New discovery could help target the causes of aging and cancer

#1

Researchers investigated and determined why somatic cells don’t have the same repair capacity as germ cells and attributed it to something called the DREAM complex which is active in somatic cells but not germ cells. Inhibiting DREAM allows for increased repair capacity. And they identified a compound, harmine, which suppresses DREAM. Harmine is a major constituent of Ayahuasca. The compound was also used for a while to treat symptoms of Parkinson’s in the first half of the 20th century. It is dangerous on overdose.

From their study:

" In vivo, harmine treatment reduced DNA damage and apoptosis in the retinas of Ercc1 −/− progeroid mice. We thus establish that pharmacologically targeting the DREAM complex could be applied to augment genome stability. We propose that the DREAM complex represses the expression of various DNA-repair mechanisms and thus limits DNA-repair capacities. Therefore, inhibition of DREAM could overcome the consequence of dysfunction in single DNA-repair systems and DNA-damage-driven aging."

Study link:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41594-023-00942-8

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#2

I saw an article on harmine 18 months ago about how it was found in a small molecule screen to be the only one that stimulated beta cell growth. No human studies. Since this is what I need, I’ve been taking harmine HCl 55-65mg/day for 5 days every 13-15 days since then. I don’t know how effective it is for my purpose, since I assume growth is slow, but it gives a very mild mental effect for about 8 hours.

Nice bonus, as described in the article.

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#3

Are you still taking Harmine? Have you found that it has positively impacted your blood glucose and/or insulin production?

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#4

I am still taking it, but I haven’t noticed any effect. I might stop soon, since 3 years of trying seems like enough.