Cue the dozens of people complaining about his choice and how wrong it is, despite there being no clinical trial for rapamycin use in humans to improve longevity, and maybe one MR study that does.
I’ve had reservations for the following reasons:
Infection risk
Risk of cardiovascular, lipid abnormalities, possibly via increase of PCSK9, for some
Cancer risk (?)
Mice living in pathogen free environments
Proponents dying from it, like the CR people, but there can be other reasons
Also it’s been tiring to have to tell people to STOP taking rapamycin if they have an infection. We have Matt Kaeberlein continuing taking rapamycin despite having an infection requiring antibiotics.
I’m looking forward to the development of better mTOR inhibitors though, without these side effects.
But I’m wondering about low dose rapamycin like 1-2 mg a week. I don’t like the seemingly random decision at 5 or 6 mg a week. Or @Dr.Bart mentioning 1 mg EOD (3.5 mg a week) seems interesting since it is a lower dose.
At the same time I think SGLT2 Inhibitors seem risky at 5% absolute risk for genital infections within study period, so maybe there aren’t that many interesting longevity drugs.
This is why we need more studies. Personally I tried it because of periodontal disease and it incidentally seemed to help with my mild post-COVID syndrome.
However, I agree with Attia and Kaeberlein about taking breaks from the drug. Cycling may be important, Johnson didn’t mention cycling off for several weeks.
One point though, isn’t Johnson taking like… 100 other supplements ?.. how in the hell did they “narrow down” to rapamycin. It is very possible that some of or combination of these supplements is exacerbating the side effects of rapamycin via direct or indirect action on m-tor pathway (or down the pathway), somehow potentiating the effect of rapamycin by reduced metabolism, synergy, etc. And of course other yet to be elucidated interaction with rapamycin.
From what I remember, SGLT2i bring the genital infections in men to the level of women who don’t take it. And if you don’t have diabetes it’s close to zero. So the risk is very low.
Right ?, that was the only intervention with the most evidence bad or good… but 100 other supplements most with scant data - NO PROBLEM.
NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS for BJ I guess.
Michael Lustgarten only does diet + exercise. If we have longevity drugs coming it’s worthwhile to not take too high risks that might lead to something that can kill you, like infections (sepsis).
Ezetimibe
Acarbose
Taurine
Creatine
Astaxanthin
These seem low risk? What else?
Messing with the immune system seem particularly dangerous, based on the tail effect of infection, it’s no bueno?
Ahh, I literally mess with the immune system every day over the years in thousands of patients over past 25 years - saved lives, improved symptoms and outcomes.
Majority of medical problems are caused by dysfunctional immune system…
BTW, anytime you take an anti-inflammatory (aspirin) you are technically messing with the immune system
It’ll be interesting to see if BJ improves in those parameters he attributed to negative rapamycin effects.
And it is clear that rapa has different effects on different people, at least according to anecdotal evidence, where not everyone on a given protocol gets mouth sores, lipid or glucose abnormalities, skin infections etc. For some it may be a matter of adjusting the protocol, but rapa may simply not be helpful for some people. Let us remember, that even though rapa was a positive in trials with mice, that was on a cohort level, and there were those who did not benefit for whatever reason. BJ may be someone for whom rapa is a net negative.
Of course, he does take a ton of supplements and interventions, so isolating the effects of just one seems like quite a challenge.
I’m keeping an open mind. I figure there is no way to know ahead of time whether rapa will be a net positive for my health, so I just have to experiment and see. The “see” part requires extensive measuring, recording and comparison, which is why at the moment I’m doing all the baseline tests and measurements before taking rapa, which I’ll start January 2025.
We’ll see. My only serious concern is the beta cell toxicity and the interstitial lung disease.
With over 100 billion people having lived (with most of them in the past 1000 years) we would expect some freak who exercises and eats in a particular way to be noted for his longevity in history books.
Too much war, pandemics, other infections, violence, low amounts of recordkeeping, and stuff like that. Most people were farmers and had deficiencies, why would you know about someone’s great great grandpa farmer who lived to 120? Did they even count how old people became or just guessed?
I think most people ate bread also or potatoes. Not much variety to show effect from diet?
thanks, I remember that and thought that might have been what he was referencing but that doesn’t even say what he’s claiming. The study showed rapamycin no effect on the vast majority (14 or 15) of epigenetic clocks and slight acceleration in 1 or 2 depending on the dose.
Also I’m planning on taking cat’s claw because of that study. Doesn’t seem to have any major side effects so at worst I’m only losing like 60 bucks a year.
Yes. He is just jumping on the anti-rapa movement. He’ll be back on in a year or two when that move will bring him more headlines.
Did you see the Masterjohn anti-Rapa bit? I think masterjohn is worth listening to but he seems to be leading the anti-Rapa charge for some nonobvious reason.
What I meant with ‘messing with the immune system’, is using something with a proven increase infections or sepsis in RCT’s or observational trials – thus which might be the case for lower doses or longer use in rare circumstances.
