Hi everyone, I found this site in a convoluted way by looking for an alternative treatment for asthma, and now I’m deep into reading and learning about longevity from all of you. This is a great resource, and I really appreciate everyone contributing to the knowledge base here.
Back to how I found this site: I was on corticosteroid inhalers, which were effective at controlling my asthma. However, I believe they reduced my immunity to the point that I got a really bad case of shingles. I could be wrong, but long-term steroid use doesn’t seem like a good idea generally. I stopped the steroid inhalers when I had shingles, and interestingly, my asthma stopped as well; probably because my immune system was too busy fighting off the virus.
After recovering from shingles, I’ve mainly been using albuterol (rescue) inhalers when I need them, which unfortunately is most nights. If I fast, my asthma goes away for 1 or 2 days, but then returns. Recently it’s gotten worse because we’ve been remodeling at home, and that’s where my search for another solution led to rapamycin.
My first dose was today (1mg). I fasted on fresh squeezed OJ yesterday and took Rapacan this morning. No side effects so far, so I plan to up the dose by 1mg every week until obvious side effects become apparent. I’ll be tracking my inhaler use to see if there’s any measurable impact to asthma and report back here.
Thank you for the warm welcome @RapAdmin. Really appreciate all the work you put into building and managing this community.
Thank you also for the links, I had already seen those topics and was thinking about tracking my N=1 results with rapamycin and asthma in this thread. If it’s more appropriate for me to do that in reply to some other post, please let me know.
A quick update: 1mg dose around 8am on 12/1; night of 12/1: 0 need for inhaler .
This is the first time in months that I haven’t needed at least 1 puff from albuterol at night. Even on nights after fasting, I usually need it once per night (vs. 3-5 non-fasting nights). Very encouraging.
Did have some chest tightness and wheezing after dinner on 12/1, but that quickly resolved itself.
The Rapa may or may not have anything to do with you lack of. Asthma symptoms, and it would be better if they didn’t since you don’t want to be on Rapa every day.
Nothing else changed besides the addition of rapa, so I don’t know where else the asthma relief could be coming from. Haven’t been asthma free at night since I had shingles about 6 months ago, last night was the only time I slept through the night in a while, huge improvement.
I’m not convinced I need to dose daily to get these results. I’ll report back tomorrow to see if I get 2 asthma-free nights in a row from a measly 1mg dose of rapamycin.
Yes - that may be an issue. Most of us dose rapamycin once per week to get around the side effects that tend to occur with daily dosing… like immune suppression, lipid and glucose disregulation, etc.
@EverVital may find out that this is an issue - or perhaps the higher dosing (e.g. 5 to 8 mg once per week) also works for the asthma.
I am also taking Rapa due to asthma. I have severe steroid dependent, late onset asthma, and had 4 hospital stays in a 9 month period, 3 of them in 4 months of it. It’s my impression that the steroid inhalers just created a slowly worsening spiral in my condition. Last time I was in hospital I spent a week on supplemental oxygen.
Just my experience, not a medical professional, not advice:
Asthma is an inflammation issue and doctors are often unwilling to discuss this, they just seem (in my experience) to want to throw ever stronger medication to suppress the symptoms.
I now follow the Blueprint diet (Bryan Johnson) and am taking rapa and metformin. The inflammation is still there, I’m not over it, but it has lowered considerably in the last 2 months without any puffer use. Also my night time oxygen levels have gone up from average 90% to 95% (whoop) after stopping asthma medication.
Most importantly I don’t eat seed oils, sugar or ultraprocessed food, except as an occasional treat. Also I don’t eat after 2 pm most days.
Doctors will just give you stronger and stronger puffers with more and more side effects. not their fault, as people are mostly unwilling to deal with diet and other issues.
Ps, if your asthma symproms are worse after eating, have you tried to log what you are eating, what time, etc?
Are you eating pro-inflammatory foods? Eating late, etc.
It’s possible the rapa is countering something you are eating that triggers asthma.
12/3 update: needed 1 inhaler puff last night. Not a perfect night like yesterday, but still much better than usual.
As to the daily use required to make rapa effective for asthma, if the dose response is linear and the reduction in asthma requires a minimum threshold amount of rapa in the blood, then I would think taking a weekly dose would work just as well. For example, if I need the equivalent of a single dose of 0.75mg in the blood to have sufficient mTOR deactivation to prevent asthma, then a 5mg dose should meet that minimum threshold for a whole week (assuming 62-hour half-life). Any flaws with that logic?
Hi Amira, yes, there’s definitely a link with diet. I have found wheat products at night make the condition worse. But it’s a good idea for me to test foods more specifically. I typically don’t eat too late, usually done by 8pm. Lunchtime doesn’t matter, it’s only dinner, maybe there’s some circadian influence on asthma onset as well.
Asthma slowly came back over the course of the week, likely coinciding with rapamycin leaving my system. I took 2mg this morning (12/7 around 8am) and will report back next week on the asthma impact.
A few notes on the chart below:
Fasting is also effective at reducing asthma episodes for me, but it usually only lasts the day of the fast (11/30 this past week). To avoid confounding factors, I will not fast for the next few weeks.
This is simply tracking the number of times in each day that I use an albuterol inhaler (each puff). Early morning albuterol use is accounted for in the prior day’s tally, e.g. if I take a puff at 4am on 12/5, that is in the count for 12/4. I do this because my asthma episodes mostly emerge at night, and I’d rather keep all the episodes over each night in the same day for tracking purposes.
Been on rapamycin 6mg once weekly for months. I stopped the rapamycin temporarily in order to compare my CGM readings with and without the weekly rapamycin. I have not had a flare-up of asthma in years but I awoke in the middle of the night due to wheezing and had to find an old albuterol (rescue) inhaler. I never expected that! I associated it with the temporary (3 wk) cessation of rapamycin. It’s not that rapamycin stopped my asthma attacks, but curiously, stopping the rapamycin may have induced one.
As a physician that specializes in asthma, I would be very careful here:
Several points to consider; NOT MEDICAL ADVICE.
Asthma treatment is typically catered to its phenotype.
It’s extremely unlikely that rapamycin would achieve immunosuppression high enough to suppress inflammatory bronchitis at 1 mg a week, and if you ever achieve this degree of systemic immunosuppression I would worry about systemic side effects - increase chances of infection (bacterial or fungal), mucosal atrophy, etc.
There are 3-5,000 deaths a year in US from asthma and it occurs equally in all types of severity.
Placebo effect is HUGE in perceived asthma symptoms, better way to track asthma progress would be to use exhaled NO or spirometry. At home I would use serial peak flow meter measurements. Objective >>>>>>>>>>>>>subjective.
Asthma is characterized by its ability to quickly revert back to normal lung function in most people when stimulus for exacerbation is removed or mitigated - air pollution, infection, allergy etc.
New asthma guideline allow for AS NEEDED use of inhaled steroid usually combined with B2-agonists - my preferred way to treat intermittent or mild persistent asthmatics.
I have seen many cases where asthma presents along with misdiagnosed vocal cord dysfunction.
I had many patients with asthma that were able to stop continuous use of inhaled steroids with allergy desensitization, restoring nasal breathing, avoidance of allergen or irritant, addressing GERD, etc. etc. etc.
Dr. Bart, thank you so much for taking the time to give such a thorough reply. A couple of follow-ups:
It’s extremely unlikely that rapamycin would achieve immunosuppression high enough to suppress inflammatory bronchitis at 1 mg a week…
Yes, I suspect my results were largely due to fasting, which has always improved my asthma symptoms; and less by rapamycin. Or maybe it was the combination of fasting and rapa that had such marked improvements. This week I did not fast and the impact of rapa (2mg) on asthma is less pronounced.
Placebo effect is HUGE in perceived asthma symptoms, better way to track asthma progress would be to use exhaled NO or spirometry. At home I would use serial peak flow meter measurements.
Agree, I have a peak flow meter somewhere, I’ll try to find it or order a new one. I was hoping # of albuterol puffs was objective enough, but maybe not.
Asthma is characterized by its ability to quickly revert back to normal lung function in most people when stimulus for exacerbation is removed or mitigated - air pollution, infection, allergy etc.
We’ve been trying to find the stimulus for a long time, so far no luck. Using hypoallergenic material wherever possible and reliable air purifiers too. We recently ordered a new mattress in case that is part of the triggers, though the one we have is wrapped in an allergy barrier. I would like nothing more than to manage asthma by reducing environmental triggers.
New asthma guideline allow for AS NEEDED use of inhaled steroid usually combined with B2-agonists - my preferred way to treat intermittent or mild persistent asthmatics.
Doctor prescribed inhaled steroid, and those worked great at controlling my asthma. Any thoughts on adverse long-term use of inhaled steriods? I got a very bad case of shingles while using them and was concerned there might be a link.
I had many patients with asthma that were able to stop continuous use of inhaled steroids with allergy desensitization, restoring nasal breathing, avoidance of allergen or irritant, addressing GERD, etc. etc. etc.
I asked for allergen testing and to my surprise, all the major ones (dust, dander, etc.) came back negative. As a kid, I had very severe allergies to dust especially, and did some desensitization. GERD is an interesting one, I’ll look at it more closely, but generally my digestion feels okay.
Herpes Zoster is typical for you age. I have never seen a correlation between steroid use topical or systemic and shingles.
Dust mite allergy can be entopic - google it.
GERD can be silent - google it.
Before I developed asthma last year I used to fast regularly. Now I find that when I fast my breathing becomes much worse very quickly. As albuterol inhalers don’t help me, I haven’t been able to fast. Oral prednisone is the only way I can control asthma so no fasting.
When I fast i feel great, calm and full of energy. So even as I am feeling the positive effects my breathing is getting worse, forcing me to stop.
I have tested negative for allergies btw.
Tbh I haven’t noticed any positive effects from 2 months of taking 2mg of rapa every week with grapefruit juice.
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