What are people’s opinion on fasting when taking rapamycin?
I think it is a good idea as it encourages more autophagy and in theory potentially clearing out more inefficient mitochondria as the probability of mitophagy increases.
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I agree with John - its probably a good idea, and will increase autophagy. It also increases mTORC2 activation, which research suggests helps with longevity, see here: UCLA study links fasting to mitochondrial splitting and mTORC2 Activation (UCLA)
The issue however, is we really have no idea what the optimal level of autophagy is, whether taking rapamycin and doing fasting gets us closer to the to the optimal, or not. Generally though, since in the rodent studies they typically dose much higher on the rapamycin that we do, it seems likely to me that the optimal level of autophagy is likely much higher than most of us are getting to with typical 5mg to 10mg once per week rapamycin dosing.
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Opinions are mixed because nobody knows for certain. I’m of the opinion that taking rapamycin during fasting is largly a waste because mTORC1 will already be low when fasting so rapamycin is unlikely to lower it further. If there are benefits of fasting when taking it I think it’s mainly because fasting will help prevent the reduction in mTORC2. But since mTORC2 inhibition is a long term thing that happens with chronic use, not something that happens in the firs days, I don’t think you would need to fast at the same time you take the rapamycin to get the benefits of increasing mTORC2. I think you would get the same benefits if taking it on other days. Also there are some individuals that experience clear worsening of blood glucose around the days they take rapamycin. For these pepole, fasting, or eating less on dosing days, could be beneficial for preventing that.
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