.

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That is a good suggestion. Is there any evidence that rapamycin while raising glucose also somewhat suppresses insulin output (which results in high lingering glucose levels? Pre-rapamycin both my fast and post eating blood glucose levels and fasting insulin levels were pretty optimal.

I live in Serbia, and I cant get Acarbose anywhere in our pharmacies.

Any East European that gets Acarbose from somewhere?

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The version of Acarbose I use is a generic made in Portugal by Farmoz.

I take Rapamycin less frequently than most people (not as frequently as every 2 weeks). I wore a CGM for two times when I took Rapamycin and posted the charts in this topic:

It is clear that Rapamycin puts glucose up. However, my HbA1c has come back down in the periods when I am not taking Rapamyin.

Although I have some Dexcom G7 sessions available I have more recently taken Rapamycin without running a CGM (still not as frequently as every 14 days). I do weekly blood tests and they are generally OK. My last HbA1c was 26.5 mmol/mol which is about 4.6%

I cant import medicines in Serbia, they are not allowing it except for certified distributers.

Thanks for information anyway :slight_smile:

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Croatia?

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It’s a good question but one I don’t think has been addressed in research. I looked for any published work that described the effect of rapamycin on insulin but drew a blank.

For now, Ive decided to end my brief rapamycin experiment. Yesterday I ate a small amount of beef with berberine (nothing else) the entire day, today Ive eaten nothing all day and its 12pm noon and my blood sugar is 105. Under this eating schedule, I normally be in 80s or 90s and I measure quite regularly both at home with finger pricks and at the lab with bi-monthly blood testing which includes fasting blood glucose.

The positives: definite and noticeable increase in visual acuity. Definite increase in exercise capacity and recovery ability. Less joint pain.

The negatives: very high fasting blood sugar that remains high very many hours. Up to 50mg acarbose with meals did not seem to sufficiently mitigate this, also tried up to 400mg of berberine.

I dont think this is “normal insulin resistance” as one obtains when one is overweight, undermuscled, old - actually diabetic so I dont think its that unhealthy in that way. I assume this will go away once rapamycin leave my blood. However, I feel generally more tired and foggy headed when my glucose levels are like 110 or higher so will stop at this point. Perhaps will retry once I obtain metformin sr. I will be using acarbose with carb meals as I did not seem to have any side effects with this which I was expecting (no gas or gi issues). I think Rapamycin is an absolutely amazing drug but I would like to figure out the glucose issue more before committing to long term consistent use.

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Yes, couldnt find anything on insulin output, only blood glucose levels which seem to reliably rise in animal studies.

Is Dr, Mikhail Blagosklonny silent on this subject?

Pancreatic beta cells (β-cells) are endocrine cells that synthesize, store, and release insulin.

“Clinical evidence of rapamycin β-cell toxicity”
“Together, these studies provide evidence that rapamycin has significant detrimental effects on β-cell function and survival and peripheral insulin resistance”

Ergo: rapamycin reduces insulin levels.
Of course, the article is about kidney transplant patients who have diabetes and are on doses of 10mg/day. Nevertheless, it is something to watch.

“These mechanisms include reductions in β-cell size, mass, proliferation and insulin secretion alongside increases in apoptosis, autophagy, and peripheral insulin resistance”

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Yes, I had read that article and thanks for quoting the relevant part. That phrase “b-cell toxicity” sounds scary as a non-professional as I think I’ve read how pancreatic beta cells can be sometimes be regenerated in diabetes with sufficient visceral fat loss and reversal of insulin resistance but if the diabetes is present for too long, regeneration isn’t always possible. I wonder how any of this relates to relatively healthy life extensionists with no preexising diabetes taking 6mg once per week. As I said, for me, my blood sugar was thrown way off in a way that affected my energy and mood so I’ll stop at this point. There’s no doubt in mind that rapamycin does extend life and will retry with the addition of regular metformin and perhaps even lower and more infrequent doses.

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I have been self experimenting on myself with various rapamycin dosage regimens and I started with high doses, up to 20mg with grapefruit juice bi-weekly. At the time, Dr. Blagosklonny was advocating higher doses with increasing age with manageable side effects. I have been titrating down ever since. I am currently taking 5mg/weekly with EVOO. Since I have started taking rapamycin my blood markers have not been as good as they were before I started rapamycin. My epigenetic age on the Levine spreadsheet became worse right away.
I have some blood tests scheduled at the end of this month and if there is no significant improvement over my last tests I will be reducing my intake of rapamycin to 1mg/daily for a week and then one week off.
I am thinking that rapamycin may not be the panacea for aging that we have been led to believe. Or, maybe, the doses I have been taking are just too high for me.

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I would not say there is a single solution to mitigate aged based deterioration. There are a number of interventions. One is rapamycin.

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Mike Lustgarten has a simple philosophy, does a variable positively or negatively impact ‘big picture biomarkers?’. This is the second thread today where we have objective data that Rapamycin is pushing markers in the wrong direction. I’ll ask again, does anyone have longitudinal data showing rapamycin having a positive effect on any biomarker? For example, monthly data for A1c before, during and after rapamycin treatment?

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I think quite a few people have positive data on MCV. My view is that Rapamycin causes an improvement in mitochondrial quality. However, I think it causes a short term increase in glucose levels. The big question (to which I have no answer) is how long the increase in glucose lasts. This will depend upon how much is in the blood for how long (dosage, bioavailability, half life etc).

As far as I am personally concerned my HbA1c and glucose returned to a good level once the rapamycin dropped out of my system.

I can give extracts of any biomarker I measure on an almost weekly basis from May 2022 if you want.

I have a broader protocol objective and I am happy that my cellular health is improving.

For example Cystatin-C
8/6 0.73 mg/l

See the chart in this tweet:

CRP:

or DunedinPACE

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YES and YES and YES, I experienced a sustained rise in baseline glucose level ( I have a continuous glucose monitor) a few weeks after starting rapamycin. In my case it subsided after a few weeks to previous basal glycemia (4.5) spontaneously.

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@vishnu I also have a fasting glucose which is too high with rapamycin. As I have a continuous glucose monitor I can see that it’s totally unrelated to the meals and it’s not at all an insulin resistance issue. During the nights my glucose is around 80-90 but then 1 hour or 2 before my waking time the liver cranks up the glucose production and the level goes up (It’s called the dawn phenomenon). All that is perfectly normal so far but the issue is that the glucose continues to rise and rise until 105-115 which is very high in a fasted condition.

I’m eating low carbs/keto so I’m totally powered by burning fat and ketones as a more efficient fuel than glucose so my cells don’t really use it and it stays there until either, I go for a run, which will bring it back to around 90 or, I eat, in which case the glucose goes up and then down when the insulin kicks in.

At some point, I was also worried about insulin resistance so I did an NMR blood test to check and as you can see in my post below my insulin resistance is so low it’s off the charts (literally)

How to interpret Very high LDL and TC on rapa but with conflicted risk assessment?

BTW in addition of high glucose I also have high LDL but again the NMR blood test above says it’s low CVD risk so I’m not really worried about that one.

Anyway if somebody has suggestions to reduce that hepatic glucose generation that would be welcome.
Basically I need to find the equivalent of Settings/Liver/Glucose-Generation/Level and set it to 90. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Right so we have mounting evidence now that @DeStrider was right a few months ago, for most people, rapamycin should be used in conjunction with a diabetes medication.

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