Hi Paul, and welcome to the forums. Sounds like you’ve got the basics of a good plan of action.
We probably need to come up with a full list of implementation ideas. What Agetron has suggested is a great start. We have a bit of a quantified self orientation here in the forums - the more measuring you can do before you start, so that you have a good baseline, the better to decide on how things are working out for you and what adjustments you may need to make… of course ,the sky is the limit when it comes to testing, but everyone can adjust based on their interest level and budgets…
Also - because many of us here made the mistake of starting rapamycin before realizing all the tools there are out there for tracking biological age, etc. - its good to know this before you start. For example, the blood tests can be good input for a free biological age calculator from Yale that many of us use regularly to track what we hope is progress…
So, here is my quick and dirty list of things to consider testing prior to starting rapamycin… and additionally, if you’re also adding on acarbose, you may want to first start rapamycin, then after a few months, do some more testing prior to starting acarbose, just to keep things simple. Changing more than one variable at a time between testing makes it pretty much impossible to know which drug is doing what to your body.
Pre-Rapamycin Testing:
Dexa Scan - for total body composition, eg.
Rationale: In the PEARL rapamycin clinical study they are looking at visceral fat as one of the key endpoints of the trial. From other research, the expectation is that reductions in this area are one of the most likely benefits the researchers expect to see in using rapamycin over the longer term.
Bood tests (CBC, HRP, CRP, etc.), so at a minimum you have enough information to calculate your Levine Phenotypic Age, and some of the Aging.AI tests.
For details see: A Friendly, Biological Age Reduction Competition?
AgingAI Free Online Test: http://aging.ai
More reading: Impressive Biological Age Reductions with Rapamycin (anecdotal)
Other Biological Age measures - like GlycanAge, etc.
I’d recommend doing the one leg standing test, each leg, eyes closed and eyes open - do it 5 times to get an average. Details here: Balancing on One Leg, Good Test for Your Longevity
For fun - you might try this too: https://futurself.ai
News story on it here: What is your psychological age? Free online test from Hong Kong-based longevity firm gives answers and tips | South China Morning Post
You can see a little more on what they do in the Pearl study and get as aggressive as you want in testing: Tracking your Rapamycin Results - From the PEARL Study
Inexpensive labs for getting blood work done quickly and cheaply include:
Anyone have any other ideas to add here?