Rapamycin and Exercise: any Muscle inhibition?

I find Peter Attia’s information valuable as I’ve refined my exercise program that is balanced between strength/weight training, cardio / zone 2 training (biking, rowing machine, running, etc.)…

See this podcast:

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If you’re above a certain fitness level, it’s hard to make progress in aerobic and anaerobic simultaneously. Some of these adaptations are in tension with each other. I suggest working in 8 or 12 week blocks where you focus on one system but do just enough of the other to maintain it. For example, focus on cardiac output by increasing that to 4 or 5 days per week, with only 1 or 2 for strength maintenance, and even that at a lower volume. Then switch to strength 3 or 4 days per week and cardio only 2 days for maintenance.

Your programming within the week also matters. Standard would be to have two stress-recovery cycles per week, with light, medium and heavy days (in terms of stress/volume/intensity, not weight), plus one active recovery day. But programming is an extremely deep topic and depends on a lot of variables.

As for Layne, I enjoyed his episode on Peter Attia, and I follow him on Twitter, but I’m not familiar with his protocols. His love of carbs puts him in a different philosophical camp from me. I enjoy listening to the other side, but it doesn’t make me gravitate to his methods.

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I’ve actually listened to this podcast and found it very good just wanted other perspectives especially the people on this forum

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Do you have any good references ?
Also this is Lanyes PHAT

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Also I wanted to ask in regards to blood work. Do you go through a lab specifically? Or do you ask your doctor to get the lab work done?
I ask because the longevity doctor I was planning on working with does blood work via LabCorp and its around 450$
It would include

  • CBC with Diff
  • Metabolic Panel Comprehensive
  • Ferritin
  • Lipid Panel
  • Testosterone free and total
  • DHT (dihydrotestosterone)
  • Luteinizing hormone
  • Estradiol
  • DHEA
  • IGF-1
  • PSA
  • Thyroid Panel TSH, T4
  • T3
  • Cardio CRP
  • Homocysteine
  • Cortisol AM
  • Fasting Insulin
  • Vitamin D
  • HgAIc
  • Urinalysis

But I was wondering if this is something I could get done via my primary care doctor and save some money or anyone has done this through other methods?

I think you’ll get a range of responses here… if a person is seeing a longevity-focused doctor then they may get the tests as part of the service from that doctor. But even then - they may not see you that regularly and they may not do that much blood testing other than the annual physical / testing.

Many of us here like to see more regular and frequent blood test results to track progress (or not). There are some great inexpensive tests for CBC , C-reactive protein (high resolution) that are quite cheap, from LifeExtension.com (working with Labcorp) - and this is very helpful for identifying / calculating Levine Phenotypic Age, or Aging.ai numbers. I try to do this at least every 3 months or so to track progress and see results to any changes in my longevity protocol.

See more discussion here on Blood Tests.

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I’d ask your family doc to do as much of it as he/she is willing so that as much as possible will be covered by insurance (assuming you live in USA or country where this is how it works, anyway). Some of the blood work might be a stretch if you aren’t having symptoms and/or history of a medical condition (the health care provider needs to put down a diagnosis code/codes to justify why insurance should pay for the indicated lab work, otherwise insurance might deny it). Seems reasonable for a primary care provider to order a CBC/CMP/Lipid Panel/TSH/CRP, maybe more if there’s reason to order more (symptoms of low testosterone, etc).
Given the experimental nature of current anti-aging therapies, are you sure you want to do all this at the age of 24? If I were 24, I’d eat a whole foods plant based diet, stay lean, get plenty of exercise and wait for more research :grin:

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Sounds good thanks, He would also do quarterly labs as well. So It would be consistent testing, I just didn’t know if there were other/cheaper alternatives out there.

Haha, I actually was just thinking about working with him in terms of preventative medicine less so than the anti aging aspect. He could provide rapamycin which I could use for my dog. He also could help me with other longevity medications , but in reality I told him that I didn’t want to start any of the aging medications until I was older. I just wanted someone who could help me get good blood work done for a relatively cheap price and also be able to provide medications if need be. I don’t know if I will actually go through with it yet as it is expensive, but I just figured it wouldnt be a bad idea to get some of the stuff started so I can have a track record of my health and then go from there

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Thats a great idea. I recommend you check out these videos by Mike Lustgarten on his blood testing to help you develop a strategy for tracking this… I would love to have regular blood test data (and physiological test data like VO2Max, etc.) from age 20+… it would be great to track and manage.

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I will check him out!
any video you recommend I start with first?
Also do You think it would be easier/better to just go through Life extension lab testing they offer? Or go through this longevity doctor?
Like I said I am just trying to establish health markers for myself as I am not going to start rapamycin or anything just yet(although last time I did blood work i did have a high fasting blood glucose(97-99 range) idk if it would be good to get things to combat that_) I also have a high resting heart rate, but that might be due to having caffeine in the mornings and usually going to the doctor in the mornings

A good starter video is this on:

I’m all about getting the best value for your money … so yes, the Life Extension lab tests are really cheap and a good value. I think about $45 for the CBC and another $35 or so for the CRP hs test.

You might also look at getting some sort of Fitbit like device (tracking resting heart rate, HRV, sleep, etc.) and a blood glucose monitor (just a cheap finger prick one that has bluetooth and an app - to monitor your fasting blood glucose levels. These are important, and your fasting blood glucose levels seem too high for a 24 year old. My range is in the 90 to 95 measures and I’m twice your age.

Something like this for blood glucose monitoring:

and I would go occasionally to a exercise physiology lab at a local university to get tested with VO2Max, Dexa scan for muscle / fat levels, etc.

for example something like this - at UCSF:

These are slowly opening up again after Covid.

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Yeah I actually have a glucose self prick device that I use. Any advice on how to lower it? I havent checked in awhile as I have felt good and eat healthy. I should probably start checking it more often. But if it continues to be high how should I go about combating it? I do not have a history of diabetes or anything and I am very active.
In terms of monitoring sleep ,
I am actually a PhD student who is doing research on sleep and most of those devices arent good for sleep monitoring. I used to use them and I had good sleep but again those devices unfortunately are not very accurate.
I will see if my primary doctor will do the blood tests first and then go through life extension for any tests I didnt get done.
Any thing else you think I should start tracking/doing around my age?

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On blood glucose - I think the typical suggestions are lower carb diet, higher fiber, regular exercise and good sleep. Other than that I’m not sure.

On sleep monitoring devices - yes, there are many that are unreliable and I’m not sure if any are really good. who reviews the reviewers? Not sure if this is worth the digital bits its printed on :wink:

There was a French / San Francisco sleep focused startup called Dreem that had a really good monitor - but I think they are now focused more on the commercial (no longer the consumer) markets. You can pick up their consumer devices more cheaply on used places - [e.g. ebay], but probably overkill for you, but perhaps good for your academic work… (Dreem Sleep Exclusive Edition Monitoring Headband Sleep Aid EEG P | eBay).

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Do you use any excel spreadsheets or data tracking for your exercise schedule? So you could look back on it down the line?
If so, do you have an example I could use?
I usually journal everything, but I was wondering if there was some data base that could be used to track exercises/blood work/sleep/performance values/etc.

No, sorry. I have been looking for a good app to do this but no luck yet.

I use Morpheus, which is Joel’s biosensor. It tells me how recovered I am every day and tracks my daily morning resting hear rate, HRV and recovery. You can export it all to spreadsheets if you want.

If you do sports where you can wear a chest or wrist strap, it’ll also track your exercise–but with BJJ I can’t wear any hard plastic, so I don’t use it to its full function. I just like to know how recovered I am. I don’t change my BJJ, but will add or subtract supplemental strength and cardio sessions based on my recovery score.

https://trainwithmorpheus.com/

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I use Strava for my endurance sessions, Oura ring for my health metrics and also have an Excel document to summarise. The latter goes back to 2013 and has body weight for every day.

Btw, not many have spoken about weight loss on Rapa here but mine has been quite dramatic (and from a ‘lowish’ starting BMI of 23).

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Interesting. Seven weeks in and I’ve had no weight loss at all.

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Then what all do you track and how do you track it. I was watching Dr. Lustgarten’s videos and I know he has talked about some of his exercise performance values when he has changed in blood biomarkers. But I was just curious what you feel is important to track and keep a log of?

I also thought about doing something with what exercises I was doing at the time of the blood work somewhere( I usually put it in my journal, but I might switch to a word document or something), so that way I can go back in time and see what helped with what, But i am not sure if that would be over doing it. I really do not like tracking a bunch of things as there was a good book by Brian Mackenzie called Unplugged

that talked about a lot of issues that comes when you are constantly tracking every health marker.