For about six months, I've been taking Rapamycin for longevity. I watched a video by Dr. Alan Green, who was extremely enthusiastic about his benefit from Rapamycin, and decided to try it. I have read a couple of studies about it in the past also.
What has my experience been? I've been taking Rapamycin once a week. In September my doctor tested my levels. My level was 3. Three what? Oh, whatever. The pharmacy told me my level should be 6, if I remember correctly. However, I think that would be to prevent the rejection of a kidney after organ transplant. I decided to increase my dose to what I calculated would be 6. I think I was also comparing levels with a mouse study. So then what happened?
I have had a mysterious weight loss of about 25 pounds during the time I've taken Rapamycin. I'm happy about that. The big thing I hoped to address was autoimmune problems, especially rheumatoid arthritis. So am I all better? Well, I'm not sure I see any difference. I don't have any symptoms except for injury from a relapse a few years ago. Is that improved? It is improved some. It seems to be slow progress. So what else? One of the symptoms of the autoimmune problems has been psoriasis. As long as I stay on a ketogenic diet, this usually isn't a problem. However, I've been surprised that there has been some psoriasis lately. I have medicated shampoo for this, but events have conspired lately, I suppose mostly due to cold weather, that I just skipped washing my hair for fear of being chilled, and noticed some psoriasis eventually. Finally, I bravely washed my hair. But it puzzles me that Rapamycin didn't seem to have much effect on improving that. I suppose I've been a slacker on my diet sometimes. So I can't say I'm extremely impressed with the improvements in rheumatoid arthritis. One area though that I've noticed improvement in is surprising to me, which is narcolepsy. I would say the whole sleep disorder picture has improved. In the past I've been able to control narcolepsy and insomnia by ruthless dieting. Any deviation and I could have trouble. However, the ability to loosen the reins on my diet without sleep disturbances has been something that I have noticed. Another thing has been better resistance to colds and flu. Am I aging in reverse? As usual, I look the same today as I did yesterday, so who knows? I feel a little more energetic after I take my weekly dose, and then it wears off after three or four days. I find myself looking forward to my new dose. Am I stronger? Not that I've noticed. One curious thing is that since September I've done a few things I don't remember doing. I have a credit card that I hardly ever use, but I keep in case my other card is lost. I decided to make sure it didn't have a balance a couple of days ago. It did have a balance - $900! What?? The credit card company said I had been using on Amazon. I have? I checked my account. Hmmm. It was my default card. Well, OK. I probably lost my usual card and switched temporarily. Still, it was a surprise, and kind of disturbing that I don't remember. They told me I had made monthly payments since September. Weird. Well, so what? One strange lapse. Still, is it the Rapamycin? I doubt it.
Except for weight loss and improvement in sleep I haven't seen a lot of difference, but those are two important areas that I didn't expect to see any changes in. Oh, what about blood glucose and blood pressure? I would say the trend is down on blood glucose, from an average of about 108 to somewhere between 95 and 100. This has been a surprise and something that never seemed to improve no matter what I did. So I'm starting to think Rapamycin has done some good.
UPDATE
I mentioned that I saw no particular improvement in strength. However, during a conversation today I was speaking of putting plastic on the windows. Last year I had to ask my step brother to help me, which he was very kind to do. I had hoped that my brother would help me with this endeavor, because I actually had not been able to do it myself. I staple up the plastic with a staple gun. However, the staple gun is too difficult for me to use. I just can't squeeze the thing hard enough to make the staple happen. But, my brother left before I asked him to help me. Now what? I went ahead and attempted the project myself, and was very amazed that my hand was able to squeeze the trigger with enough force to staple plastic over several windows. My hands were not strong enough to do that in the past. So my hands have gotten much stronger. Possibly also due to the Rapamyciin. Yay!
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