Two things come to mind one is that your dose is a little unpredictable. When I started rapamycin … it was strictly 6 mg once a week pills …nothing else. I did that for a year plus… before experimenting.
Next,I had just gotten past the age of 60 we know that we age spike at 40 years and 60 years. So perhaps some of that spike is harder to reverse kind of like Matt Kaeberlein says that if you don’t have cancer you’ll never get it …if you don’t have Alzheimer’s you don’t ever get it, but if you do have it you’ll get some benefit from rapamycin. Having gone past the age marker it might be a little harder for you to reverse some of that damage. I was at the cusp and maybe missed it… prevented it… just a thought.
Guess what? My 8mg dose with GFJ and dinner gave me a score of 13.0 ng/mL after 84 hours… that means I have to skip this week. Next week I will drop the dose down to 4mg. I can’t believe a different brand can be such a big difference. 8mg of Siroboon would give me about 3.0ng/mL after 84 hours.
@DrFraser skip this week right? Or should I do another lot at 8mg just to confirm… I did not expect it to be this high after 3.5 days.
8 mg with GFJ is a massive dose, as this is essentially 24 mg. I do 4 mg and that puts me out to a 12 day dosing interval (w/ GFJ). With a big dose like that you are probably heading more toward the 60 hr half life, so the 13 level will become 6.5 in 60 hrs, then that will become 3.2 in 60 hrs, then in another 3 hrs you’ll be around 3.
So from when that blood test was done, you’ll have 124 hrs more of significant inhibition. So from when you took the sirolimus you’ll have 207 hours of essentially 9 days of significant inhibition, and with that dose you’ll have immunosuppression and all the risks associated.
I’d be seriously considering going down on this, as I think there will be risks, and little benefit.
I’d repeat this with a 4 mg w/ GFJ and even then calculate the interval. I push it up because I have an ApoE4, but push out the dosing interval.
One thing for sure, you’re using some real rapamycin.
Today I took 4mg… and I will get a 24 hour blood test and a 4 day blood test. I took it at 2pm my time so I will be able to get the blood test during those period. I am pretty happy that the new Zydus rapamycin did not trigger my gout… which usually happens on day 2-3 if I had taken the Siroboon. Maybe because I take a higher dosage.
Looks like I am going to grind up all the old Siroboon pills and use them for my skin LOL.
If you are doing 4 mg with GFJ, I would advocate for a 20-24 hour level, then a second one 48 hours after the first level (e.g. 68 hours post taking the rapamycin). This will easily allow estimation of T1/2 and assessment of levels.
Thx, I will do one test tomorrow at 24 hours and then at day 3 which is 72 hours. Will be interesting to find out. On another note, I will be doing my ferritin check as well… just to see with the improved liver function, whether the iron level will also drop. I did my liver function test the last time and it is no longer considered fatty for the first time in over 2 years.
@DrFraser if you tell me exactly the time to take the blood test to work out the best figures, I can change the time I take rapamycin to make sure the pathology is open to do the blood test. It is literally just 5 minutes from my house so I am happy to do that if I can get a better gauge of what it is doing.
I’m doing a Rapamycin self trial with a good friend who is 20 yrs older (in his 70s), where as I am a woman in my 50’s. He is 5’ 10’’ and 182. I am 5’1’’ and 116 lbs. We are both fairly active and healthy. We are sourcing our rapa from same pharmacy and have been titrating up from 1 mg to 4 mgs. I have been taking my dose with evoo and sardines. He takes his dose with gfj, and he eats parsley almost daily.
Our dosing day and the few days following have now started to become more predictable for each of us, but very different from one another.
He feels great, with increased energy and stamina. He tackles more yard work and his sleep is normal. He feels so good that he moved to 6 mgs with gfj today and feels amazing. He feels better than normal.
I take mine a few hours after a 45 minute workout and rapa makes me feel somewhat fatigued for 1-2 days, and I might have a twinge of nausea and almost dizzy/lightheadedness in the first hours after dosing. I sleep poorly for a few nights and I experience muscle aches from my 45 minute workout, which never happens with other workouts. I stayed at 4 mgs, but have a feeling that I should probably reduce back to 2 mgs weekly.
I see that our experiences are not unusual. I have seen many descriptions of the energetic, never felt better group, and many descriptions of the fatigued, even slightly achy group.
My question to all of you is what you posit this may mean? I realize that we are all just theorizing (more so for those of us who have not tested and don’t have any personal data), so I am not taking your ideas as fact or medical advice. I am just curious to hear what people theorize this might mean. I am especially curious if you would still attempt a higher dose if feeling minor fatigue, muscle aches or if you would go back down to a lower dose. None of my symptoms are overwhelming, and not all are negative. I had a period after several years of menopause, and I may have less anxiety.
As I was in the energetic/euphoric group when I took Rapamycin, I believe the feelings were due to physical repair as my body reduced senescent cells, inflammation and general crap floating around my body (through autophagy). I believe I felt better because I was getting healthier. Over the years, the feeling has slowly faded until it has become fairly neutral. Maybe I’ve done enough bodily spring cleaning? I also experience a euphoric fatigue that knocks me out a little the day after dosing, but this has been fading as well. Maybe I’m developing resistance to Rapamycin? These are all my conjectures.
I also sometimes get intense pain in my GI tract or stomach like this past dose. Sometimes I also get rashes if I inhibit MTOR for two long (2 large doses back to back each week). I find I don’t get rashes if I wait two weeks between doses.
The other factor is that I am continually modifying my stack. I’ve added prescription drugs and other supplements that may be additive, subtractive, synergistic, or neutral in regards to my other changes. It’s really hard to tell.
All I can say with 100% certainty is that the amount of diarrhea I have has gone down dramatically since I removed Resveratrol from my stack!
Sometimes we all make newbie mistakes that take a while to correct.
If you are doing a relatively hard workout, you probably have a stew of hormones post-workout (Adrenalin, Corticosteroids, etc) that mix with the Rapamycin pharmaceutical effects. My experience and general reading of this site is that people who exercise or train take Rapamycin on their active rest days. Walking or zone 1/2 training levels. And exercise and fatigue is a dangerous mix over time. Don’t over train and go by how you feel - your body is communicating quite bluntly to you and I sincerely doubt a higher dose of Rapamycin within your training regiment is a good thing.
I was startled to read a post on here of someone stating that they are good at taking drugs. In other words, they can live easily with the various impacts of drugs that I am quite adverse to. (I think most people on the forum would kick sand in my face as they are the Charles Atlases of self-experimentation : ). So I have been open to taking Rapamycin at various dosages and periods depending how my sleep, energy levels, emotions feel. I think some of the benefits of Rapamycin works, in my case, when I am off it.
Another general reading of this site, those that go high with their dosage eventually go back down. You seem to have gotten some profound benefits. Maybe if you were older you might contemplate going higher, but I would suggest either a steady state, or take a Rapamycin vacation and log how long certain benefits last. Taking a higher dose requires you monitor blood levels of lipids and sugars as those are signs of MTOR2 inhibition. Over time things like sleep etc have gotten much better and even improved for myself in contrast to the first year of taking Rapamycin.
I went a couple years taking it in the morning and when people on here said to take it before bed I tried it just on a whim. Never went back. Best sleep I get is every 2 weeks after my Rapa. I try to fast a little the day before, but not a lot just enough to be a little hungry. So maybe 10 hours.
If you don’t like how it’s working, then try it another way. It makes a difference to me.
Yes, good point about the hard exercise on the morning of rapa dose. I’ve definitely heard that others rest. My probably erroneous thought was that I could slip in exercise before my dose and rest after. I thought that training hard after rapa would be ill advised, but training before would be fair game. lol. Perhaps that was wishful thinking.
I was someone who was feeling impacts on doses as low as 1 mg, so I am inclined to return to 2 mgs. I’ve only done about 6 doses so far and will be taking a two week break at 8 weeks. Perhaps I will also dose every 14 days instead of weekly to ensure better washout between doses or take more frequent breaks.
Luckily, I did buck the trend of poor sleep after Rapa last night. I dosed yesterday morning and slept soundly last night. Let’s hope this continues! If not, yes to experimenting with nighttime dose as bicep does.
Finally, I face the challenge of too many variables, many of which I have introduced myself. For example, is my now fading age spot due to oral rapa, topical melatonin, or something else, including wishful thinking?!
I appreciate any and all responses and find them very insightful. This self experimentation journey is quite complex.
I had all these symptoms, at different times, too, and I’m female and a bit older than you. My first dose came with dizzy and mild nausea. For a good year, I had the marvelous energy and focus boost, then, increasingly, fatigue similar to what you describe.
My theory is that for some of us rapamycin induces EBV reactivation. Why rapa brings on EBV-ra for some of us and not others, when nearly everyone has EBV, I don’t know. Why it didn’t for me the first 6-8 months, at higher rapa doses, but does now, at lower doses, I don’t know. But EBV may play a role in the fatigue.
And you may find, as many of us have, that your reactions change with time.
Yours and your friend’s weight is different, but it seems that you are taking the same doze. IMO it’s a mistake. Reduce your dose and see how you feel.
I was researching EBV reactivation from rapa using Grok and it led me to your post. I just started weekly rapa and I am sort of counting on EBV reactivating as an additional bonus of rapa. Let me explain.
EBV can cause blood cancers, particularly after transplantation, and one of the strategies used in these conditions is to induce lytic EBV reactivation while taking a direct acting antiviral such as ganciclovir. The reason is, these antivirals do not work against latent EBV at all. By inducing reactivation it’s possible to drain latent reservoirs. However the agents used as lytic inducers are IV chemotherapy drugs, obviously not easy to get. So I was looking for something in pill form to kick the virus while on antiviral (valganciclovir), and there’s some in-vitro research that seems to suggest that rapa can induce EBV lytic cycle in epithelial cells (but not B-cells).
I am very interested in your experience. How did you confirm EBV reactivation? What specific lab tests did you use?
That’s an interesting approach, all right. I have not seen papers about the therapy you suggest (inducing REBV and then taking an antiviral such as ganciclovir.)
I would urge and hope that you would do this with a medical professional so that you use safe doses and employ biomarker testing to keep you safe.
But gosh, report back! I’m eager to hear how it goes for you.
I am currently exploring the hypothesis that senescent B cells may harbor latent EBV, and therefore a high senescent cell load might be part of the problem, and senoltyics might be useful in reducing the latent reserves.
You may want to consider that judging by the lack of response to my posts about rapa-induced REBV, I gather that this is not a common response to rapa. What makes you think it will happen to you? Also note that for me, it took nearly a year of weekly rapa for me to have frequently (not inevitable) REBV.
I don’t know what makes some people more likely to have rapa-induced REBV. I don’t know why it took close to a year for it be a reliable pattern for me. I have no hypothesis that explains either.
There is an EBV test, but “Laboratory testing can help distinguish whether someone is susceptible to EBV infection or has a recent or past infection” (Laboratory Testing for Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) | Epstein-Barr Virus and Infectious Mononucleosis | CDC)-- the test doesn’t necessarily tell you if that’s the problem now. I have had that test, and like 90-95% of the global population, I had a recent or past infection .
At this point, I’ve had so many reactivations that I know the symptoms. I also have an ever-evolving protocol (that includes antivirals, but not ganciclovir.)
I sleep easily but rapamycin did not really improve my quality of sleep noticeably or I am unaware. I hope it does As for fasting, I find that finishing off the last 2 meals with almost no carb is important in keeping the hunger away.
I used to get fatigue a few hours after rapamycin, but after a while, I got used to it. It is no longer obvious. Considering that my 12 hour blood test is 23.9ng/mL which is pretty high.
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