I take rapamycin and am happy with its effects. My husband thinks he should take it too after listening to Ben Greenfield podcast.
Should he if he’s not working at getting off metformin megadose and twice daily insulin? He’s not serious about changing diet radically, taking up exercise again after a four-year-extended COVID hiatus.
Is it helpful at this point or harmful?
He’s 63, maybe 25 pounds overweight but serious sarcopenia began three years ago.
I personally would not take rapamycin if my glucose was dysregulated.
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Should check his vitamin D and do a CAC scan. Both cheap and low hanging fruit.
He needs to get serious, he’s injecting insulin twice a day.
Rapa won’t save him, but it might help a little. I’ve found it easier to control my diet on Rapa. No idea why.
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Getting his diabetes under great control will do far more for his health than Rapa.
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Studies have shown that diabetic mice who are given Rapamycin live shorter lives than normal mice not taking Rapamycin. These mice died primarily from diabetic inflammation.
Rapamycin can aggravate diabetes and should not be taken by diabetic patients IMHO. He should get his diabetes under control first.
Is his HBa1C still in diabetic ranges even with his Metformin and insulin?
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As a diabetic, there are many new medications that showed up in the last few years that make a huge difference and can drive diabetes into remission. I only found out about them 1 year ago from my doctor (and about Acarbose and CCGs on this website) and my A1C has dropped from 7.0 using just Metformin to 5.4 and my weight has dropped from 205 lbs to 145 lbs. I am currently using :
- Metformin 500mg ER 2x/day.
- Mounjaro injection 5mg/week.
- Jardiance 10mg/day.
- Acarbose 50mg before meals
- Freestyle Libre 3 (CCG) to monitor blood sugar.
I started on Rapamycin earlier this year and I was lucky that my diabetes had already improved, since I was not aware that Rapamycin decreased life expectancy of diabetic mice. My blood sugar & A1C did increase slightly when I started Rapamycin but has stabilized and continued to decline as I kept losing weight. I rarely exercise (hope to change that in the future) and am not actually trying to lose weight, it just happens with Mounjaro if you are overweight when you start using it. I think my weight loss is starting to level, as it should, since 140lbs was my weight in my 30s.
I am hopeful my A1C will drop to 4.9 after I increase my Acarbose to 100mg before meals, making my diabetes officially in remission.
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When did you start the Monjaro in relation to the weight loss and the drop in A1c?
I started Mounjaro in Nov 2022. I had previously been on Ozempic for 6 months (since May 2022), which is when my weight loss and A1C drop started, but both were more rapid with Mounjaro.
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That is a good idea. I’ll have him have both checked in a couple to three weeks after we move from California to Henderson. He currently has Kaiser (that may be 70% of the diabetes for life program and issue) insurance but there’s no Kaiser in Nevada. A good doctor would refer him to a dietician, not tell him ‘at least you’re not obese.’
30% plus body fat isn’t healthy. Wish me luck. I know he’d be happier if he could still hike even two miles with me.
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did you have any GI side effect with ozempic or Mounjaro? what made you to switch?
Mounjaro is supposedly more effective at weight loss than ozempic. It’s a good reason to switch.
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I have friends who are on ozempic, horrendous GI side effects. Mounjaro supposedly has even more severe GI side effects.
Other than slow stomach emptying (an expected side effect) I had no side effects with either. My HRT doctor recommended Ozempic in May '22 (before Mounjaro came out in July 22) and when I saw my HRT doctor next in Nov '22 and told him I had lost weight, he told me there was an even better drug that just came out. BTW, my HRT doctor was right that the weight loss would fix my low-T problem : I no longer need to take anything to achieve normal T levels.
No one seems to know the scientific mechanism for the sustained weight loss with either Ozempic and Mounjaro : It is believed to reset something in the brain involving addictive/compulsive behavior, and is now being tested to see if it can be used to treat other forms of addiction.
Other threads in this site have discussed the life-extension benefits of Ozempic/Mounjaro as well as Jardiance for non-diabetics. It is estimated that diabetics (taking the latest medications like Mounjaro & Jardiance) now have a longer life expectancy than non-diabetics, a surprising reversal of fortune. This is mainly because currently only diabetics are covered by insurance and otherwise Mounjaro is $1100 every 4 weeks and Jardiance around $660/month, and hence few non-diabetics take them.
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Yes, I know of people who are diabetic but have very clean arteries yet a skinny old lady whose arteries are full of plaques.
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I would presume that this is referring to obese people?
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A significant fraction of the US non-diabetic population has insulin resistance : Not all of them are obese, but they all have reduced life-expectancy, except for those paying for Mounjaro + Jardiance out of pocket.
Those reading this site know that at least Jardiance can be ordered inexpensively from India.
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But a non diabetic, non obese person is unlikely to benefit from Monjaro
At 205 lbs and 5’8" my doctor said I was not technically obese (BMI 40+), but I definitely was overweight. So you are right if you meant overweight rather than technically obese.
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I agree but it’s a touchy process. He eats better…when he wants to and/or I cook. He ate flippin Amazon hot, ready-made slices of pizza twice in the past four days and eats bread or like-processed food at least one meal a day.
I try not to annoy him, that is the worst way to ‘help,’ right?
FYI, I did take his metformin for about 18 months regularly after being diagnosed and treated for Ocular Melanoma by a little radiation plaque, thanks UCLA, and hyperbaric chamber, KETO diet (thanks Dominic D’agostino for answering your phone), NO sugar and daily meditation). I take it off and on and noted diabetics can live longer than the rest of us unless seriously overweight. I was stunned to see his dosage of 2 x’s 500 mg twice a day along with the little bit of insulin but he’s good about monitoring that. One can get off the meds and eliminate the diabetes but it’s not as life threatening as a malignant eye tumor so radical behavior and food modification is not as easy for people. I get that. Kinda like drinking alcohol too much.
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