Rapamycin and risk of cardiovascular disease

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#730

There is a basic problem with diets. Can you stay on the diet?

If you don’t like the diet, you probably won’t stay on it very long.

There are some basic problems because of cultural differences.

I am of northern European descent. I was born in 1941 during WWII.

I won’t bother you with details, but we ate a lot of deer, pheasant, duck, and a few other wild game types, so I was raised as a carnivore. Fresh vegetables were in short supply and we mostly ate canned vegetables.

The Okinawan diet may be great, but is not one I could enjoy.

Foods I don’t particularly like:

Salmon and most fish

Salads

Vegetables.

Fortunately or unfortunately this is the diet I can live with.

I mostly eat:

Chicken, beef, and shrimp

Broccoli, carrots, asparagus

Pineapple, cantaloupe

Lactaid whole milk,

Oat bran meal, with walnuts and blueberries (I eat a lot of blueberries and walnuts)

Protein shakes

Dark chocolate

Lots of coffee

Of course, there are other foods, but in small quantities.

Foods I would love to eat but don’t, except during the holiday, season, birthday parties, etc:

Cheesecake, ice cream, pies, croissants, freshly, baked bread, blueberry muffins, etc.

So, I use supplements to try to compensate for my dietary shortcomings

I have enjoyed a healthy life so far and have never spent a night in a hospital, I was born in a farmhouse, so not even then.

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#731

I think your diet is very good actually. You could add some flax to your oat bran like I do for additional omega3’s since you don’t like salmon.

#732

To be clear, I’m not saying everyone should eat like Okinawans - frankly, your diet doesn’t seem to have much shortcomings at all, when compared to Standard American Diet - it’s much better. I suppose you could talk to your doc about acarbose or the like for seasonal events - but that’s more of risk tolerance when it comes to classic desserts.

The main reason I was fascinated with Okinawan diets many years ago were they seemed to be the odd one out - very high carb with significant simple sugars intake - until I really dug deep upon closer inspection. That’s also on top of the use of so many different possible nutraceuticals with pharmaceutical effects demonstrated in vitro and in vivo. Particularly when already tested for such a long time over so many people.

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#733

What are their simple sugars?

#734

Curious - is ALA omega 3 intake really worth to modify a diet when it comes to bioavailability issues?

#735

Well as mentioned - there’s a large amount of sucrose in the purple sweet potato. There’s a few others - one literally being a sugarcane product - uuji - which is basically used for brown sugar and bagasse.

It got my head scratching frankly when I saw little kids drinking sugarcane juice literally - they said it was for digestion - which aligns somewhat with traditional Chinese medicine dietary approaches.

Not to mention, my SO is very fond of sugar (i.e. milkshakes, cheesecakes, ice cream) and hamburgers. I was trying to help her find a palatable substitute while slowly weaning down to have her taste slowly adjust. I figured it’s still possible to eat some sugar in a different way (for health reasons) instead of entirely giving up on it (which she hit some barriers to adherence) or resorting to non-caloric sweeteners if there was something unique in the diet that Okinawans were doing (very high carb with significant amounts of sugar), not yet described in the literature.

Personally, I’m used to eating almost no added sugar in my diet throughout childhood and life as that was just how my family cooks meals - this may seem weird to some - but even a small amount of frosting would literally make me feel like puking. I don’t eat fruits with the most sugar merely out of habit. And much lower sugar in desserts is very common throughout Asian areas due to differences in palate. It’s usually not extensive in the menu. Breakfast in Asia is not like the “dessert breakfast” here in the US.

#736

A comprehensive summary of the benefits of flax. I take 4 tbls a day.

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#737

Haha. We’ll , I would guess that the fiber in the sweet potato may negate the sucrose, at least somewhat.
The drink, uuji, is certainly interesting.

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#738

BTW, you might be interested in looking into Texas fullblood Wagyu beef (just make sure the genetics are 100%, there’s some mislabelling issues with halfbloods), especially some use microalgae/seaweed added to diet to bump up EPA/DHA (some seaweed also happen to drastically cut cattle methane emissions anywhere between 82-99%)

It has much higher levels of famed oleic acid (in olive oil), omega-3’s, CLA, etc.

Not quite the same as A5 Japanese Wagyu - but it’s close enough for a lot better pricing.

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#739

“Texas fullblood Wagyu beef”
Unfortunately, not available in the stores I normally shop in.
I normally buy Angus prime beef just because is usually more tender.
I will take a look at Wholefoods Market. I don’t usually shop there because the prices of the exact item I can find in other markets are much higher.

#740

Oh Wagyu is not just more tender - it’s melt in your mouth texture. There are plenty of farms and websites out there that will deliver to door with dry ice overnight.

Plus, if you’re taking olive oil for oleic acid and olive oil fraud (something like 70-80% fake) is in the back of your mind - you’d probably save a bunch - especially if you find the fattiest cheap cuts/tongue/organs (although it seems like some people have caught on to it already as the price is going up - but the less popular parts can be almost comparable to Angus prices)

#741

We’ve discussed the value of CAC scores and its prognostic implications but abdominal aortic calcification occurs even sooner than in the coronary arteries and is also highly prognostic not only for CV events, but for AD as well.

It’s easy to screen for it with just an abdominal ultrasound. No big deal.

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#742

Something also to keep in mind - association of ED to CVD risk with 3-5 years preceding - while Viagra for ED might help the heart :wink:

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#743

Yeah. Very significant when you consider the population studied.
Almost certainly due to systemic increases in endothelial nitric oxide content.

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#744

In support of my position that we don’t need to overreact to metabolic changes induced by rapamycin, ie. glucose/ lipids, this article demonstrates that it’s only a matter of rapamycin duration.
At 2-4 weeks mice do indeed have insulin resistance and an elevation of lipids . By week 20 these effects not only stop, but are reversed, due to insulin sensitivity and a change in energy dynamics . Fatty acid burning replaces glucose. Basically reverting into more of a ketogenic state.

https://www.aging-us.com/article/100554/pdf

A similar improvement was seen over time in marmoset monkeys as well.

So maybe patience is more appropriate than side effect inducing interventions.

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#745

“Benevolent pseudo-diabetes”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41419-019-2007-1

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#746

Thanks tong. Nice article and it refreshes my memory.

While many of the readers here may appreciate the concept of pseudo diabetes, I doubt that it’s the case in the general public, and it may not be the case with most MD’s. What do you think?

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#747

My guess is yes.

But I can’t assume which is right either, since there are a lot of things pointing in different directions.

I’m not married to the concept - I can see the rationale to treat sx with metformin/acarbose and it seems to work synergistically to an extent in animals - but I wonder how much is due to what, since there are too many overlapping and indirect targets.

Would be nice to test PCSK9 loss-of-function or PCSK9 inhibitor with rapamycin, since rapamycin appears to increase the expression of PCSK9. We already have some with transplant folks on them for some clues.

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#748

Agreed, we saw a similar effect in the Everolimus trial…an initial steep dysregulation, and then a slow trending to steady state…42 DAYS!

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#749

The initial premise of this post was that rapamycin should be protective against atherosclerosis, and possibly even reverse it, even in the presence of a lipid elevation. There are multiple theoretical reasons for this supposition including a reduction of cholesterol in the arterial walls, reduction of foam cell formation, and inhibition of intimal proliferation.

In this study recently posted by Blagosklonny, we see an actual reversal in carotid atherosclerosis in human subjects on 2 mg’s per day doses over 12 months. This wasn’t dependent upon cholesterol lowering interventions.

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