33th week: Continued with 6 mg/weekly of Rapamycin and I have not felt any noticeable (side) effects this week. One good question in life to sometimes reflect on is why you do a certain thing? For example, why do I take Rapamycin? Or if you don’t take it: “Why do I not take Rapamycin?”. Here is my answer to why I take Rapamycin.
One of my main life goals is to live very long and well. Is Rapamycin aligned with this goal? I don’t think Rapamycin will make me live to 500-1000 years old but I think it may have potential to give me some extra decade or decades where my lifespan and healthspan is kept up. That extra time increases the chance that some revolutionary discovery is made in the longevity field which enables me to achieve my main goal. This is also well aligned with the longevity researcher Aubrey de Grey’s view on “Longevity Escape Velocity”. Which means that for every extra year we succeed to be alive we gain an extra year because of the progress in longevity research.
Why don’t I just use sleep, diet, exercise and good stress management to achieve the above? I use these interventions also plus others. I turned 46 years old recently and it’s around this time the risk of age-related diseases starts to exponentially increase. I want to try to delay this process as much as I can without causing detrimental or opposite effects. From a risk and benefit calculation my own conclusion is still that I see that the potential benefits of Rapamycin outweigh the potential risks and therefore I take Rapamycin.
I get frustrated and disappointed that the research progress around the best and most promising longevity compound goes way too slow forward. One reason for this is because there is no valid patent for Rapamycin anymore and this makes it hard to capitalize on it. My philanthropic personality can not just accept this situation so I will do what I can together with other passionate people in pushing this Rapamycin snowball up to the top of the hill. After that I think things will start to accelerate quite fast almost by itself. So my N=1 experiment, every tweet on my twitter and post here, the podcast, the upcoming book etc are some of my ways to push the snowball one step forward together with others
I’m very curious to hear your view on why you take or not take Rapamycin.
What we need is a philanthropic soul who can toss a few million at Rapamycin to do the next level of studies. Barring that, we’ll have to go on the limited data that we have.
I think those with the cash to splash on something like this are using their money on moonshots for themselves (genetic reprogramming, etc…)
Proving Rapamycin extends life would be good for the masses, and not for themselves as those that believe in it, already believe and therefore won’t spend anything. Likewise, those who don’t believe in it also won’t spend anything on research. It’s a catch 22 at this point.
Unfortunately, I think the lion’s share of data that will be available on Rapamycin is already available. Do we take the red pill or don’t we? It’s all based on the evidence we have today.
Based on what I have researched, I am taking Rapamycin.
I agree. I’m confident the risk / reward profile is good. The real question is how to use it well. Is there a minimum effective dose? Are we below that by attempting to minimize side effects? Can we get 2x benefit by taking more/more often/with what? Or do we get less benefit by taking more?
The answer is probably individual or at least based on archetypical situations: healthy, healthy but in decline from “aging”, metabolic illness, cancer in family history, apoe 4, etc.
1mg/day
1mg/day 7 days on/ 7 days off
20mg 1x/14 days
6mg 1x/7 days
Holidays / no holidays
mTOR rebound or no rebound
Fast during rapa dose to increase mTOR turndown or fast later to decrease mTOR rebound?
Use of additional chemicals to turn up or down mTOR in coordination with rapa dosing
Has anyone attempted to summarize the best thinking on goals / strategies/ tactics utilizing rapamycin? It’s probably buried in this site somewhere.
I’m not counting on rapamycin giving me more years. I am hoping that rapamycin will give me better years for the years I have remaining and then I want to very suddenly drop dead. Recent pics of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, who are both pushing 100, show them melting away in their wheelchairs. I don’t want that.
I tried it on my 13-year old dog first. It gave her some vitality. It did not make her a 3-year old again but it did improve the quality of her life.
“Dr. Kaeberlein is in the midst of a much more ambitious study called the Dog Aging Project. In this study they are using rapamycin at a dosage of 0.15 mg per kg body weight given ONCE weekly. This translates into 1.5 mg of rapamycin per 22# body weight, again given once weekly.”
My dog weighs about 25 kg. I am giving her 4 mg once a week.
@Agetron is taking hormones while @desertshores is not. I’m sure there are other differences as well. However, I’d say 6 mg - 12 mg is a sweet spot depending on your biology.
My personal focus is on improving health/preventing illness.
It is quite obviously clear that a large number of diseases that occur in later life result from aging. I have spent a lot of time reading papers and doing experiments and have concluded that there are two main causes of age related diseases. One is a problem with the transcription of genes into mRNA, the other is with the translation of mRNA into protein (via tRNA).
IMO the cause of the first problem relates to lower levels of acetyl-CoA in the nucleus as a result of IL-10 reducing NF kappa B (via the Janus Kinase) that reducing levels of the citrate carrier which reduces the amount of substrate for ACLY. When a cell fails to differentiate as a result of this limitation it ends up as senescent so there is a feedback system because a large number of senescent cells emit IL-10. This also causes the patchyness of senescence as IL-10 affects local cells to a greater extent than those some distance away.
The second problem occurs as a result of a shortage of ATP. Mitochondria ordinarily produce increased amounts of ATP as a result of its depeletion and the ATP/ADP gradient increasing. However, as mitochondria deteriorate they are unable to produce sufficient ATP. Hence the Ribosome stalls and the failed proteins are sent to Ribosome Quality Control.
One technique for improving mitochondrial efficiency is increased autophagy. I therefore take Rapamycin about every 4-6 weeks (6mg) to inhibit mTOR (or more precisely to increase the probability that mTOR is inhibited in some cells) and therefore make the process of mitophagy more frequent.
I do not, however, think that Rapamycin is sufficient in itself to deal with the two key causes of age related diseases so I do other things as well.
My current plan is to take Rapamycin whilsl fasting so that the probability of mTOR being inhibited becomes greater and autophagy is more likely. (the combination of the two probabilities). I am assuming that there is a threshold at which the probability of autophagy materially increases.
I think there is at least one other cause of age related diseases specfically DNA damage, but I do not think it is as significant as the other two. There are probably other stochastic elements as well.
Good point Chris.
I take weekly 1ml (injection) which is 200mg Cypionate a form of testosterone.
Raises my testosterone from 400 low to about 1400 high normal. Been 4 plus years.
Highly recommend for its many health benefits. The negatives have recently been found to be unsubstantiated.
I’m curious about this. Did you try to boost testosterone in other ways before going down this path? Is there a need to continue using TRT forever once you begin (body stops making any)? Thanks in advance.
Happy to answer. I did try boosting with testosterone enhancer first.
From Primeval Labs… I ordered: Epiandro Max 120 capsules- used it for almost 3 years.
When I told my physician what I was taking… he told me it is doing so little if anything at all for testosterone enhancement… might raise you 20 points.
That’s when we discussed real improvement in testosterone level using either topical TRT, injection or inserted tablets.
Went for injection… strange at first using a needle in my thigh… now it is nothing.
4 years in… I could do this for life. I definitely don’t want to go back to 400 level.
One of my main life goals is to live very long and well. Is Rapamycin aligned with this goal? I don’t think Rapamycin will make me live to 500-1000 years old but I think it may have potential to give me some extra decade or decades where my lifespan and healthspan is kept up. That extra time increases the chance that some revolutionary discovery is made in the longevity field which enables me to achieve my main goal. This is also well aligned with the longevity researcher Aubrey de Grey’s view on “Longevity Escape Velocity”. Which means that for every extra year we succeed to be alive we gain an extra year because of the progress in longevity research.
