Rapamycin and Cholesterol Levels? Any impact for you?

That’s a possibility. As I said I will be getting more frequent tests to determine the cause and effect.

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What were the side effects you were looking for? I myself have had zero even at 20mg. In fact nothing noted of interest on blood test? Went back down to 6mg. (BTW my first Rapa pills were USA prescription) now I get them overseas.

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As you can see from the chart: I had 3 tests during the eight-month period I when I was taking rapamycin

I was following Mikhail V. Blagosklonny’s ( “MD/PhD. Professor of Oncology In Search of Immortality. Theory of Aging, Anti-aging interventions, Rapamycin, mTOR, Life extension”)
suggestion of increasing the dose until you start seeing adverse side effects. I really didn’t know exactly what to look for. I reached the adverse side effect dose when I took 20 mg of rapamycin along with pre-loading grapefruit juice and with olive oil. For a few days after taking this dose, I experienced mild diarrhea. It wasn’t until later that I became aware that it might be raising my cholesterol levels.

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I saw a significant increase in triglyceride and LDL cholesterol levels after 3 months on rapamycin pushing me out of the “good/normal” range and into elevated. There seems to be a lot of data out there that shows this is a fairly common response:

It is not something that I am willing to ignore and after a browse of personal experiences here and the literature I’ve started taking 1g of citrus bergamot in addition to my usual daily niacin intake.

I am glad to have heeded @RapAdmin advice and taken a baseline blood test before and 3 months after. We really have no clear idea what level if any of rapamycin is good for longevity in humans and it’s likely to be highly variable. All you can do is start slow and consistently measure. Adding additional interventions, reducing dose or stop if markers are going in the wrong direction.

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Exactly! When I was doing 6mg to 12 mg…I had excellent biological age results when I tested… for 1.5 years.

When I upped my dose by 6x’s with GFJ to approximately 36 mg - 38 mg for 7 months, I lost some of that anti-aging benefit.

I reduced back to 6mg to 12 mg for 4 months… the better biological benefits returned.

Here are my GlycanAge and TruMe tests over the past 2.5 + years. You can see the faster aging spike. That was at the period of higher dosing.

Cautionary tale… too much can not be as beneficial. You can only know what is happening thru regular testing.

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If you’re like me you’ve gone down the Taurine rabbit hole since the science came out. Well it turns out Taurine is good for cholesterol too!

The effect of taurine on cholesterol metabolism


Abstract

The elevated plasma cholesterol level, in particular, LDL cholesterol is regarded as an important risk factor for the development of atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease. A number of studies provide the evidence that taurine has the efficient action to reduce plasma and liver cholesterol concentrations, especially to decrease VLDL and LDL cholesterol in hypercholesterolemia animal induced by high cholesterol diet. Cholesterol lowering effect of taurine is actually involved in the regulatory mechanism of cholesterol and bile acid homeostasis that mediated by CYP7A1, which has become a biomarker for cholesterol metabolism and itself is also regulated by several factors and nuclear receptors. This review summarizes the change of cholesterol concentration in metabolism observed in feeding studies of hypercholesterolemia animal dealing with taurine, and then, addresses the possible metabolic and molecular mechanisms of cholesterol lowering effect by taurine in three aspects, cholesterol clearance from blood circulation, bioconversion of cholesterol to bile acid in liver, and excretion of cholesterol and bile acid from intestine.

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My cholesterol went down to almost half while taking Rapamycin weekly. Just changed my diet and exercised and did lots of intermittent fasting and lost a few pounds. I’m not saying Rapamycin can’t cause elevated cholesterol (it’s listed in the side effects) but in my experience it’s possible to lower cholesterol without statins while still taking Rapamycin weekly through lifestyle changes. Try lowering your dose and make some lifestyle changes. See if that works.

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Fwiw I once went through a period of taking thyroid hormone T3 (long story) purchased from Mexico. I didn’t notice any effects, but when I got my normally high lipid levels tested they had TANKED - all below reference and LDL severely so. My TSH (which is not really a thyroid hormone though it’s usually called that) was close to zero - not surprising since in the presence of excess T3 it wasn’t needed. Because T3 is essential for converting cholesterol to other compounds, it likely used up my available lipids - impacting from the “demand” side instead of the “supply” side like statins do.

I’m very suspicious of statins, though granted I haven’t looked into them for a while. With high cholesterol now I’ll look into them again - and also might look into more careful thyroid use.

Just started Rapamycin, and it’s too soon to tell if it has impacted any numbers.

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Just had my yearly physical (first one after about 7 months of using rapa at about 6mg/week). LDL was up to 3.01 mmol/L vs previous 2.52 mmol/L (and I was already on statins). Dr asked if I had any “lifestyle changes” which I haven’t. He doubled my statin dose. Reconsidering my use of rapa at this point.

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I went to every 2 weeks and that problem went away. Blood sugar problems persist. I’m keto and the morning fasting glucose is really hard to keep down.

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I have been on rapamycin for 2 years - highest dose was 10mg once a week, but decided to decrease since my cholesterol and LDL has been on a steady rise. The latest test while on 4mg a week showed 209 cholesterol, 133 LDL, 113 ApoB! I am 37, I eat a diet very heavy in vegetables, mono and poly fats, I am bordering on underweight, fit… Before rapa, cholesterol was always in 160s, LDL in the 80s.
Quite concerned about this to say the least

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Me too Milly. There are so many arguments about cholesterol and Rapa dose and I don’t think anybody has a great answer there. I am 63 and have had high LDL, in the 160-180 range for years and now I have a bad CAC (400). I think the damage was probably started before I started Rapa and went Keto (now more like very low carb). My Apo B is in the 90 area and triglycerides are low too because they come from carbs.

If I could go back in time I would never eat any corn chips, or any grain chips of any kind ever and would go low carb sooner, mostly avoiding all added sugar and flours.

I do Rapa bi weekly because it gives your body a longer rest and I think that helps. I use grapefruit juice because it’s so much cheaper, using 3 mg (x 4 probably) so now probably 12mg every 2 weeks. I use acarbose because it helps increase mtor2, be careful if you use any wheat otherwise a great supplement. Since I have backed down from 5…to 4… now finally 3mg/2weeks my numbers are finally reasonable. It’s possible they’re reasonable because of the cyclodextrins I’m using too. I can’t help it I’m completely sold on the cyclodextrins.

Good luck,

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Not a bad idea but you should’ve replaced them with chicken breast and olive oil.

Thanks for mentioning that. I must have missed the previous posts where that was discussed…

" Though Acarbose does other things… I’ve seen reports it increases mTOR2, which is good for lifespan enhancement, see this new paper: New Paper: Targeting the Biology of Aging with mTOR inhibitors

and it changes the gut microbiome…"

Are there any studies that found an mTOR2 increase resulting from acarbose? I couldn’t find any.

Yeah with 113 apoB that rapa is going to be useless. I’d look into lowering dose as you are and adding cholesterol lowering medication(s), like statins, ezetimibe, bempedoic acid or pcsk9 inhibitor. Also lifestyle changes like the Mediterranean diet or at least decreasing saturated fat.

For every increase in 20 mg/dl you should see about a twice increase in heart attack risk from 70 mg/dl. Probably half the risk at even lower apoB. It’ll probably half so much it’ll go to zero pretty much at low enough apoB, neonatal apoB levels, unless you live to 200 and the exposure to apoB has accumulated enough.

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At the age of 37 i would look at a big reduction in frequency to perhaps every 6 months.

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I have just started rapamycin. I got my (non-fasting) cholesterol tested last month:

Total cholesterol: 2.69mmol/l (104mg/dl)
HDL cholesterol: 0.75mmol/l (29mg/dl)
LDL cholesterol: 1.14mmol/l (44mg/dl)
Triglycerides : 1.74mmol/l (154mg/dl)
edit ng/dl to mg/dl

Converted to mg/dl using an online tool with rounding so hopefully no mistakes.

I am not on any cholesterol lowering medication and will retest in 6 months or so and update on here.

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Thanks, yes it should, I’m not familiar with the US units