We should take into consideration that there are effects from medicines and supplements that don’t follow the population’s average. Just because a very serious side effect only affects 1 out of 100, it does not mean it is insignificant knowledge. On the contrary, it is very valuable, and the focus is to try and find out what that little percentage has in common so we can choose another treatment.
Same goes for a small minority who respond favorably to a treatment when the vast majority of the population does not.
“Importantly, spermidine supplementation enhances immune responses in aged mice, improving tumor cell surveillance and vaccine efficacy. While rapamycin is one of the first pharmacological interventions shown to extend the lifespan of mice, concerns about immunosuppressive side effects of rapamycin have been raised. Indeed, the first clinical indication for rapamycin was immunosuppression in the context of organ transplantation. It is tempting to speculate, yet remains to be demonstrated, that such immunosuppressive effects can be mitigated by co-administering rapamycin with spermidine, by using rapamycin in a discontinuous fashion, or by a combination of both approaches.“
Its not just Richard Miller - its a team of excellent scientists at 3 independent labs… (I think they may all have done the preliminary testing to see blood levels of spermidine). But more importantly they worked with Frank Madeo (the key researcher on Spermidine in Austria) to identify dosing and delivery strategies… so they had the input from the key proponents of spermidine.
Richards’ discussion of Spermidine (queued up in the video below):
If exogenous spermidine is useless, what about boosting endogenous production? Perhaps through providing some kind of substrate to increase production, or take something that will modify some rate limiting pathway or the like? Does the rate of spermidine production decline with age, and can that decline be slowed or prevented?
Speaking just for myself, all I do, is add a tablespoon of wheat germ to my morning cereal/mix five days a week. I know the spermidine fraction is microscopic, but as a natural food source, maybe it makes some kind of functional food difference? Because maybe isolated spermidine supplementation can’t be absorbed, but when the spermidine is present in a natural food matrix, the effect is different when consumed? But ok, I figure if the tiny bit of spermidine does nothing, then maybe other constituents of the wheat germ might be helpful, like vitamin E… and failing all of that, at least I know it provides a small fiber boost, always useful.
The other thing is that the ITP rapamycin and rapamycin+ trials did nothing to add or boost spermidine for the mice, yet they still exhibited life extension, so I’m not sure how much to stress over this.
I particularly valued the comments about the economic interests pushing commercial products. What will happen when there are no more Richard Millers who don’t have a commercial interest?
