How does Rapamycin make you feel?

#10

You know, thats an interesting question. I’m a pretty fit, active person and always have been. I regularly run, mountain bike, road bike, hike, ski, whitwater kayak, rock climb, etc… and generally what we see here is that the more fit you are, the more subtle the benefits of rapamycin.

I think the sleep benefits are likely the first thing I started noticing - perhaps 3 to 6 months after starting. Just a lot deeper sleeps, fewer wakings during the night, feeling more refreshed in the morning… I think of it as a more youthful sleep phenotype… basically I started waking up in the morning feeling like I did 20 years ago. I also noticed that I used to get phlegm buildup while sleeping, and would have to clear my throat and spit in the morning. That went away with the rapamycin. Similarly, I used to get quite a bit of “sleep” buildup (not sure of the medical term), the crud that builds up near your tear duct of the eye over night “sand” from the sandman… you know what I’m talking about… that all went away after I started rapamycin.

At the same time, as my quality of sleep improve, my energy levels improved. I used to be tired in the afternoon (and didn’t feel that well rested when getting up in the morning). If I had the opportunity, I could easily have a nap in the afternoon. Over time (3 to 6 months after rapamycin initiation) I found I had a lot more energy. My energy did not slow in the afternoon - I could keep going to 9pm or midnight without a problem. I could even pull all-nighters, working through the night or getting minimal sleep (e.g. 3 to 5 hours) and get up and be fully functional (just like in college days). I had not been able to do that in many, many years. If I had a bad sleep during the past decade, my day was largely shot. After starting rapamycin I felt much more resilient to shorter sleep nights.

One more functional example; I do road trips occasionally with my kids. After using rapamycin for a year+ I started doing something I haven’t done since college - I started driving all night during longer road trips, so my family could sleep while I drove to the destination. I would not have done this 10 years ago because I’d have been too wiped out the next day to function. But, now this wasn’t much of a problem. I was still tired the next day, but would not get the headaches, complete loss of focus ability, etc. that sleep deprivation typically caused me.

The slow reduction of aches and pains over time is subtle and takes many months in my experience. But at some point I realized that wow - I don’t have the same aches and pains I had a year ago. All my joints feel like they did 20 years ago. No more aches when getting out of bed in the morning, faster return to baseline after exercise, etc. All of this is hard to quantify, and some is likely placebo effect, but 1 year out from starting rapamycin I felt a lot different as an athlete. My body just felt more together, like it did 20 years ago. When I started doing my more regular blood testing and then calculating my biological age as measured by the Levine Phenotypic calculator and Aging.ai online calculator - my biological age was about 12 to 15 years below my chronological age. Sadly, I did not do this prior to initiating rapamycin, so its not a well controlled measure.

Oh and one other thing. The longer I’ve been on rapamycin, and the more I believe in the effects, the more I believe that there are second-order psychological effects, which I’ve outlined here: Rapamycin Changes How you Think About Aging

Hope this helps.

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#11

Thanks, very helpful.

In my own case, after one month (2->5mg, weekly increase), no discernable psychic benefit. The only apparent physical impacts are on-going skin breakouts, particularly on the scalp, and a general low level itchiness. (Perhaps skin is drier?)

So, in the very short term, no upside, and some aggravating downside. Of course, there may be many benefits that become apparent over the longer term. We’ll see.

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#12

RapAdmin, was your dose constant through these 3.5 years? 7mg weekly?

For the record, since I started Rapamycin 8 weeks ago my eyesight has returned to 20/20 after about a year of needing reading glasses, my gums are healthier than ever before, and I feel great. There may be other subtler effects at play as well, but I’ll need longer to evaluate them.

I began with 1mg a week and am now up to 6mg. At 6mg I switched to biweekly to give my body more recovery and growth time between treatments. I plan to build up to 7-8mg every 10-14 days.

Best of luck to the OP (original poster). If you do have a diagnosable disorder I would want to work with an open minded physician on Rapamycin dosage. Otherwise I’d suggest you begin, like many of us, with 1mg a week then 2mg etc, while monitoring your health. Take a pause if anything concerns you.

(I’m not a doctor so these are not medical recommendations, just one layperson’s suggestions).

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#13

I’m up to 8mg per week now and have noticed no effects at all, good or bad.

One word of warning: I suspect that a lot of the “effects” people say they are getting from Rapamycin in this forum are completely placebo.

There are lots of “I think I feel more energetic” and other wishful comments about “feelings” that probably have absolutely nothing to do with rapamycin.

People like @Agetron who are sharing actual meaaurable data (weight loss, blood biomarkers etcetera) are much more believable.

Also, there are some completely ridiculous claims being made constantly in this forum about rapamycin, like saying it makes you not need reading glasses anymore after a few weeks of use. Or that it brought your dog back from the grave after one pill. I mean, gimme a break guys.

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#14

Like many here I have experimented with higher doses. I’ve taken as high as 8mg with grape fruit (I eat the whole fruit) so effectively somewhere around 24 to 40mg dose given typical GFJ multipliers people are seeing here. I did that for a few months with two weeks between doses. Did not have any noticeable side effects at that level, but then decided to go back down to 8mg in part due to high lipid levels (ApoB). The first six months I slowly ramped up to 6mg/week and then stayed there, then slowly edged up. Most of the 3 years have been around 8mg to 10mg. I’m currently on a 4 month hiatus because I’m in a parabiosis clinical trial that didn’t want rapamycin users, so I paused rapamycin until I complete the trial next month.

Then I’ll restart, probably start at 4mg/week, then move quickly back up to 8mg/week.

Good to hear your results. Track it over time and report if you see any changes, positive or negative. As others have mentioned here, its hard to parse out the placebo effect, but if you are off reading glasses for good, I find that very interesting. Lets see if it holds going forward!

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#15

I take 5 mg + GFJ +EVOO every other week. After dosing I feel a euphoric fatigue. I feel great but tired. The effect lasts only about a day though. Usually just the day after dosing. The rest of the time, I feel amazing, but it may not have anything to do with Rapamycin for that.

My memory is also better in some regards. I find I am more positive, cheerful, and happier than before, but that could be attributed to other supplements I take such as lithium or NAC. Or it could be because I love my job and family and am generally a lucky guy. Who knows for sure? Feelings are hard to quantify.

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Rapamycin and Fatigue
#16

How you ‘feel’ isn’t an especially useful metric since we know the placebo effect is real and powerful. If I look at quantifiable markers then 12 months of Rapamune has caused significant improvements in body composition and in sleep duration but all other markers are neutral.

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#17

Thank you, all of you, very much indeed for all of your replies, especially RapAdmin who very kindly welcomed me to the forum and who has given very extensive replies.

Some of you have suggested that it may be the case that placebo might be responsible for some of the benefits in how people feel when they are taking Rapamycin. I agree that this may be the case to a limited degree. However, if, let’s say, someone has had really terrible pains for several years before starting to take Rapamycin and just a few weeks after starting to take it, they are almost completely pain free then I would find it very difficult indeed to believe that placebo could be 100% responsible for that sort of pain relief. What do you think?

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#18

No, that could absolutely be placebo.

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#19

Hi Maveric78

Thank you very much fo your reply.

I would be amazed if what you say is correct.

My own experience is that I have tried lots of different supplements and all of the standard OTC pain killers and they have had absolutely no effect on me whatsoever. I therefore suspect that I maybe somewhat unplaceboable.

EDIT: I have just remembered that Solgar Niacin 500MG did succeed in making me flush.

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#20

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18511

Placebos expert Kathryn T Hall: ‘The effect can rival painkillers like ibuprofen or even morphine’ | Placebo effect | The Guardian.

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#21

Hi Maveric78

Thank you very much for the links.

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#23

Hey phil, since you’re at 8mg does this mean you have been taken it roughly 2 months?

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#24

I suspect that Brian Kennedy is paid handsomely by Rejuvant. The clinical trials for their supplements have been successful. But he never fails to mention the placebo effect when he discusses the clinical trials for Rejuvant. He says that if you pay a lot of money for a supplement thinking that it will make you feel better, you likely will feel better!

Two years ago my main complaint when I went for my physical was always feeling tired. My physician said that is because you’re getting old. I can’t remember the last time I have felt tired. All of my measurables from bloodwork to blood pressure have improved significantly. Much of the improvements came from long-term fasting before I started rapamycin but there is some overlap between those two interventions.

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#25

Many of those on this site respect the work of Dr. Matt Kaeberlein… one of the foremost authorities on rapamycin research.

Here with Peter Attia, Matt discusses his use of rapamycin for 8 weeks that created physiological changes. And, it was not placebo.

Go to 1: 27 :10

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#26

Yes, and Matt himself says, 'the placebo effect is very real… ’

I’m not saying that rapamycin doesn’t have these beneficial effects, I’m saying that without DATA it’s just anecdote and therefore worthless from a scientific perspective.

image

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#27

The parabiosis clinical trial sounds interesting! Can you share any details?

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#28

Yup! I started at 1mg and am increasing by 1mg every week. I’ll probably keep it at 10mg long-term, if only because the medication comes in packs of 10. But I’m open to changing the dosage if I see good advice/data in this forum!

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#29

Let’s not exaggerate. No one has said any such thing about their dog. I wrote about the glasses and I’m sorry you disapprove.

For those who are intellectually curious and not inclined to dismiss people’s first hand accounts out of hand, I had not needed reading glasses for 20 years since grad school when last year, around age 47, I began to need the glasses to read my phone.

I used them for 6-8 months when I began rapamycin. Since then I have stopped using the glasses and stopped needing them.

Placebo? Maybe. Coincidence? Perhaps. I’m certainly making no claims about causation, because how can you know?

What I know is that I needed reading glasses and now I don’t. That’s the data.

For the record, a persistent shoulder pain (3 years) disappeared in my 2nd to 3rd week of rapamycin, when I’d started with 1mg and took 2mg on week two. The shoulder never hurts now. More data.

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#30

Lots of info in this thread: Plasmapheresis Startup Looking for Clinical Trial Participants SF Bay Area

Its all been pretty uneventful so far. I’ve gone in for 4 parabiosis sessions so far, two more to go next month. You go in, lie down, they put the large needles with hoses into your arm veins (one on each arm, one taking out, one putting back in), and you sit there for three hours while the equipment does its work. I bring my headset and prepare my podcasts, and audio books and to entertain myself.

They actually put a good amount of effort into blinding the participants from knowing whether they are getting the actual treatment or a sham treatment (they have a control group). There is a curtain barrier between the patient and the equipment, and the blood hoses are covered in a black wrapping to hide whether blood is moving through the hoses, and they cover your arms with towels too.

To be honest, I’ve not noticed much difference in anything. I haven’t done any bloodwork, etc. since starting because I want to remain unbiased (I’m assuming that I would notice some changes in my blood work and biological age if I was getting the treatment). But so far, my guess is that I’m on the control arm of the study just because I’m not feeling any difference. They do some basic functional testing - grip strength, balance, etc. every time I go in , and not much difference so far.

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