Considering the recent results of the Dr. Brad Stanfield Rapamycin study on exercise capability (on humans), which showed worse exercise capacity in the rapa group than the placebo group, did that cause anyone who was taking rapa to stop taking it? Or change dosage or scheduling of it?
I changed from 3x3mg (9mg) every other Fri/Sat/Sun, to once a month 3x6m Fri, Sat, Sun. So same total dose, just once a month. Got ulcers the first time, but 2nd and 3rd times I haven’t.
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I just started Rapa a few months ago. The week i titrating up to 6mg this study came out. I have been taking 6mg once a week
I am considering moving to every other week or maybe once a month.
Question - My first week at 6 mg, I had some pretty terrible ulcers. After that its been managable or not there. I am assuming changing frequency will make some of the side effects come in harder
Dr. Stanfield is either ridiculously misinformed or intentionally trying to discourage the use of rapamycin. Using his ridiculously under funded study to determine anything is a slap in the face of serious science.
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I’m in the phase where I want to maximize muscle strength gains, so I’ve pushed out the timing between doses to 3 weeks (vs. 7 to 10 days before), and increased my dose (from 8 to 10mg once every 7 to 10 days, to ~20 mg once every 3 weeks. Its working well for me.
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Did you get ulcers/sides initially from ~20mg?
I am thinking about similar approach to doing E3W as well
No - I’ve been taking rapamycin for over 5 years, only had one really noticeable side effect once (mouth sore) once back at 4 or 5 mg dosing. Have gone as high as 28mg dosing, no noticeable side effects. Did get higher LDL-C at 10mg / week dosing before bempadoic acid and ezetimibe.
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we need more people opening up about how different dosages affect their biomarkers. Furthermore, my plan to determine a personalized rapamycin dosage window through gut microbiome abundance testing seems like a viable approach. My rationale is that for healthy biohackers, the true impact of rapamycin is unlikely to show up on standard clinical markers.
Testing is relatively cheap, and it costs next to nothing to have:
- comprehensive metabolic panel
- CBC
- lipid panel
For rapamyin’s specific effect on improvement on immune markers, and inflamaging reduction, a good set of tests could be:
- CD4/CD8 ratio, aging causes a drop of this ratio due to senescent cells
- IL-6, this tracks SASP burden
- GlycA, which tracks vascular and chronic tissue inflammaging and is more stable than either IL-6 or hs-CRP. It’s like HbA1c for systemic inflammation.
I don’t see why this study would cause me to adjust my dosage. I am surprised that anyone thought that Rapamycin wouldn’t reduce muscle growth (apparently there are people who thought it would increase it, including the author!) given the mechanism involved in its action.
Rapamycin is not just a magical “good” pill that improves everything. It interferes with an important growth pathway. In spite of the many side effects that manifest from its use, it has been shown to cause life extension in every animal it has been tested in. Saying that because of lower muscle growth it should be used less is missing the point entirely. Lower muscle growth is the very sign that the core mechanism is working as expected.
Furthermore, I would add that I don’t believe people have been very thoughtful about the meaning of this study. A person who lifts heavy weights regularly and takes rapamycin is going to have much higher muscle mass that a person who doesn’t lift heavy weights regularly and doesn’t take rapamycin. Given the experience of many of us who lift on this forum, there doesn’t appear to be a strong anecdotal signal that rapamycin dramatically reduces strength. If you think muscle mass is important for slowing aging (personally I don’t but I mostly lift for aesthetic reasons, more mass = more organ strain and potentially cancerous anabolic signalling), then you should already be lifting heavy. Anyone who thinks that rapamycin dosing should be more spread out because of the results of this study, but is not already lifting heavy, is being inconsistent.
I would also add that if you want to take the results of this study seriously, then you should observe closely how your lifting performance changes (if at all) with wider and narrower spacing of rapamycin dosing. Increasing the dosing interval without testing this seems to be trading a guaranteed reduction in the benefits of rapamycin (life extension has been shown to improve with higher dosing) for a vague and (I strongly suspect) possibly trivial amount of benefit in regards to muscle growth.
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100% correct. In fact, one can go further - it is entirely possible (although it would need to be proven) that lower muscle growth (there still is muscle growth with exercise + rapamycin) you are making sure your muscle lasts longer - a candle with a lower flame will last longer. And we are in the game of longevity, not sheer muscle size (except Luke and folks like him, for whom muscle size is an aesthetic priorty) - if we were just looking at muscle size you should use steroids (and live bodybuilder lifespan). How do we know this is possible? CR (Calorie Restriction) studies showing conclusively that CR results in smaller muscles but longer lasting (same principle as many other physiologica functions, hormonal etc.).
1)If you want to live longer: [smaller CR (and possibly rapamycin) muscle] is better than
2)[bigger muscle without rapamycin only exercise], which is better than
3)[no exercise sarcopenia and tiny muscles and frailty] which is better than
4)[gigantic muscles of bodybuilders]
So avoiding #1 in favor of #2 is a net loss as far as I can see. Someone may argue that it’s speculative - what if rapamycin does not have the same muscle result as CR - well, yes, that’s speculation, but based on the mechanism (mTOR suppression shared between both CR and rapamycin) it’s eminently reasonable speculation. And if you want to avoid speculation, well, all of rapamycin (as a life extending molecule in humans) is speculation, so you may as well avoid rapamycin on principle.
That anyone would change their dosing protocol based on this study is really bizarre to me. It’s a super short duration study (which is an extremely serious limitation, acknowledged as such by the primary author himself).
Anyhow, I’ve written extensively on this in my commentary on the study in the main thread devoted to the results of the study, so I won’t repeat that here. But it certainly is mind boggling to see such reactions - rushing to change protocols without thinking through what the study results really mean, including - what does it mean for longevity that rapamycin blunts muscle growth and performance… what if it’s the whole entire point of it?? Which is what I believe, FWIW. YMMV.
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I am still on 6 weeks or more.
I was already on a non-weekly schedule before the study came out, as I came to consider weekly non-stop dosing a form a chronic dosing in my case. I now cycle rapamycin, where I take it weekly for 2 or 3 months out of the year. Looking forward to my cycle next year.
The study made me shift back to everolimus for a bit.
10mg once in 7 days, or 20 once in 14 days