RapaAdmin has posted about this several times : Since mice have a roughly 12x higher metabolic rate than humans, to achieve the same plasma or tissue concentration of a drug, the daily dosage/kg (body weight) needs to be 12x higher in mice than humans. Also the frequency of dosing needs to be 12x more frequent in mice (eg Rapamycin daily dosing in mice corresponds to every 12 day dosing in humans). (This means that each dose/kg is the same in mice and humans). Daily dosing in humans corresponds to dosing every 2 hours in mice, which is often approximated by mixing the drug into the mouse food or water. In this case they used once daily dosing for mice, which is unusual.
Thank you @tananth for bringing this to my attention, it’s much appreciated.
It’s so easy to keep increasing the dose of a drug without thinking about what the maximum dose is.
Seriously I will think about cutting back my metformin dosage.
blsm, It’s been a while since you made this post, but it’s an interesting thought. If cooked I assume any useful ingredients would be destroyed and if not cooked it would be out of the question for me. However, many people use dessicated pig thyroid for hypothyroidism. Why couldn’t the companies that do this processing consider processing the thymus gland the same way? Of course, I’m sure they would have to have sound medical backing to pursue that. But, gee, wouldn’t that be a way to bypass the thymus rejuvenation approach?
Thymus gland extract are destroyed by the digestive tract and would have to be purified and injected (like Insulin). However, one company makes one long Thymus protein (Proboost Thymic Protein A, $90 for 60 days supply, with subscription discount) and claims it is absorbed, if taken on an empty stomach. I have been taking it daily in the winter (when immune system needs to be boosted the most), and every other day in the summer (to save money). Not sure if it actually works.
I would have thought that perhaps implanting some stem cells or induced pluripotent cells into the thymus might yield results but I’ve never heard of anyone doing it. Or perhaps extracting a few viable thymus cells, culturing them in vitro, then injecting them back into the patient? Any comments from researchers in the stem cell area welcome.
DrT, Interesting ideas. Why not? But, I wonder if whatever is causing the natural Thymus involution would affect the implanted cells the same way?
By the way, it seems that Bryian Johnson has discontinued Dr. Fahey’s protocol, after having seen the negative results on him (in terms of epigenetic clocks I presume).
I remember he called it a ‘Whackamole’.
But he did say it shrank his thymus, so it wasn’t all bad.
I don’t remember that, probably I construed it to be negative (shrinked = atrophied thymus).
If I’m right, Dr. Fahey says the involved thymus has less active tissue and more adiposity in it. His therapy is supposed to reverse this process.
Lvareilles, pls note I’m not competent in the medical field let alone in the specific camp of this very little-known organ.
I just went back to some interviews with Dr. Fahey and one in particular. He speaks about ‘thymus involution’ and then ‘thymus regeneration’. I have no personal opinion, my mind just automatically tries to configure every input into a logical framework.
I’m going to paste an excerpt from Dr. Fahey. He seems to speak of thymus shrinkage in this old rat in negative terms.
Of course, the same definition can have a dual meaning, like shrinkage is good when it is a sign of lack of edema or bloated issues…
My interest in this protocol was potential benefits to either longevity and connective tissues, since I cannot lift heavy because of tendon pains. But it appears to be controversial, besides HGH is overly expensive.
If you continuously expose an old rat to growth hormone the incredibly deteriorated thymus, which looks nothing like a normal thymus both histologically and physically, the thymus actually shrinks down to a size that was so small that they couldn’t even weigh it. In the study it looks like a glob of fat but you can still bring that thymus back by giving the animals cells that secrete growth hormone (constitutively pituitary adenoma cells in particular), they found that when they did that not only did the thymus come back to its normal morphology, but T-cell ability to respond to foreign antigens was restored back to the level seen for a three-month-old rat. That caught my attention.
My apologies. I posted that early this morning before my brain could kick in. Thymus shrinkage happens with aging, so yes it’s indeed a bad thing. No idea how I typed the opposite
The TRIIM trials are regrowing the thymus
I’m also very interested in all this and have listened to most of Greg Fahy’s talks and interviews about it.
LOL, no problem whatsoever, I can’t say I’m always fully awake myself!