Hi, I am a new rapamycin user. Have been on a low dose, 2 mg every 7-9 days due to oral apthous ulcers limiting my ability to increase my dose. I had routine labs checked today by my primary care. I did a Levine phenoage prior to starting as I had my lab values within 9 months of starting rapa. I am 59. I have been on it for 3 months. My ptypic age was -6.83 and DNAm age -7.57 so not bad at start. I figure anything less than my actual age is good news.
Today I ran the excel spreadsheet again with my latest labs.
Ptypic age -11.38 DNAmage -11.96
Can this be real? I saw there are updated Levine coefficients however in this case I am comparing apples to apples before and after 3 months of rapa. 4 years reduction in both. Can this be due to chance? Seems too dramatic a change for such a small dose and during such a short period of treatment.
Rapamycin guru’s is this real? Is this a cause to celebrate? Honestly I am quite surprised but ultimately skeptical.
Congrats… for me 3 months was just right for changes in inflammation… visceral fat loss and arthritis reduction.
After a year’s use of rapamycin…at 62 years… I went from Levin score pre- rapamycin 67 years… tested biologically 5 years older… sucks… after one year on rapamycin testing at 50 years. Drastic change of 17 years.
TruMe tested 13 years younger DNA at 50 years biologically… DNA METHYLATION and 42 years biologically using GlycanAge.
I would be cautious interpreting this, because your calculated PhenoAge can vary quite a bit based on a few blood test values. For example RDW, which often varies between blood tests, has 3 times the weight of CRP and 4 times the weight of your chronological age. A change in RDW (it’s the standard deviation of red blood cell width) that’s just due to “sampling effects” can alter your PhenoAge by several years.
Its possible, and its a good sign, but don’t put too much faith in the current generation of bio clocks. I think they are probably right directionally, but not very precise. Please test again in another 3 or 4 months and report back. Is would be interesting to see the trend line, and find out if it continues down or plateaus.
With respect to the validity of your change score, setting aside the question of whether or not it correlates highly with actual longevity, the answer rests on the statistical error term(s) in the metric. If the test/retest reliability statistic is, say, 95% of cases +/- 5 years, then the difference you observed would be more likely to chance (random, as it were) than anything else. And so on down the line. Perhaps the company will give you the test/retest data, if they have it.
With respect to whether the test metric correlates more highly with actual longevity than simple predictive models, I am skeptical and more inclined to think that it will not.
He’s using, as many of us are, the free Levine phenotypic calculations that came out of Yale research. Search here on the website and you will find the spreadsheet and research paper behind it.
What metric do you use to determine if your intervention with rapamycin is making a difference? I know there are many out there but assumably there must be some metric that everyone is using…
My albumin got higher, creatinine lower, glucose lower, lymphocytes higher, RDW a slight bit higher. I have to look at the latest info because I did see the weight of certain labs have changed but because I did both with old Levine I thought it could be significant. For reference also I have significant improved from 10 years ago where my pheno age was -1.5 and DNA methylation age was a little under -2.0. Major difference in hsCRP from then to now… so in any case I am going significantly in the right direction
Is it the case that the primary or even the sole reason to think rapamycin might be extending our life- or healthspan is that it has done so in lower life forms?
Agree but do we have even that @John_Hemming? Has a person taken taken rapamycin for a period of time and eventually died at a time later than would have been projected in the absence of rapamycin? This would be weak but at least some evidence.
Subjectively, I think I felt better for a brief period of time but other factors can always account for that I suppose. But most of my metrics were already good and the one area that was not (borderline HBA1C) is not said to be improved by rapamycin.
On the other side of this, it is reasonable to think, for example, that demonstrated improvements in some immune functions might contribute to longevity in many but not all cases.
I think for healthspan we do have it anecdotally. We also have a lot of information about people who have had transplants and take rapamycin.
In the end we need to do a risk reward calculation. We know the risk (of harm) is really rather low. The reward is not so certain, but does appear to be there.
This is the fundamental problem with all longevity / aging interventions right now (and the entire longevity biotech industry, such as it is); there is no simple, agreed upon, inexpensive metric to measure aging or the positive impact of these longevity drugs. Its definitely a work in process right now.
But none of these really do what we want to at the granularity that we need. The Teal organ aging clock looks interesting, but again, its likely going to be too expensive to use on a regular basis: Teal Proteomics 2024 launch - Organ Specific Biological Clock
In the end we are looking for functional tests. I think the meaning of DNA methlation is a frequency of gene expression. Genes that are less frequently expressed get more methylated.
However, things like maintaining muscle and bone strength are key priorities as is improving glucose processing.
These can be tested through approaches such as the stand to sit test.
