My Rapamycin Experiment: Male / Early 30s / Non-US Based

Hi,

So I'm currently at the early stages of experimenting with Rapamycin, and thought, if I'm going to take an experimental drug, I might as well document the process and see if it can benefit the collective.

As far as I know there aren't currently a lot of 30 year olds taking Rapamycin.

So, let's run through some info about me and what I'm doing:

How I came across Rapa, and why I'm interested to try it:

• I was put onto mTOR / rapamycin / hyperfunction theory via Peter Attia and his podcasts/interviews, where he mentioned Mikhail Blagosklonny's research.
• I started reading through Blagosklonny's work + animal studies, and the hyperfunction theory seemed to make a lot of sense.
• Despite having an athletic build, circa 10% bodyfat, and being generally "healthy", I feel like I've been aging way quicker than I'd like the last 5 years or so.
• An additional motivation is the early onset of age related diseases (particularly cardiovascular disease and cognitive decline) in my close family. Hopefully I can delay them longer than they have.

What do I expect to achieve with Rapamycin?

• It seems possible that rapamycin will delay ageing, and thus age related morbidities such as cardiovascular disease (heart attacks and strokes), cancer and Alzheimers. How much will it delay them? It’s unclear.

What I don't expect:

• Biological age reversal - we will need other drugs for that unfortunately.
• To start looking better than I do now
• To feel significantly different from how I feel without taking the rapamycin

Trying to find a doctor to work with:

• Given how new rapamycin is in the context of longevity, I was keen to work with a doctor, to minimize risk.
• As I'm not based in the US, it wasn't obvious how I'd go about working with a doctor and getting a prescription.
• I initially looked at working with Dr Alan Green (rapamycintherapy.com), but he seemed to have a rule about only consulting in person, and with older people.
• Then I started down the route of trying to work via telemedicine with US doctors who are prescribing rapamycin for longevity.
• I found a doctor and arranged a call. Unfortunately I was let down by the experience, and realized I had a potentially better understanding of possible side effects and biomarkers to monitor.
• At this point I decided to "go it alone" - as I wasn't going to be able to collect the prescriptions easily from the USA, and I wasn't overly impressed with the options.

Getting a baseline for biomarkers:

• For 2018 and 2019 I had done fairly comprehensive blood panels. So then in 2021 I did a further one to make sure I've got a good baseline for where I'm at.

• I specifically used the panel on this site - which is done via LifeExtension.

• This way I will be able to compare future blood results, and see if anything is vastly worse (or better!).

Buying Rapamcyin:

• As I don't have a doctor to work with, this made getting prescription rapamycin impossible.
• So I decided to go to the next best option I could find - Indian pharmacies.
• I contacted a number of sellers on the India Mart website, and ordered some by brand Zydus. Who seem to be a relatively big Indian pharmacy.
• They ended up costing about $1.70 per mg delivered.

Doses I've Taken So Far:

• August 15 - 1mg
• August 22 - 2mg (1 week apart)
• August 29 - 2mg (1 week apart)
• September 5 - 3mg (1 week apart)
• September 17 - 4mg (12 days apart)
  (September 22 - blood donation)
• Oct 2 - 4mg (15 days from last one)

Notes on dosing:

• As you can see, I started off at the bottom of the dosing scale, and gradually increased.
• At the 4mg mark I decided to move from 7 days to 12 days between doses, at least for now.
• I had no side effects until dose 5, at which point I spotted my first mouth ulcer. I don't normally get mouth ulcers, so there's a good chance it's related to the rapamycin. It lasted about a week before healing.

Do I feel anything?

• I don't think I notice any difference whilst on the rapamycin.
• The only thing might be a slight increase in energy and interest in moving about - but that could just be placebo / natural - it's hard to tell!
• On the plus side, I don't feel worse, and nothing has got worse physically that I'm aware of.

What I’ll do going forward?

• Dose: I’m probably going to hover around 4 mg every 12 days, and get an idea for my tolerance at this level.
• Measurements: I have waist measurements, so I’ll keep an eye on my weight. However, as I’m already at a healthy weight for my height, so I don’t expect things to change much.
• At a future point I'll do another comprehensive blood panel and see if anything appears negatively affected.