Longevity by Design podcast with Dr. Keith Baar
The discussion of mTOR and exercise and rapamycin was very interesting. He claims exercise, both endurance and resistance, send a signal to activate mTOR in the exercised muscles and reduce it elsewhere. He claims rapamycin is most useful as an intervention in people who are unable to exercise. Curious what you all think.
I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest young people taking Rapamycin. (< 40)
Thanks. Keith Barr is magnificent. I heard him a couple years ago on the Flex Diet podcast. It was the best talk on tendons I ever heard.
From the show notes:
“So endurance is important, but it doesn’t work the same way. So if you have the highest, in that same longitudinal study on Hawaiian, if you were in the highest third of endurance capacity, it would only give you a 10% greater likelihood of making it to 100, relative to the strength giving you a two and a half times. So 250% greater likelihood.”
I was hoping he would talk about timing of rapamycin and exercise. I know a lot of people on this forum align their rapamycin dosing day with a non-lifting day. The unresolved question is whether cycling mTOR in all tissues is good for longevity or if there are specific tissues where we want to suppress mTOR while merely accepting the suppression of mTOR as a necessary side effect. I.e. should you:
(a) combine rapamycin and lifting to get extra mTOR suppression in the body outside of the muscles you are working;
(b) combine rapamycin and lifting to blunt mTOR suppression in the muscles while still getting suppression outside of the muscles you are working;
(c) combine rapamycin and rest days to have mTOR suppression body-wide including in the muscles;
(d) not bother taking rapamycin at all if you are physically capable of regularly lifting weights?
I thought he was going to weigh in on the big (a)/(b) vs. (c) question, but his answer sounded like (d) to me.
I did not listen to the entire thing. Does he have a study that shows little benefit for those that exercise? Because if not, then its just an assumption based on his limited understanding of the mechanisms involved. I believe that Rapa affects the entire body. Tough for me to believe that vigorous exercise does exactly the same thing, to the fullest extent of Rapa. And even modest benefit outside of exercise, especially in areas where exercise is of little benefit, still makes Rapa worth it for me.
Yes - me too. Its not like we have any mouse studies where the exercised mice live 30% longer than controls, as we have with rapamycin in the ITP studies.
Since we as humans are still developing until age 25, it’s a rule of thumb to not take Rapamycin until you are 26+ yo.
But there are some younger than that taking it even though they are aware it may stunt their growth and development due to MTOR inhibition.
Also don’t take Rapamycin if you are planning on children soon or pregnant.
I believe that younger people can get much of the same benefit from just a healthy lifestyle and fasting. I would save Rapamycin use for older age.
I am thinking of suggesting to my children in their 20s and 30s they should take rapamycin once a year.
Exercise and Rapamycin have the same impact:
Start young (30y/o), maintain it for a lifetime, and your decline will be slow and graceful.
