Several people here mentioned taking grapefruit juice to increase the dose of Rapamycin. They seem to just eat a whole fruit. I took Rapamycin for 2 years and then switched to Everolimus. I didn’t notice much of an effect with either but had to quit a while back because of a nasty rash and mouth sores. However, I have started taking GFJ after seeing that it can help Secondary Adrenal Insufficiency by making it easier to wean off Hydrocortisone. It makes the dose of hydrocortisone last longer.
My question is about how to take grapefruit juice. I don’t want to buy and juice 2 grapefruit every day and that seems like too much anyway so I found it in powder form on Amazon. The bottle says 1 serving equals 1/4 cup of fresh juice. It says to mix 3 g of the powder with 8 ozs of water for a dose. I’m putting 1/2 teaspoon of the powder in coffee twice a day when I take my hydrocortisone. I think it is helping me feel a little better as I try to lower my H-c and hopefully restart my atrophied adrenal glands. Does anyone know how much I need to take? Or how much it increases the dose? Thanks!
I take 750ml of grapefruit juice from the regularly available brand and wait 2 hours before taking my 4mg of siromilus. It usually gives me about 2.5x the level of what I would have got if I did not take grapefruit juice. I use my blood test at 36 hours mark from consuming sirolimus as a benchmark. Usually returns a value of 11.0ng/ml instead of just 3-4. The only way you know is if you do a blood test. I have repeated the blood test at least 10x to get to this point.
The biggest issue with using grapefruit juice is the potential interaction with other medications (some statins, blood pressure medications, etc.) where it can cause you to overdose on those medications … so do your research.
Also - grapefruit juice (and supplements like you’ve mentioned) vary a lot in terms of their efficacy in this application. So, its best to do blood sirolimus level testing to see if its working for you… only about $17 per blood test at GoodLabs.com - test two hours after dosing with grapefruit juice (or supplement) and see if what levels you are getting. Thats the only way to know if it’s working.
See these other conversations to learn all the tricks and tips:
My approach is to buy a ruby red grapefruit and eat half of it 1 hour before taking rapamycin and half at the same time. I don’t have an easy way of doing sirolimus blood tests, so I started with grapefruit and rapamycin at a low dose and built that up.