I’m replying to my own post with some interesting info that I gathered on the subject. I’m also providing a little back story on my personal condition and throwing out some props to Dr Alan Green for making an insightful diagnosis that was under my nose (no pun intended) for many years.
It turns out that there is a cottage industry of medical device makers who design products for delivering medications intranasally. As best as I can tell the mack daddy of these devices is the ViaNase from Kurve Therapeutics. This device facilitates dosing, pressurization, precise atomization, etc. It makes it easy for a patient to deliver a consistent dose, taking into consideration the volume, viscosity, etc. of the medication.
Check out Kurve Therapeutics: www.kurvetx.com
I learned of this device from a researcher at Harvard Med who did a bunch of studies on intranasal insulin (INI) using this device. I had been reading up on the use of INI for treating smell disorders, but it turns out that there has been a lot of research on using INI to treat and even prevent neurodegenerative disease.
Punchline: Those of you trying to live forever might want to consider INI as part of your protocol.
Parenthetically, if any of you are interested in spraying Rapamycin up your nose or running a study on intranasal Rapamycin, you might inquire about using one of these devices for such a purpose.
ViaNase has been under development for many years, but Kurve has not yet completed a Phase 3 trial and thus they do not have FDA approval for any specific therapy. The product is, however, available through a compassionate use program. Apparently, a lot of the patients in the trials wanted to continue therapy afterwards, so Kurve made arrangements with the FDA under compassionate use. If you want to buy one of these devices, you will need a prescription from a licensed doctor. The device is also costly. I don’t think it is appropriate to post their price here, but suffice to say that it is a mid 5 figure spend in USD.
Back story: How I got interested in Intranasal Insulin
I have a funny form of Type 2 Diabetes that is caused by low insulin production, not by poor insulin sensitivity. My hypoinsulinemia is not caused by an autoimmune response, so it is not Type 1 or LADA (Type 1.5). It is also not one of the known monogenic diabetes. Some might argue that this condition should not be called Type 2 Diabetes since T2D is characterized by increasing poor insulin sensitivity, but this diagnosis makes sense to my insurance company, so I’m not arguing semantics.
By the way, kudos to Dr Alan Green for diagnosing this for me. I have known of my high blood sugar for years, but did not know I had this funky condition. As part of my consultation for Rapamycin therapy, Dr Green required me to get a fasting insulin and glucose test which revealed that I have very low insulin levels relative to glucose. These two values together produce a score called HOMA-IR which is a measurement of relative insulin sensitivity. So, it turns out that all of those years of low carb diet and intense exercise gave me good insulin sensitivity, but was not enough to keep my blood sugar at a healthy level.
(BTW, I’m using Ozempic and Acarbose to keep blood sugar in check. That’s a great combo for any of you out there struggling with high blood sugar.)
While it is imaginable that low insulin production could be good for longevity, both my father and grandfather died in their early 80s of Alzheimer’s, so I worry that low insulin could be implicated in their neurological disease. There has been a ton of research in the last few years implicating faulty glucose metabolism in neurodegenerative disease. There are even some labeling Alzheimer’s as Type 3 Diabetes.
Then, last month I saw a headline about intranasal insulin being used to treat smell disorders in long Covid patients. As it turns out, I have a compromised sense of smell for as long as I can remember. I wonder whether low insulin could be the cause and/or whether INI therapy might ameliorate. That kicked off this particular research thread, and now I’m excited to research another interesting biohack that might be relevant to cheating death. Hopefully, some of you will jump in on this with me or have experiences of your own to share.