First, for Binger: Sorry I haven't started the other thread. I've tried typing it up a few times. I've never really told the story, and I'm realizing just how many moving parts there were, and how hard it is to tell without getting into all of the side-stories. So, in case it never does happen, the most condensed version possible is that myself and 3 other dudes (a chemist undergrad [at the time], an ER doc, and a human guinea pig) had a little gig consulting for supplement/fitness companies in the 2000s. About 90% of my role in the rag-tag group involved a lot (and I mean, a lot) of reading through studies -- predominantly stuff from the 1950s-1980s that had been abandoned, but stuff that was being researched at the time as well.
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A few more comments/thoughts on rapamycin, as I’ve largely had a good stretch of my brain working almost like the good ole days.
The anti-aging/longevity stuff with rapamycin is basically just an interesting novelty of sorts. The enzyme pathway that rapamycin tinkers with has had a lot of research done on it. It looks like it has excellent potential for targeting/treating some neurodegenerative diseases, but there’s just too much other stuff downstream that’s effected to use it for something more broad like "anti-aging." What’s the point of getting the full benefit of exercise if the very thing that’s helping you out could also make it so you can’t heal from an injury from exercising (for just one example of a downside of a broad-acting inhibitor like rapamycin).
As an aside, intermittent fasting tinkers with this same pathway (I imagine most people have come across at least one news things about fasting, and living longer -- (
PDF Warning).
There’s pretty much always a tradeoff of some sort when it comes to this stuff. Along the same lines (sort of) you can tinker with IGF-1 to influence the same pathway, and you bypass the wound healing problems that could happen with rapamycin. You get the metabolism benefits, cognitive improvement, anti-depressant/anxiety (animal models), etc. On the surface, another
miracle drug. Bonus is this one is all-natural and already in our innards. But… (
dun, dun, dunnnnn) you’re then potentially super charging cancer growth.
Whenever you mess with enzymes, or hormones, or proteins, there’s usually a feedback loop that’s going to get pissy, a pathway that’s going to forget how to act, or some bizarre gymnastics the body will do to try to reach what it thinks is supposed to be its homeostasis.
