My Lab and Fitness Results After 3 months of Rapamycin Use

[qBx123Yk]

I’m posting this so I can relate the effects of my rapamycin usage over 3 months, from October 2022 to January 2023. First, a little about me:

• I’m 41, male, black.
• I exercise 5 times a week, averaging 45 minutes per session. I do 2 sessions of weight lifting (5x5 stronglifts), and 3 sessions of cardio (steps machine, rowing) where I mostly stay under 70% of max hear rate.
• The medication I’m currently taking are: statins (10 mg/day), vitamin D (50k IU/week), B12 (3500mg/day), Omega 3 (2200 mg/day)

I signed up for the rapamycin protocol on HealthSpan, which includes a 3-month supply of rapamycin and acarbose. Based on my labs, I was given a prescription of 4 mg/week of rapamycin, and 25mg of acabose/day, to be taken with food.

Here are the test I decided to use to track health:

• complete blood panel
• lipid panel
• apoB particle count
• insulin level

For fitness, I decided to track:

• muscles fitness via a DEXA scan
• cardiovascular fitness via a device that measures pulse wave velocity on your finger
• cardiovascular fitness via resting heart rate

Blood and lipid panel results

Here are my blood labs for October

blood-work.pdf (61.5 KB)

Some observations from the blood work data:

• rapamycin doesnt seem to improve or worsen my apoB. I’m not surprised by that, statins have worked great for me
• my trigliceride numbers improved noticeably from 47 to 39 mg/dL. Maybe rapamycin is playing a role there?
• my insuling levels are down to their lowest, at 2.3 uIU/mL, this is just confirmtation that I’m indeed taking rapamycin. Tests of insulin levels can be used as a cheaper way to test your rapamycin, BTW.

The rest of the numbers don’t jump out at me, but maybe I’ve missed something. If you guys have see any changes that jump out to you, please let me know

Fitness results

In terms of cardio fitness, I haven’t found a trend to point to. My resting heart rate has been 52-53 bpm during that period. My pulse wave velocity has been around 7.5 and 9, with no clear trend either way.

For muscle fitness, my DEXA scans are below

February 2023:

vs October 2022:

To sumarize the differences:

• total body fast went from 16.8% to 17.3%
• I gained ~3 pounds in that time period
• 1.28 of it was fat
• 1.45 of it was lean mass

This is not bad, and should assuage my fear of not being able to put on lean mass.

Side effects

I tried to be document any side effects that I encountered during that period in a spreadsheet. Here they are:

And finally, just because I’m curious, let’s see what a crude biological age calculator says. These numbers on october 2022:

And these are the results with my most recent blood panels (february 2023):

So apparently a 3-month treatment of 4mg/week of rapamycin and 25mg/day acarbose shaved off 3 additional years off my phenotypic age. I don’t put much stock in these biologcial age calculators, but hopefully they’re “consistently wrong”: the delta/magnitude of change might be wrong, but the direction of the change could be useful to look at over time.

So my conclusions are:

• this dose of rapamycin doesn’t seem to worsen overall lipid levels, given the other medication that I’m also taking (statins, vitamin D, etc). This was important to me, since I don’t consider a significantly higher LDL/apoB level an acceptable tradeoff of taking rapamycin.
• tracking cardiovascular changes didn’t give me much insight over that time period.
• muscular fitness was a mixed bag: I gained weight but overalll gained more muscle mass than fat mass
• Incidentally, I don’t know how normal it is to add 1lbs of lean tissue over 3 months, lifting 2 times a week.

[John_Hemming]

If i were you i would take vitamin d daily rather than weekly - same total dose.

[qBx123Yk]

that was prescribed by my doctor, and my levels have improved. Good enough for me.

[John_Hemming]

Your choice, but you are pulsing something once a week that works better daily. Do you find sleep deteriorating in the day you take the vitamin D and then gradually improving? The body has a limit as to how fast it can convert cholecalciferol D3 into 25 hydroxy vitamin d (that measured in blood tests 25OHD)

[qBx123Yk]

Good to know about vitamin D. I can’t say that I’ve noticed any sleep changes in the day I take it.

[desertshores]

@qBx123Yk

This was important to me, since I don’t consider a significantly higher LDL/apoB level an acceptable tradeoff of taking rapamycin.

Thanks for sharing. It’s always informative to see the results of others.
I agree with you that significantly higher LDL/apoB level are not an acceptable trade off.
Some others in the forum seem to want to ignore this.

[RapAdmin]

Welcome to the site, and thanks so much for the detailed information pre and post rapamycin. Really - I wish everyone would do this! Its so helpful to others here to understand what people’s experiences are over and above just subjective feelings.

But - since you’ve posted all the good data, I have to ask… How are you feeling? Do you notice any other changes that maybe were not covered in the data?

[qBx123Yk]

Thanks! Yes, I’m pretty fond of the “N-of-one trial” idea, it helps me take an active part on my health. It also helps me temper some of my enthusiasm with pharmaceutical interventions that potentially extend lifespan.

But - since you’ve posted all the good data, I have to ask… How are you feeling? Do you notice any other changes that maybe were not covered in the data?

I’m feeling the same in general before rapamycin vs after. Aside from the side effects I posted above, I can’t say I feel any other changes. My sleep hasn’t changed much, I haven’t felt like I’ve had necessarily more energy from rapamycin either. My guess is that any improvement in healthspan has been driven mostly by diet and exercise.

I’ve decided to increase my dosage to 6mg/week starting this month, so we’ll see how things are after 3 months or so at tht dosage

[Phil_Van_Treuren]

Great post, thank you for taking the time to share real data!

[Fast70]

FYI, You’re probably taking vit D2 not the over the counter variety vit D3. The prescription dose once weekly is correct for D2. Agree with your doc.

[leo_bezhanishvili]

Thank you for sharing. Which brand of Sirolimus have you been taking?

[DeStrider]

Overall great results. Thanks for sharing and looking forward to your next report on 6 mg!

[Arhu]

@qBx123Yk

this dose of rapamycin doesn’t seem to worsen overall lipid levels, given the other medication that I’m also taking (statins, vitamin D, etc). This was important to me, since I don’t consider a significantly higher LDL/apoB level an acceptable tradeoff of taking rapamycin.

An increase in lipids actually means that the rapamycin is working

mTORC1 regulates a lysosome-dependent adaptive shift in intracellular lipid species

Finally an answer as to why rapamycin raises triglycerides? https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-022-00706-6

[Joseph]

Could someone get a PDF copy of the above linked paper and post/upload the copy?

The title is;

mTORC1 regulates a lysosome-dependent adaptive shift in intracellular lipid species

Posted link

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-022-00706-6

Thank you, Arhu

[Maveric78]

Now THIS is what we need more of… Data not anecdote.

[RapAdmin]

One of the authors of the paper shared a link on twitter that allows you to view it (the full paper):

Brendan D. Manning

Let me know if this does not work:

Paper should be at this link below:

mTORC1 regulates a lysosome-dependent adaptive shift in intracellular lipid species

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-022-00706-6.epdf?sharing_token=XI30ZM2EGunwLedKAflYxtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NIqjP5_r7Wh9CXPW5apSLqqo0IXTfF31sTM2rawNXbcLKtN3dQpUtN-IEh7NveS1DOHmmGKYG2ZkGkSuIuUCdwdRRp3KhJqywGB2MPG1MImBAGqRDUldbWsq_B9xVFSS0%3D

Brendan D. Manning

Brendan D. Manning

[24Kerrit]

Thanks for taking the time to chart and share all this information!

[desertshores]

@Arhu

An increase in lipids actually means that the rapamycin is working

That may be but it still does not make high TG levels ok.
The elevation of TG levels seems to be dose-dependent. It certainly seemed to in my case.
I think, because the majority of evidence indicates high TG levels are bad for your health, we should either adjust the dose or take other measures to keep TG levels in the “lab normal” range.

“Both fasting and nonfasting TG levels associate with CVD risk. In a European population, 27% of adults had nonfasting TGs greater than 176 mg/dL, a level that was associated with an approximately 1.9-fold increase in risk of CVD”

https://www.jci.org/articles/view/148559

[RapAdmin]

@desertshores

That may be but it still does not make high TG levels ok.

This has been discussed ad-nauseam in this thread, which I recommend people read if interested: Rapamycin and risk of cardiovascular disease

[desertshores]

@RapAdmin

This has been discussed ad-nauseam in this thread

True, but it obviously unsettled. My main point of contention is: People taking rapamycin are using it to justify high lipid levels.