As suggested by Dr. B and others, I think after taking rapamycin for a long time reduces the raised glucose effect goes away. While initially taking high doses of rapamycin raised my fasting glucose levels to ~109-112mg/dL, levels eventually went back to normal for me when taking 5 -10mg weekly doses. My HEMOGLOBIN A1c never increased above 5.6%.
My fasting glucose is back to 97mg/dL, which is normal for me at my age.
I don’t think the fasting glucose increase is that great for most people and will probably go away after a few months.
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I will have my blood tests in a few weeks at my annual physical. So I will see if there are any changes of BS over a period of a year on rapamycin, and hope I have the same outcome as you. In the case of Alex_Barton who raised the topic, and myself to some degree, I think there is more risk than reward by waiting to see if it resolves over time. I think high BS in some individuals, even temporarily, could have a poor outcome. In Alex_Barton’s case, and her use of berberine, the blood levels of rapamycin might be much higher than anticipated. I haven’t tried metformin, but I am using taurine, beta sitosterol, and inositol in tandem to reduce blood sugar. I am anxious to see if my strategy is working.
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Berberine and Metformin BOTH increase the absorption of Rapamycin along the same pathways as GFJ but to a lesser extent than GFJ. If you take Metformin + GFJ, you will get Rapamycin absorption at 3.5X+ based on your biology. Add in some EVOO and you could easily be looking at 4X+
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I have begun to measure my BG first thing in the morning to see if my newly started Rapa is raising it. My feelings on this right now are that if my BG (and/or my lipids) go up significantly, I’ll be taking long breaks between Rapa dosing. I don’t believe there’s enough data on Rapa to convince me it is worth the known risks of disregulated/higher blood sugar. There is no upside to higher blood glucose.
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My experience is that Rapamycin’s effect is temporary and although having high glucose is best to be avoided if it comes back to a good stable state then that is no reason not to have the benefit of intermittent autophagy.
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@Alex_Barton, I’ve been on rapa 6 months and my blood sugar was a bit higher on my dosing days for the few months. Now it has actually improved and is lower than before I started taking rapamycin and I’m not taking anything to lower my blood sugar.
I gained 5-6 pounds but that was in the beginning as well and now I’m weight stable. I’m exercising more lately in hopes of building muscle so I’m just going to see how it goes since I’m still at a “healthy” BMI of 20.9 and according to my smart scale the gain was both muscle and fat. It’s still somewhat hard to accept but since my doctor wanted me to gain a little weight I’m trying to make peace with it and just get in better shape. Best wishes
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I have gained 8 lbs in the 5 weeks I’ve been taking rapamycin. I just increased to 5mg. I’m a smallish person… 5’3", starting weight 126 lbs now 134lbs. My A1C is high at 5.9 so possibility even at weekly dosing it may be affecting blood sugar. I’m going to start metformin 500mg and work up to 1000mg max. I’m also considering decreasing rapamycin to 4mg and dosing every 2 weeks vs. weekly. Idk…
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Your blood sugar is quite high. Is that before or after talking Rapa? You may be negatively impacting your lifespan by taking Rapamycin with preexisting high blood sugar. IMHO you should only take Rapamycin if your blood sugar levels are not at near diabetic levels.
I would use a CGM to see what the patterns are.
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Depending on who you talk to an a1c of 5.9 is right at the top of normal range or "pre-diabetic ". Yes, a CGM is probably a good idea.
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Did he say this somewhere? If so I wonder what he bases it on. You’re the only one I have seen report on the blood glucose increasing effects going away after taking it for long.
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Could you give more details here? Did you experience worsening of blood glucose initially with rapamycin but it went away after taking it for a while? If yes, how long did it take to get back to normal?
You said your A1C is high. What was it before starting rapamycin?
I am one of the most infrequent users of Rapamycin. I have taken it I think 4 times over a period of a year, but not regularly. I wore a CGM when taking it and posted the charts into this forum so you can see. It is not 100% certain from the charts.
My HbA1c is normally around 4.5% (although it has been as low as 4.18%) and although I do weekly blood tests that would not necessarily pick up that much from rapamycin as I don’t have it frequently enough.
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I originally saw a comment by Mikhail V. Blagosklonny, MD, PhD on his Twitter feed many months ago, but I am not able to view the feed back that far.
My own experience was that when I started rapamycin, unlike most people, I started with high doses of 20mg with GFJ. That raised my fasting glucose to ~102 -110 which disturbed me. After titrating down to 5-10 mg/week my fasting glucose levels fell below 100 once again.
In any case, I don’t think rapamycin should raise anyone’s glucose levels significantly.
Most studies were done with transplant patients who were taking high doses
Here are two papers discussing the effect. Sorry if they have been posted before.
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That’s a very low HbA1c. Has it always been this low or do you attribute it to some specific diet or supplement?
I copy below my HbA1c starting in May 2021 then jumping to 2022 initially 4 weekly then moving weekly apart from holidays. Not all labs give me HbA1c as part of the basic package.
As you can see there is a 4.18% in the middle of it, but it is settling around the 4.5% mark.
There is an issue about HbA1c that some labs measure both aldimine and ketoamine, some only measure ketoamine. It tends to be ion chromatography that measures both and immunoflourescence that measures the irreversible element. I think the lab that gave me 4.18% was only measuring ketoamine, but it is hard to find out from the labs what they do as they often don’t know themselves.
Sadly I don’t have my measurements prior to 2021 and in May 2021 I had already dropped my weight from 130kg to 85kg.
My guess is that my HbA1c was quite a bit higher in the past.
I am 63 and an HbA1c of 4.5 for someone of my age is quite unusual. I am running a broader protocol which is intended to improve gene expression (both at the transcription and translation level). If you consider my CGM records from January 2022 to those in 2023 my Glucose was previously peaking around 10mmol/L and now peaks at 8mmol/L which is good because it does not excite the pathway for over 8mmol/L which I think is innositol, but it is not easy to look up.
I think the improvement in glucose processing arises from improving pancreatic function (gene expression). However, I think there are two other factors
a) I megadose on Melatonin from time to time (quite frequently really) which drives down blood glucose
b) I am from time to time a binge drinker although I stopped after last Sunday because on Monday I got quite a high CK value in the blood test I gave the sample for on the previous Thursday.
I am likely to revert to drinking, but I did another blood test yesterday and will do another next week. If I go out to dinner with any of my family I am likely to have another drink although I may not. Hence I may get an idea if HbA1c goes up with less alcohol.
Here is the HbA1c results (some converted from mmol/mol)
4.9 4.8 4.9 4.3 5 tested on second day 4.38 cvt 4.8 cvt 4.6 -> 4.7 -> 4.5 4.18 night time melatonin drives this down ->5.3 5.4 follows glucose by 2 hours 4.9 5.1 4.9 5 4.9 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.3 5 ->4.7 ->4.5 ->4.6 ->4.4 ->4.6 4.4279 ->4.6 ->4.6 4.5556 ->4.6 4.4618 ->4.6 4.4296 4.4468 4.5189
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weight gain on rapamycin: where is the research? Most of user experiences that I read mentioning losing some fat?
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I don’t know why you are asking me.
I weighed about 130 kg in August 2022
I weighed about 85 kg in May 2021
In 2022 I first took some Rapamycin.
I have no view as to whether Rapamycin affects weight. I think it makes the metabolism more efficient whatever effect that has.
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The research in mice suggests a slight weight loss, the research in humans is mixed but generally not a significant difference one way or another. The PEARL Rapamycin study is tracking visceral fat as one of the key outcomes they are hoping to see a difference in, as I think one of the study designers said the most significant change he saw in one (unpublished) study on rats was change in visceral fat - so we’ll have those results in a year or two perhaps.
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