People sacrifice their souls on the chase for money.
3 Likes
I think on balance David Sinclair has done more for raising the awareness of the field of Longevity than anyone. I don’t think that excuses some of the language that he uses, but unfortunately it takes a lot to turn heads these days. I doubt things would be as far a long as they are.
11 Likes
Good for Matt. He’s the epitome of a responsible scientist. David Sinclair, though I appreciate his contributions to the field, seems more and more to be revealed as less than responsible.
7 Likes
I don’t hate Sinclair. I think his reputation is increasingly being downgraded by his actions, which seem more motivated by profit than science.
13 Likes
No - I think Dr. K is upset because there were no significant differences between groups in changes in measured activity and instead they used the owner-reported Canine Cognitive Dysfunction Rating (CCDR) results showed no difference in the dogs (see graph below, without error bars as is normal in a study like this).
In other words, they ignored their actual test results and claimed “reversal of aging” based on some owners perceptions, which may or may not have been significant.
Full paper here:
2024.02.26.581616v1.full.pdf (2.1 MB)
6 Likes
Not to be overly cynical, but they’re not selling this product to the dogs, they’re selling it to the owners and many of the owners seemed pleased with the results. And they will tell you that they know their dogs better than anyone. So while this study may not contribute much to the science, it may be beneficial to the company. And let’s face it, this is becoming more common, scientists, doctors and other professionals are getting involved in new companies - the companies fund studies and then use those studies to promote their products. The only difference here is that David Sinclair is a very prominent scientist.
3 Likes
Fair enough call.
The other component to this, is that “science” does a great job of finding things that consistently result in a certain outcome. What if we have a complete range of responses, some massively positive and others not, based on genetic or epigenetic causes?
The issue on whether some benefit or not becomes a matter of conjecture. Those who think their dogs did better - placebo effect or not … they are happy with the results, and with being separated from their cash.
I worry a bit more when we are dealing with people, which is what this ends up translating into, as a natural effect of anything that happens in animal studies. People think the science is settled, and it isn’t.
3 Likes
When i was in grad school, half the biochem professors had their own startups. But they spoke like scientists, not promoters.
5 Likes
I’m one of them. Before putting my 16 yr old on Rapa, he’s been on the Sinclair’s protocol for a while, and there were noticeable improvements, specially early on. Before NMN and TMG, and the whole alphabet soup, he was very lethargic. He didn’t want to play. The hip dysplasia was getting worse. Since on the protocol, he improved in two weeks. It was night and day. We stared him on Rapa, 1.5 yrs ago. He is still on the protocol but not daily. He takes a huge amount of supplements, and eats only grassfed meat and organic veggies, but he was on that diet before and still became lethargic and would not run and play as he does today. I have to go by my experience. This dog wouldn’t be here today without that protocol and Rapa. And no heart, liver, or kidney issues either. He also takes acarbose daily. He’s the reason I got a second job. Lol.
6 Likes
Good job on taking care of your dog so well! I’m glad he is doing well on this.
We have a cat that we want to give the opposite therapy to right now … any suggestions?
3 Likes
Absolutely! The 2 that immediately come to mind here, are NMN and Resveratrol. I think there would be much agreement that they were over-hyped but when people start acting like they are worthless substances or “scam products”, I personally doubt it. Look at the huge number of studies. As you say, some massively positive and others not. The damning evidence for resveratrol, as pointed out by @RapAdmin above in the video with Rich Miller and Peter Attia is that Sinclair’s original mouse study was deeply flawed - and subsequently there were many pro and con studies. But there were enough positive studies (we’re talking about a huge number), that I can’t believe that they were all flawed or funded by a Sinclair company. It’s a polyphenol, for god’s sake, should that cast doubt on all polyphenols - some people think so. Ultimately, you have to sift through all the studies (with a juandiced eye in my case) and decide what makes the most sense to you.
3 Likes
That sounds like you want to kill’em! 
the opposite of good therapy is bad therapy…
3 Likes
Exactly … our cat needs to be have some pro-aging therapy …
3 Likes
Remember. the first rule is…do no harm
Edit: What’d he do? Pee on the rug? I’m often inclined to do that with @AnUser (re: his avatar 
) Nevermind…he changed his avatar…used to be the “Dude” from Big Lebowski
2 Likes
DrFranser,
Poor kitty. Lol.
My neighbor has a kitty named Bart. She rolls her eyes when I ask about him. He wakes her up every night and kicks her out of her bed. He’s super smart, and able to solve puzzles that some of my dogs can’t handle. He’s the cutest pain in the rear end. I adopt seniors only, dogs no one else wants, but the cost of properly caring for them is soooo much. I just bought half a cow and hope that will help decrease the cost associated with grassfed dog food. How old is your furbaby? Old enough for rapa? I know he/she wants to be on rapa really bad to continue to brighten your day and bring more “excitement” into your life.
2 Likes
I personally will not recommend resveratrol to patients. The NMN or NR is a tougher call. The main issue is cost. The walking study with NMN https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36482258/ is at least interesting. For me personally, I subjectively feel better with 1000 mg of NMN in the morning. If I fail to time manage and get my AM supplements, the only item I’ll grab on my way to the ER is NMN. Probably placebo, but I have a bunch of other things I take each morning, and I don’t seek those at all.
I continue to have my scientist hat on, with looking at standard approaches of thinking anything beneficial should be consistent, work in all people and yield a consistent result such that we can have high level evidence and certainty. The other reality, is that there are a diverse range of experiences and responses, even for objective things like blood pressure control or glycemic control with medications.
The more time in clinical medicine - the more understanding, if one listens to their patients, is the incredible diversity of responses. If any of this actually heads toward hard outcomes, that is a worry, as our scientific approach looks at average outcomes, not individual outcomes. This works in genetically identical mice … but that isn’t the situation in clinical medicine with humans.
The problem with polyphenol supplementation, or supplementation of anything for that matter, is that you have to be pretty darn sure you have the active ingredient. We’ve seen the mess with Vitamin A for example - thinking it was good in isolation - just not the active ingredient. Get your polyphenols from real food … not in a capsule. If you get it in a capsule, make sure you are also getting it in foods.
The highest risk people are those who have bad diets, and think the supplements fix this. If you want to supplement - go to it (I do), but make sure your nutrition is rock solid and don’t rely on the supplements as your get out of jail card. They will be a fail for sure.
6 Likes
So … the cat … a bengal, female, the last of our 3 cats that we brought with us from Australia, when we moved back to the U.S. in 2017 after 10 years there. Surprisingly no quarantine.
The other 2 cats have succumb.
She is by far the most annoying, and will probably live forever. We’ve recently got her addicted to screentime on the iPhone looking at videos of squirrels and the like … she is most confused when she digs under the phone and bites that nothing is accomplished.
Her brother was amazing - we lost him a few months ago. Very sad, especially for my wife who loved him so much. He was dog like in much of his behavior. We probably should have given him rapamycin and his sister arsenic.
The pets are a great topic … we’ve got a dog that is only 18 months that we are also needing an anti-rapamycin medication for.
5 Likes
Solution: Put the dog and cat together in a locked room and put them on a caloric-restricted diet. Results may vary depending on size of animals.
Think of it as a longevity experiment.
(Disclaimer: This answer is for entertainment purposes only. Do not attempt in real life.)
6 Likes
I can only submit 1 like on this comment. I want to provide several!
2 Likes
Personally, I do too. I’ve cycled on and off a number of times and now I’m down to 500 mg, but placebo or not…it works for me. It’s a lot easier to pay attention to your own body and make a judgement. Everyone’s different, so to tell someone else what to do (your job) must be hard. And resveratrol is something that I don’t feel at all (cycling on and off).
And talk about “diverse range of experiences”, just look at this forum. Some people swear by something and how much it improved their blood tests or whatever, and others say it was a huge waste of money. And they’re probably both right.
“our scientific approach looks at average outcomes, not individual outcomes.”
This is a huge hurdle for the individual. Even when I plug my blood measures into the Levine Phenotypic Age calculator and it tells me that my BioAge is 10 years younger than my 70 chronological age - they have some averages figures that tell them what 70 should look like -in America that might be some overweight guy on a couch somewhere with a bad diet. Should I really feel that proud that I’m healthier than he is(by 10 years)?
My nutrition is rock solid but I still take supplements (and believe that they help, even polyphenols). And on active ingredients - if it’s 3rd party tested and has a COA and the company has a top notch reputation - I don’t worry. There’s a lot of information out there on the web and if you know how to filter it - that’s the key.
2 Likes