=> This is more easily tractable than increasing intelligence, and we do have a gene for it. This could be important for those with super-short timelines
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Its interesting… if we insert the gene for less sleep requirement, that is effectively like increasing your lifespan, because you can get your required work done more in the time when you would have been sleeping, thus opening up time during the day for more social and other activities… so a 25% sleep reduction hack, is almost like increasing your lifespan by 25%.
If you put on 7 lbs of non-lean-mass, that’s very concerning. How did your % fat mass change before and after? Abdominal fat?
How much can you bench-press/lift before/after?
I’ll have to go back to the DEXA scans and confirm the breakdown of the non-lean weight gain, but I don’t find it concerning as my weight historically fluctuates a great deal w respect to my water weight, especially if I have more muscle on my body. I don’t do lifts for strength and pretty much exclusively train for combat sports, so I don’t have those numbers.
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Single injection into abdominal fat. And thanks yeah it’s pretty damn cool to have had the honor of doing it.
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They plan to run a fitness study next (eg compare values pre and post benchpress). See
Running a fitness study is another type of study and requires a fitness lab to verify that correct form and numbers are established during the movement — logistically it’s best suited to recruit patients all from nearby the same fitness lab.
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Can you please share more about your experience. This is really interesting, I think, for many of the people here. When did you go to Roatan to participate in the trial? Is this something people have to pay for? if so, how much? How long does the process take, what is involved other than just the single injection? It sounds like it could be quite quick. Do they want you to say on the island for a few days afterwards for medical monitoring, or did you leave immediately afterward? How quickly did you start to notice effects? Any side effects?
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I remember going down the FST rabbit hole and reading that it can increase muscle mass but not correspondingly increase strength
Muscle mass is much more conserved with age than muscle strength - not convinced yet that FST will be that helpful for aging w/o more data
- We know that strength matters more than hypertrophy in longevity
- Discussed in a recent podcast, #176 – AMA #27: The importance of muscle mass, strength, and cardiorespiratory fitness for longevity
- Peter asks Nir about the impact of Metformin on cardio-respiratory fitness and what he thinks about people who exercise a lot
“Can you please share more about your experience.”
Sure, no problem. Just have to be brief and specific as some things are NDA.
“When did you go to Roatan to participate in the trial?”
We went to a beautiful resort out there.
“Is this something people have to pay for?”
You are expected to pay for blood tests, but that is it.
“How long does the process take, what is involved other than just the single injection?”
You have an intake interview and a consultation with the Doctor. They ask you some questions and then it’s stabby jabby time. By that time there has already been a bit of a selection process and conversations with the team. Very quick process as far as the operation itself. They’ll typically have you wait around or be nearby in the immediate term in case some random very unlikely unforeseen catastrophe occurs.
“Do they want you to say on the island for a few days afterwards for medical monitoring, or did you leave immediately afterward?”
Yes, they are very careful about that and want you to remain on the island a few days.
“How quickly did you start to notice effects? Any side effects?”
I feel like maybe on the 5th or 6th day I just started to notice a little bit more of a pep in my step. By the fifth week I was noticing substantial morphological changes in my muscle mass and endurance during jiutjitsu/MMA practices. I believe the effects had a ‘peak’ somewhere around 8 weeks, but I am still currently holding muscle mass that I did not have previously.
In regards to side effects, I would say that there is a small potential that my body in the initial stages may have had some slight nerve pain due to increased muscle mass in my neck area? However, I put my body through a great deal of abuse and high-volume high-impact damage with combat sports and I have a myriad of injuries that I collect each year, so it could 100% easily be nothing. I did notice an increase in appetite both sexually and food-wise. I didn’t experience much psychological change other than indirectly being excited about the fact that the experiment was actually working, but psychological changes are difficult for me to measure or understand (even if all I did was drink a cup of coffee). I still do carry more muscle mass and I am a bit stronger. During the trial, I was not lifting weights or making any changes to my training regimen as I wanted to be sure that something was happening. I am telling you 100%, something is definitely happening in those cells.
Is this an instant GMO Hulk-a-mania science juice? No it is not… but is it actually working and doing something? Oh hell yeah it is.
I would urge people who are interested in providing lukewarm opinion or shallow tepid recoil to this project (especially press) to actually interview people who’ve undergone these processes rather than simply dismiss it.
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How many other people were there/did you get to know the others while they were doing the thing?
" I did notice an increase in appetite both sexually and food-wise."
Hm this is slightly concerning. Do you have tests of testosterone both before and after? What blood tests did you do before and after?
How much heavier are you?
From Scott Alexander’s blog
Still, I think about this argument a lot. I agree he’s right about nuclear power. When it comes out in a few months, I’ll be reviewing a book that makes this same point about institutional review boards: that our fear of a tiny handful of deaths from unethical science has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths from delaying ethical and life-saving medical progress. The YIMBY movement makes a similar point about housing: we hoped to prevent harm by subjecting all new construction to a host of different reviews - environmental, cultural, equity-related - and instead we caused vast harm by creating an epidemic of homelessness and forcing the middle classes to spend increasingly unaffordable sums on rent. This pattern typifies the modern age; any attempt to restore our rightful utopian flying-car future will have to start with rejecting it as vigorously as possible.
a lot of ppl didnt see results
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I wonder if that’s because the percentage of cells that got transfected is too small or because the effect was too short lived to cause noticeable effects.
vitalia.city is next
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More on Follistatin Injections… and a new group in Dubai doing it… (perhaps?, needs to be confirmed).
Eterna:
But…
Paper:
That’s probably a fake or deliberately done photo for marketing purposes.
Fat loss requires caloric restriction.
I don’t know… the guy is pushing this image / result on Facebook too… from his official account. Eterna does seem to have some reasonably credible doctors behind it… though the guy seems to be pushing the social media marketing to 11, on the scale of 1 to 10, so yes, always be skeptical. Generally, the heavier the marketing effort, the less valid the product.
Posted Nov. 1st:
It is so fake IMO as he is truly letting his gut protrude in the first picture and look as bad as possible with the worst lighting while the other picture is the opposite. Yes the person in the right picture is leaner as well.
Could achieve the same result by eating junk food/sodium in the first picture then just dieting in the second.
Follistatin does not lead to weight loss, that is not how physics works.
I agree with what you are saying… but its not so much “fake” as exaggerated, but yes, another sign of excess marketing when a company is trying so hard to present astounding results, without testing and third party validation.
I think its still early, and these results seem likely to be greatly exaggerated, but it will be coming eventually…
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It’s such a turn off as it makes the therapy look like a scam. That marketing will probably backfire.