What is that?
And are you taking Metformin and Berberine?
My goal is to reduce the amount of supplements I take.
The reason many of us get to using so many supplements is because of the daily clickbait articles touting this supplement or that. We then look up the particular supplement on PubMed, etc., and find literature that backs up the support for the supplement for healthspan or lifespan and add it to our supplement list.
We actually never know if we actually need the supplement because unlike Michael Lustgarten we are not actually measuring the amount we are getting in our diet.
At my age, my stomach just doesn’t like large amounts of supplements that are supposed to be taken on an empty stomach. Not to mention, the fact that there are so many variables to watch; does this supplement interfere with the efficacy of that supplement, and when is the best time of day to take this or that, etc., etc.
Honestly, it is a pain in the a*s to take so many supplements.
I have managed to cut my supplement list in half, but I still take too many.
Right now I am starting to cull by taking only supplements that the literature suggests have life-extension benefits.
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Sorry I mean Aspirin, and yes I take also Berberine next to Metformin.
My current stack. I welcome criticism or questions. I don’t admit to thinking I’ve figured it all out.
Medications:
Rapamycin
Rosuvastatin
Acarbose
Core Supplements:
Fish oil
Vitamin D
Multivitamin
Magnesium
AKG
Creatine
Taurine
Cystine
ECGC
Temporary (testing, and likely to be dropped)
Low dose Lithium
CoQ10
Pantethine
Urolithin A
Hyaluronic Acid
Monthly bolus senolytic dose:
Grape seed
Dasatinib
Fisetin
Quercitin
Ginger
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@desertshores I had exactly the same, that’s why I manufacture my own atm. Slow release pills no any extracts and contain 13 different ingredients. I just don’t want to miss out in the support the active ingredients give me and you can not get enough from your food no matter how healthy you eat. And doesn’t matter which brand you buy you always get capsules, fillers and extract with unknown amounts of active ingredients. Or they sell you a blend also with no any information about the contents.
I really believe that supplements, medicine and other small molecules next to healthy living are the best way to slow down the aging speed as much as possible. So cutting on my supplements is absolutely no option for me. I am happy I am in chemicals and pharmaceuticals all my life so even getting my hands on some new research chemical is fairly easy for me.
My next phase of anti aging will be peptides.
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I certainly wouldn’t drop lithium from your stack. There is simply too much literature about its many benefits, including mental and life extension. It is certainly one of my main supplements for its mood-altering benefits alone.
“Currently, literature shows that low-dose lithium (≤0.5 mM) may be beneficial for cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, metabolic, and cognitive function, as well as inflammatory and antioxidant processes of the aging body.”
https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ben/cn/2023/00000021/00000004/art00011
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I’m curious on this… peptides get a lot of coverage in the consumer press, but I see very little (in terms of longevity / geoscience) in the academic journals with successful animal trials. Do you see things I’m missing in this area?
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So, peptides are basically just short chains of amino acids, right? They have a ton of potential for anti-aging, but there are a few reasons why they haven’t really taken off as medicines. First off, because they naturally occur in our bodies, it’s super tough to patent them. This makes big pharma companies not interested in putting money into developing them because they can’t exclusively own and profit from them. Let alone they put money in researching them.
Besides a lot of people don’t see aging as a disease, so that doesn’t help either. Also, using peptides is kinda tricky because to get the full benefits, you need to inject them, which is a big no-no for a lot of people. And also you need special licenses for this.
And as a chemist I know they’re actually pretty easy to make. You can even buy a peptide-making machine without breaking the bank. It’s just about connecting the right sequence of amino acids together. The big companies know this and they don’t see any profit in a non patentable easy to produce medicine.
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Sure - the same is true of supplements, but we see a fair amount of research published on them in animals. I don’t see the same thing relating to peptides, do you? Am I just missing the papers somehow? I rarely see any peptide / longevity research published.
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Supplements easy available and easy to use. Also there is big money in supplements.
Peptides although easy to synthesize they are medicine and regulated. They need injection and licenses to use. I think the barriers are to big for normal people to use and and for companies it’s not patentable so they don’t invest.
Oh - you’re specifically talking about injection of peptides then. The entire reason that One Skin went the peptide route for their topical cream was that there was not much FDA regulation, so they had a much faster path to revenue (which is important for any startup company).
I have not looked into peptides in other delivery mechanisms, e.g. injection (and I’m assuming you can’t just swallow them, but I’ve done no research).
So you’re saying that as soon as you go for injectable peptides they are regulated (but obviously, there are no clinical trials, as I’ve heard of none, so I’m curious as to how exactly the FDA regulates peptide use). I guess I need to read this: https://www.fda.gov/media/107622/download
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I understand there are some peptides that can survive digestion but most will not. Insulin is a peptide but people can’t just eat it.
I’m totally not into injections.
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Yes you can not take them orally, the digestive system breaks them down very easily. So what remains is nasal spray or injection. It’s regulated, it’s not consumer friendly and because they are already present naturally in the body they can not be patented easy. Altogether it doesn’t stimulate users and or manufacturers. But maybe the succes or Saxenda and Ozympic will change this. Also HGH is very successful.
I think it’s in very high dosage in Blueprint I believe at 6 mg. But other ones also interesting think of mots-c, bpc 157, epithalon, CJC-1295. They are all very involved in all the anti aging pathways. I expect personally a lot of development in this area of anti aging besides the small molecules and the gene therapy that’s on the forefront now. There are a lot of studies on them and I think a lot of peptides are now in clinical trials. Peptide factories are booming at the moment. I think there will be breakthrough now the companies seen the popularity of for example Saxenda that’s available ok doctors prescription for obesity.
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I’ve seen peptides for sale on Amazon “for lab use only”. I’m assuming people are injecting them. I might be crazy but I’m not stupid.
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I take rapamycin in kind of a scattershot way, since I’ve seen arguments for lower and higher doses, and no one really knows at this point. I usually take either 9 mg or 12 mg, although a couple times I have taken 9 mg one day and 6 the next, during a 3 day fast. I tend toward higher dosages, since I only take rapamycin once a month. I’m 38 years old and figure I don’t need an aggressive intervention at this point.
Other than that, 5 mg rosuvastatin EOD, 10 mg ezetimibe every day, 20 mg telmisartan ED, and 1 mg finasteride daily. I take 50 mg acarbose with carb meals when I remember.
For supplements just multivitamin (Thorne elite), protein, creatine, and oral hyaluronic acid.
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@desertshores Which supplements need to be taken on an empty stomach. I must have missed the memo as I usually take all mine with a light meal. Thanks in advance.
Curious about why you take rosuvastatin EOD, 10 mg ezetimibe every day, 20 mg telmisartan ED, and 1 mg finasteride — do you have high blood pressure/ lipids / cholesterol or purely preventative?
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My family tends to have high lipids. My LDL was about 116 or something unmedicated. Ezetimibe brought it down to about 100, so a low dose statin should get me down to something pretty low.
Telmisartan was recommended by my doctor for various longevity benefits.
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There are a few problems here. For most supplements, there are no blood tests that are specific enough for that supplement that they tell you whether you “need” them or not. Exceptions to this are supplements that have very specific easily measured targets, such as statins and LDL cholesterol. For most supplements however, there is no specific blood test that tells you whether you need it or are benefiting from it or not.
As far as measuring amounts one gets from the diet. I agree that that is very important and useful and I have roughly estimated myself how much I’m getting of various nutrients on an average day. However, I would say that for optimal health, there are many vitamins and minerals and other compounds for which the dose I think is likely to be optimal is higher than what people can reasonably get from even a very healthy diet. In such cases, I would argue supplements are necessary.
There is another reason I am generally a proponent of taking various supplements. That’s the fact that even for chemicals that you can get from the diet, it’s not necessarily a good idea to rely on dietary intake alone for various reasons. As an example, lets say you come to the conclusion that you want to get 600 mg of elemental magnesium daily for optimum health. If you try to get that amount from the diet, it’s not easy, even eating foods very rich in magnesium. In addition, the nature of foods is such that the amount of magnesium can vary a whole lot between different foods of the same type depending on so many factors like the soil it was grown in, the country it was grown in, the season it was grown and more. If you look at nutrient databases you will see that an ounce of walnuts contains on average x amount of some minerals, but the variation between cultivars and batches can easily vary more than ten fold, so you really don’t know what you’re getting. If you aim for a dietary intake of 600 mg daily, some days you might get only 200 mg and others a lot more than 600 mg. Taking standardized supplements (even though they too don’t contain the exact amount stated either) and aiming to get some of your target dose from the diet and some from supplements is likely to give you closer to 600 mg daily. This goes with the saying: “never put all your eggs in one basket”. This is why, even for things I can get from the diet, I aim to get some of the dose from supplements.
In the end, I think in most cases we certainly don’t know with high certainty whether we need a particular supplements, even with regular blood test tracking. Each person has to decide whether to take that as a reason to be extra careful and avoid all but the most well proven or measurable supplements, or to go more by the scientific literature and assume that odds are that whatever effects seen in intervention studies will also be seen in you personally and that the risk/benefit ratio is low enough.
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I think that all supplements found in the class of geroprotectors are beneficial for people. They prevent your cells from DNA damage, and clear out senescence. They also address many other hallmarks of aging and it’s obvious that the theory ‘the hallmarks of aging 2013’, holds ground. Also, aging seems not to be inevitable. I suggest everyone who wants to add years of lifespan and healthspan to his years should be actively involved in his own health at the moment. As long as we don’t classify aging as a disease, our healthcare system will not help us fight off all age-related diseases. You have to be proactive at the moment and find out facts from fiction yourself. Don’t forget there is no difference between a supplement and a medicine. It’s the FDA who decides this when they decide to say that something is developed or needs to be used for a certain disease. And since aging is not a disease, all the supplements for aging are not seen as so. It’s even impossible now to classify a medicine for aging. Most geroprotectors are naturally occurring substances in our daily food that we don’t get enough of to be beneficial. Some geroprotectors are naturally occurring intermediates in our body that we can only supplement. And some geroprotectors are medicine used for other diseases like rapamycin. I don’t think any single pill for aging will be ready within 15 years. I am 44 which puts me at risk of dying before a cure will be ready. Also, slowing aging and improving health and lifespan is important for everyone, also when your still young. The whole society is build on alcohol and bad quality food and most decisions about health are made with a calculator.
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