Does anyone have a list of all longevity related drugs that can or cannot be easily split without impacting efficacy/safety? The smallest doses of some medications may contain a greater quantity of the active ingredient that some of us wish to take.
Some drugs are difficult to split due to the delivery method (auto injector pens or capsules meant to protect the drug from stomach acid). Others may be inappropriate splitting for safety reasons because the extended release and/or absorption elements can be negatively impacted.
Some of the drugs I have seen discussed include statins, bempedoic acid, ezetimibe, PCSK9 inhibitors, SLGT2 inhibitors, ARBs, CCBs, ACE inhibitors, GLP-1 agonists and PDE5 inhibitor’s (not always available in doses as small as some prefer to take). I would love to see a list of sources for the safety/efficacy of splitting many of the drugs discussed on this forum.
There are some general principles. In general pills that have special coatings that relate to time release, should not be split. Most simple pills can be. Medications like Acarbose, immediate release metformin, statins, ezetimibe, and most anti-hypertensives that are in a non extended release pill can be split. Overall a search on each item or discussion with a pharmacist is safest. There are some pills where there may be solid quality control on the total mg, but it might not have equal distribution in a pill.
Rapamycin is rather unusual. It has very low bioavailability unless protected. Rapamune has a special Elan Pharma formulation to increase its bioavailability: Rapamycin and NanoCrystal Formulations
The generic tablets from Biocon and Zydus also have some sort of coating, though its not the Elan technology. When I crush the tablets up for skin / toothpaste formulations there is some type of “film” that is left after crushing. All this leads me to believe that you don’t want to do pill splitting with the generic rapamycin tablets. I’m not sure how the nanocrystal tech from Elan/Rapamune works exactly and whether the rapamune tablets can be split.
Yes, good point - any pill with a special coating shouldn’t be split or crushed unless you’ve investigated the reason and function to the coating.
Interestingly, I think one of the problems with the compounded forms is that these are usually powder that is encapsulated. I’ve never seen any data on levels with those versus coated tablets. It would seem that staying with the commercially produced ones would be the smart move.
