My Rapamycin Journey log

Hi all,

I haven’t introduced myself in a separate topic, so I will take the opportunity to let those interested know that I am currently investigating and planning on starting a journey into weekly rapa dosage.

I already posted in a separate thread that I ordered from India, 500 mg of Rapacan, at a very good price, even too good to be true, so I hope I did not got scammed. I will update that post with replies once I will have some more updates.

Some details about me and my history:
I am a male, born in 1985, 37 at the time of this writing, 69-70kg, 176cm. I weight train 3 times a week, walk around 10k steps almost every day, hike and backpack the mountains almost every weekend. I do consider myself healthy, but I do indulge in some bad behaviour once in a while, and I have a tendency to do so towards sweet side of things. I don’t drink alcohol, unless is a special occasion like new years or my birthday or something along those lines. Roughly a beer or two every quarter.

I have been taking blood measurements of a lot of markers, for the last 5 years, roughly every 6 months. I was on a keto journey for about 3 years, starting in 2017 and ended it in the beginning of 2020. This was a bad experiment from a lipid panel point of view (and a psychological one as it lead to some binging disorder - but this is a story for another time), as my LDL was constantly above 200 mg/dl, although trigs were low, under 80 mg/dl and also good improvement in HDL.

I had a CAC score of 0 in Dec 2017, and planning to retake the test later this year. Curious to see if 3 years of keto caused any damage or not from a perspective of calcium deposition inside the lumen. I have ApoE 3/3 alleles and my Lp(a) of around 6.5, measured for 7 times in the course of 2 years.

My hsCRP is low as well

Since giving up keto, I have been trying to lower my LDL and ApoB with diet and exercise and I was successful to some extend, but at the beginning of Sept, after my last blood draw, I started taking a low daily dose of 2.5 mg rosuvastatin combined with 5 mg ezetimibe.

Here are my LDL and ApoB results prior starting statin intervention mentioned above.


I do have some sdLDL measurements taken as well, but this measurement is rather expensive and I am not doing it for every draw.

I will retake the lipid profile after 3-4 months of statin and prior starting rapa journey.

I have calculated my DNAm age using the data from last blood daw on 31 Aug 2022, with the exception of Albumin, as I forgot to add it the list and I used the last Albumin I had from August 2021. Not sure how much it will affect the result. Also, my lab threshold for CRP is 0.3, anything lower than that is marked as <0.3, therefore I used 0.3 as CRP value as my true value is below the threshold.


I am super happy with this result, but again Albumin was not tested and I used a one year old value.

Glucose and insulin are looking okish… I would like to see my insulin lower than it was for the past year, but I guess I have been eating more carbs and sugar since trying to keep fat and sat fat low to reduce my LDL/ApoB


I recall reading somewhere that insulin is pulsatile and C-peptide might be a better use for calculating HOMA-IR, but sadly I could not find a good calculator for insulin resistance using C-peptide (except HOMA2 from Oxford, but I dont have a good understanding on how to interpret those results). In any case, C-peptide is more stable compared to insulin

Now back to rapa
If you are still here and not bored to death already, I thank you for that.

I will relay my plan here for taking rapa and I will update with every new change of plan or new result.

My target start date is beginning of 2023, somewhere in Jan, assuming that the pills will arrive until then and after I would have taken another blood draw with a very comprehensive panel. If you have any suggestions on something that I need to measure, please let me know and I will include it in my list, assuming it is not overly expensive.

I will start with 1mg/week taken with a fatty small meal like avocado or sardines with olive oil or something along these lines and increase by 1mg/week until I reach my 6mg or 7mg target dose. That would be between 0.085-0.1mg/kg/week.

PS: all charts results start on 14 Jan 2020 and end on 31 Aug 2022, with various measurements in between. I highlighted the first date and value of the analysis by moving my courser over the point to help understand when it was first taken. The green section of the chart is the lab reference value.

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I therms of supplements, at the moment I don’t take much:

  • 1 per day Nordic Naturals Omega-3 1280mg
  • 1-2 per week Solgar Magnesium Citrate 400mg
  • 1 per week Solgar Male Multiple Tablets
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Thank you for such a detailed profile. It’s very informative.

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Really great post and thanks for sharing! Keep us updated who everything goes :pray:

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Thank you all for your kind replies and love for this log.

I forgot to add that I tested HBA1C as well, and it ties into my feeling that insulin is a bit high, since the result of HBA1C is within limits, but on the higher side

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As part as my pre rapa baseline tests, I have done a Dxa scan. I was curious about my fat percent, but I found out instead that my overall bone density is below average with both T and Z scores of -0.8. The normal is considered above -1.

I will have to improve this as well, but I dont know yet how or if this is possible. Coincidently, Attia just released on Monday an AMA about dxa, but since I dont have a subscription, I can not deep dive into the podcast.

If any of you has more knowledge about these scans and would like to see the report, I can upload it.

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Thanks for sharing your data.

For bone density, you can try supplementing vitamin D and vitamin K2. Vitamin D increases calcium absorption and vitamin K2 sends calcium into bones. So you need both. What’s your blood level of vitamin D? Dr. Rhonda Patrick believes that the optimal level is 40 - 60. Every 1000 IU of vitamin D supplement increases blood level by 5.

I take vitamin K2 in 2 forms: MK4 and MK7. 100mcg per day. I alternate the two forms.

You can also supplement collagen and vitamin C for bone health. Collagen is a major component of bones. That’s why bone broth has a lot of collagen. Vitamin C is required for building collagen.

By the way, what’s your body fat %? If you lower your body fat %, you will be more insulin sensitive and so your fasting insulin and HbA1c will improve. I think for men, the optimal body fat % is less than 13%. Just as a reference, Paul Saladino and Michael Lustgarten (both can be found on YouTube), are very lean, low teen body fat %, and their fasting insulin are in the low 3s. You can also check out Jessie Inchauspe’s (aka Glucose Goddess) hacks for minimizing glucose spikes, which can help to improve your insulin and HbA1c. In addition, if you lower your body fat %, you’ll also likely see a reduction in your VLDL and LDL numbers.

Lastly, CAC is not a good test to measure the progression of atherosclerosis because it does not pick up plaques that do not have calcium in them. Only the very advanced plaques have calcium. A better test would be carotid intima media thickness test (CIMT).

If you want to implement these measures, you may want to do them before starting Rapa and give yourself some time to see any impact, so that you can distinguish the effects from these measures vs. Rapa.

Keep us posted on how you do.

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Thank you for your input.

Since I got the DXA result, I has a visit to my endocrinologist and she sent me for another DXA scan to another clinic, just for safe measure, so we can confirm the result. She does not trust the current scan, given my medical and family history. Along with that she sent me to a complete hormonal panel, including vit D.

Last time I have tested Vit D was in 2020, when I was initially above the normal value and normal some months after

I started taking 4000UI vit D, no K2 yes, but will add that. If you can recommend a brand, I appreciate it.

I do take collagen for a knee pain for 5 months and I have another 2 or 3 to go. Probably I will extend even more given this bone density issue. This is what I currently take https://www.ch-alpha.de/

My body fat is 16% according to the dxa scan, which put me at a T of -0.7 and Z of -1.2. I dont deny others have lower body fat, but I feel like I have troubles maintaining this level as well. I feel hungry a lot of days, with some days very very hungry. My focus is to increase my lean mass and maybe later I will be able to drop the fat as well. I am 176cm and 70kg.

I am not a fan of CIMT, but thank you for pointing it out. I will stick to CAC. And I had my second one on Monday that came up 0. Pretty happy about that. At least one good news for the current week. :slight_smile:

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I don’t have a particular brand of K2 to recommend. I usually just buy the cheapest one.

I understand that it’s hard to maintain a low body fat %. For me, I found that eating unprocessed foods is the key because they have much more volume than processed foods and therefore are more filling. Processing basically removes all the fibers and concentrates the calories. For example, I found eating plain potatoes or corn (without adding too much fat) quite filling. One potato, without any added fat, only has 100+ calories, which is very little.

Do you follow Michael Lustgarten? I highly recommend his YouTube channel.

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Could you please upload your DEXA scan - I’d love to see an example (take out your name if you want - you can frequently use this website to tweak a PDF: Edit PDF - Free PDF Editor Working Directly in your Browser

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In regards to dexa scan, do you know what bone mineral desinty 1.051g/cm/xb2 and young adult t-score -1.5 means?

I’ve had a t-score of -1.2 and -1.5… but this was in 2017 (22 years at the time) before rapamycin when I was dieting alot. I need to get a new scan next month.

I understand that t-score below -1.0 is considered low. So your -1.2 and -1.5 are low. T-score is a measure of standard deviation. 0 means median. -1 means 1 standard deviation below median. +1 means 1 standard deviation above median. The cut-off for bone density is -1.0 or 1 standard deviation below median.

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Ok thats not good! I was only 22 at the time but I didn’t exercise at all during that time and I had low vitamin d/calcium levels and lost lots of weight by skipping meals so maybe thats y i guess. I’ll get tested again hopefully my bone density has improved as I’ve done alot since then. 27 now.

Keep us posted on your new scan results.

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Sure, here they are. I redacted my name to keep private information… well private.


A score of -1.2 is below -1, which qualifies as osteopenia. You should redo the test. The endocrinologist I discussed about this with, said that this is a fixable condition, especially at younger age. So it is important to have it investigated again and act if it is needed.

Next week I have an appointment for blood draw, lots of markers related to osteopenia/osteoporosis and the new scan will happen in mid Nov. Will update the log once I have new results.

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I got the lab results requested by my endocrinologist. All hormonal markers are within normal limits, including T and free T, which unfortunately are on the lower side of the range for a 37 year old male:

Testosterone = 18.6 nmol/L NV: [8.64 - 29]
Free Testosterone = 7.6138 pg/mL NV: [5.01 - 27.78]

There is a topic of someone else that got T lowered by rapa, so I will need to keep this under tight control, unless the doc decides to put me on TRT with these levels…

In next couple of weeks will redo the DXA scan and I will report back with that result.

I will take another full blood analysis at the beginning of Dec, and based on that result I will decide when to start rapa.

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Got results of my DEXA scan: - 1.3 (osteopenia). I’m 67. My doc said that it’s not bad for my age, but did not tell how to fix it. Any suggestions?

Sorry to hear that. Good thing is that it is treatable. I dont have a protocol yet, but hopefully I will get one soon after I will have my second appointment.

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Vitamins D3 and K2 plus calcium in the diet and most importantly do weight bearing exercises is what I would do.

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Seconding the “weight bearing exercises”…

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