I think most people don’t really experience side effects at modest doses.
What brand do you get from India?
I get Rapacan and users here have validated the brand and others. Now compounded Rapa is different and the US sellers that sell this are pretty upfront about that.
As you probably know, ketoconazole is probably a bigger variable than a branded India source of Rapa. Yes, it will raise levels but how much is the variable.
I think very few people think Rapa will cause loss of functioning muscle mass. Blunting growth is expected depending on dose - even before these results. But actual loss, besides some beneficial autophagy, is not expected.
Now everyone has loss from time to time and you need growth to replace it. So that is an issue. I think a low muscle mass woman should be working hard to increase mass. And you presumably know that is muscle stress, protein, some calorie excess and testosterone and preferably in the absence of Rapa. Which means that you likely should keep your Rapa intervals on the longer side.
As a male, I can probably keep intervals tighter. My muscle mass is not likely to be a life limiting factor.
I would not think 2mg every 2-3 weeks would have much of an effect. It is a bit like the PEARL trial conclusions … viz if you don’t take much rapamycin not much happens.
Thank you for your reply. I know it’s a very low dose but because I also take ketoconazole 200 mg with it this should greatly up the blood levels of rapamycin. If both drugs are fake then I’ve been wasting my time and money - which is quite likely unfortunately!
Thanks so much for your reply, David. Very helpful. Yes, I am getting rapacan too, so that’s good news to know that it’s the real deal. The man in India seemed very good, but of course you just don’t know when buying medication online. We are very much warned against it here in Australia but, like most people around the world, we Aussies ignore the authorities - unless we really are convinced that they are on the right track!
That has been a rough estimate based on quite a bit of data; however, I’ve mostly stopped doing the multiple levels required to hunt this down and taken the approach of getting a level of 3 ng/mL at ~30-35% of the dosing interval, such that we know the level is above this for approximately 1/3rd of the week.
I can speak to the safety of this approach, but none of us can speak to the efficacy. However, the dosing is almost always higher than what individuals used to take when the approach was a 5 or 6 mg per 7 days. My average dose remains very close to 0.1 mg/kg when dosed every 7 days without GFJ. However, I have individuals requiring <0.05 mg/kg and some at 0.3 mg/kg … so a 6 fold difference to achieve a similar target.
Single dose half lives like what I’m testing do seem to be significantly shorter than the half life documented on daily dosing. I’m however unable to find decent documentation in the literature available on this; but there isn’t much documentation on cyclic dosing and levels.
I think you need to focus moreso on how this actually works. I am not persuaded that increased frequency has any particular benefit beyond reducing the side effects of higher dosing.
@DrFraser
I’ll say this out loud to make sure I understood you correctly.
If we switch from 7 to every 14 days, you still look for a level of 3 ng/ml at 30-35% of the interval.
That means I’d have labs drawn aprox 4.6 days after dosing, and I’d want the result to be 3 ng/ml.
Not medical advice of course, but what might be a good generalized formula to use so we can have an educated guess for what our 14 day dose should be? Through testing, I know 8mg is my 7 day dose. Claude suggested I try 12mg and then work up to 14 (or even 16, but that sounds intimidating). Does that sound reasonable?
I would follow that up with labs, and then how to tinker with the dose should be fairly obvious.
And yes @John_Hemming, I prefer weekly for that very reason. The idea of having side effects makes me a little wary about this trial… but if it might be better for body composition, sigh, I guess I’ll try
Maybe they were testing the hypothesis that the chronically activated MTOR signal in the elderly was actually what impaired their ability to put on muscle? If it turned out that it actually increased muscle building in the elderly then it immediately becomes a solution to one of the most common age-related health conditions out there.
Unfortunately the results just sort of show that rapamycin isn’t entirely a free lunch, and if trying to counteract sarcopenia is your top priority then it makes sense to give the rapa a rest.
Not agreeing with you on this one. As @desertshores noted above (n=1 though but reliable IMO) RAPA seems to counter sarcopenia. Most people in old age are not looking to gain muscle, but preserve muscle and RAPA may? (and “does” according to @desertshores ) help preserve muscle. I as an example would not want to gain any muscle whatsoever, while would love to preserve (as long as possible) what I have so not worried about Rapa not matching my goals. To me the bigger surprise was the fact that even the rapa population actually were able to gain muscle, and that is a BIG plus IMO as I was of the opinion that Rapa does not allow/help gain muscle but rather may help preserve muscle. So as far as I’m concerned, this study did nothing to change my mind on RAPA nor to even change my RAPA regimen.
Certainly dont want to fall victim to any sort of confirmation bias but how do we extrapolate these rather important findings to people in their fifties recognizing ageing isnt a linear process and rather dramatic molecular sgifts happen at cresting points as 44, 60 etc. May be that should be the some kind of primary endpoint of younger cohort. Are the upsides or downsides cumulative?
Just typing out loud here but since we saw some pretty impressive results in the study for the older folks (aged 70-76) folks who took 1mg daily on health parameters, I wonder if the 6mg bolus dose explains why we saw these negative results in Brad’s trial.
I know the endpoints were different for both trials (cardiovascular vs anabolism) but what if instead of focusing on dosing frequency needing to be more spread out, we actually would be better off taking daily 1mg micro doses that might not actually worsen muscle benefits or even side effects like worse immunity, A1C, LDL, and ALP since it’s a lower dose.
Well, first 1mg its’s not much of a micro dose since that is the dose transplant patients take, and I kind of like the idea of doing 1mg daily for 5 days per week and see how it feels.
We do have a person in here @LaraPo that has been taking daily (?) Rapa for a long time.
If I remember correctly, she had once said she is very healthy and feels and looks better than her age group. Maybe she’ll chime in again with some info because she’s a really good N=1 example since she’s been doing it for a long time (over 10 years if I remember correctly) plus she is in relatively mature age, early 70’s (if I remember correctly) and if she is free of pains and aches and other old age maladies then maybe Rapa might have had a positive effect.
Yes but it’s a micro dose compared to the large intermittent doses people have done for anti aging. Maybe just small daily doses would be enough to get the benefits without the side effects of the intermittent dosing. It’s too bad that study didn’t measure the same outcomes that Brad’s study did because that would’ve given us a lot of information.
After all, pretty much everything else we take is in daily doses
Well, it has been 16 years since I started Rapamycin after kidney transplant. It had been working well for me - my kidney is working well and I’m still alive. 1 mg per day is definitely not a micro dose because it accumulates quickly and produces a kind of a permanent trough level between 3 and 5, which leads to mTOR2 inhibition with all expected and well described side effects. To avoid that negative side of Rapa it seems we need breaks. Nobody knows how often and how long. I prefer my trough not to fall under 1 and never cross 5. When it’s close to 1, I restart the 1 mg/day cycle till my trough reaches 4.5 - 5, and so on. I don’t think that those who take it for longevity should follow my transplant schedule. If not my transplant I would have longer breaks.
At 71 I feel pretty good. Have good energy, walk and jog daily, and still occasionally skate. No pains besides recently developed pain and stiffness in both thumbs. It started as a side effect of Lipitor. Pain went away after I stopped it but after starting Repatha it returned. Decrease in cholesterol definitely affects it. It’s the only thing that bothers me.
About the looks, it’s difficult to say if it’s Rapa or fillers and other cosmetic procedures. But after 70 I noticed that my skin elasticity changed. Fillers stopped working aa effectively as before. Now I need more frequent applications. It happened rather suddenly.
Another problem I have is inability to gain weight no matter how much or how often I eat. My weight got stuck on 110-112 lbs (5’3” height). Seems that Rapa created a permanent starvation mode for me and my body responds accordingly.
To play devil’s advocate against myself, this study last year showed 1mg daily might have worsened Alzheimer’s disease and inflammatory biomarkers in a small study of ten people. Very small study though so not sure how much merit to put into it.