I found spirulina tablets from costco and they taste “interesting”
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Hi Alex,
Why are you posting all of this random, non-rapamycin material in this forum? There are more appropriate venues for questions like this.
There are loads of supplement questions on this forum, and high-quality response rates are higher here than elsewhere.
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So there’s already a lot of junk: what’s a little more junk 
? Please desist.
It’s unclear if the supplement stuff is junk, there are potential benefits from these.
I’m VERY tued into (ADHD-PI-friendly) health interventions - I may be better at this than almost anyone else on the planet, save for a few
For MANY of the longevity interventions, if you google them up, the google will lead to the rapamycin.news page, rather than the page for any junk-filled site. I would prefer them find rapamycin.news than the zillions of trash sites (or sites filled with hostile moderators, like many subreddits)
As long as you just have one topic per intervention here (it’s easy to use search)
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I think you are missing the point. Many supplements are adjunct to rapamycin and in combination may extend life longer than rapamycin alone. In addition, taking rapamycin produces unwanted side effects such as anemia, especially in older people like me. I was glad to be turned on to spirulina as a treatment forum anemia by another member of the forum. So I don’t think it is “junk” to be informed of supplements that might be beneficial to me while taking rapamycin.
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The question “are they worth it”? is something that is obviously very hard to determine for supplements and likely varies a great deal from person to person.
I’m fine with discussions like this, but Alex please keep in mind that this isn’t Quora, (for those who don’t know Alex, he was the #1 Question writer on Quora back when it was popular). In fact Alex is pretty Internet Famous on Quora - see below. So Alex is very good at asking questions… unfortunately we aren’t all necessarily that good at answering his questions.
Some of the questions are highly unlikely to get much of a response because they are so narrow a question.
Getting back to the issue of “are they worth it”? I think at some point it would be valuable to quantify things, at least for well-known longevity drugs to help people prioritize interventions.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while - and when I have time may follow up on it, but it seems we need to develop a simple measure of an interventions cost-effectiveness.
I’m thinking something like this… for rapamycin for example (and this is just at the concept stage):
What I’m trying to get at is a sort of “Cost per QALY” calculation that we can use to compare and prioritize longevity drugs over time.
Rapamycin Cost/QALY Example:
Cost per year for average dosing: 6mg/week, $1.50 per mg price = Approx. $500/year
Number of years you’d have to take the dosing: assume Avg starting Age: 40 (adjust as you see fit)
40 Years of Rapamycin: $20,000
Avg. percent lifespan increase seen in model organisms: 15% to 30%. (higher doses map to higher longevity, so perhaps we need to adjust the cost/year to map to the percent lifespan increase)
Average Human Lifespan (no rapamycin): 80 (placeholder, adjust or personalize as needed)
Expected increase in human lifespan years (range): 12 years to 24 years
Cost per added year of life using rapamycin: $1,600 to $800
Obviously this is an oversimplification because higher doses are going to cost more, and also be more likely to increase the lifespan benefit. I give this as only a basic example of how we can come to the cost/effectivenesss of these longevity drugs and supplements to answer the question “Are they worth it?” and help us prioritize.
Since we dont’ have that much data on the spirulina products, we probably couldn’t do the calcs on that supplement. But we do have data on NRF2 promoters like Moringa (The ITP studies had good results with Protandim which is an NRF2 promoter) so perhaps something could be roughed out for it.
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I’d say you’re falling down a slippery slope. It’s entirely in line with the purpose of a forum dedicated to the use of rapamycin as a potential anti-aging drug to discuss possible ways to address rapamycin-induced anemia — including spirulina.
It’s another thing to just throw up dozens of unconnected supplement questions like “Chlorella/spirulina/moringa/other “supergreens” - are they worth it?”
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I used to buy spirulina powder fairly cheaply. Somehow it seems better than a capsule.
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The “is it worth it” thought is a good one. Having a framework to assess contribution to goal achievement is importing all things.
I long struggled with bikes and bike parts. So I really need that new bike? Do I really need those faster wheels? Will 3 seconds over 25 miles really make me happier?
When I was young some guys at work (roommates) had a framework that used Heineken beer as a unit of measurement. How many cases of Heineken is that TV worth. Is that a good exchange. No way!
Hope I made you laugh.
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