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Rapamycin, drug used in cancer therapy, emerges as powerful anti-aging remedy

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211–220 of 228 posts

Re: Rapamycin, drug used in cancer therapy, emerges as powerful anti-aging remedy

#212
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes me scared about this is that it's immunosuppressive. The immune system is a very important part of the human body, and I worry that taking it could have terrible health impact after years of acting on your body lines of defense. What can you tell me about it?

If you think about it, there are specific parts of our immune systems that are likely entirely maladaptive given modern civilization, where people are ~never exposed to parasites, animal venoms, etc. We can turn those parts off, while leaving everything else on, and be better for it (no allergies, psoriatic arthritis, MS, Chron’s, etc.; and so none of the accelerated cellular senescence those conditions provoke in af…

Deactivating parts of the immune system wouldn't be simpler than giving receptor blockers. Everything in the body is connected to one another, and whatever circulating immune signaling proteins are involved could have numerous other effects on other non-immune cells.

There's also no reason to think that the immune system is so easily split up between systems that respond to parasites, bacteria, and virii. While a human designer might think that way, in nature most things are messy and have tons of overlap. This is true of the immune system. For example you can measure C-Reactive Protein and use it as a thermometer for general systemic inflammation. But elevated levels could as likely be a cold as a particularly intense workout-- they'll both trigger strong immune reactions with lots of overlap in effect.

Re: Rapamycin, drug used in cancer therapy, emerges as powerful anti-aging remedy

#213
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure AI could do this with enough data.

I'm sure. But it's data we don't even have right now. We don't even know every chemical that naturally occurs in the body, how are we supposed to predict how they could interact with novel chemicals? Some day, though, it may be possible. There was a point where people couldn't imagine these image generation AIs working

Yea, data collection is the key here. If we had unobstrusive sensors that people could wear and embed in their body, to continuously measure a multitide of biometrics, that would greatly empower bio-AI systems.

Re: Rapamycin, drug used in cancer therapy, emerges as powerful anti-aging remedy

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw no indication he was promoting the Church, rather than belief in G-d. (Not that it was a relevant reply anyway.)

guys, come on, it's just a meme. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/everyday-we-stray-further-fro...

Yeah :)

Re: Rapamycin, drug used in cancer therapy, emerges as powerful anti-aging remedy

#215
Tangentially related - it seems there are other things that, if experienced early enough in life, have significant health benefits that are triggered if-and-only-if the catalyst occurs at the right time. For example, pregnancy at a young age is associated with a significant decrease in breast cancer risk. My recollection is this benefit of pregnancy disappears once a women is in her late teens. Our bodies are wildly interesting.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24355762/

Re: Rapamycin, drug used in cancer therapy, emerges as powerful anti-aging remedy

#216
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good measure is whether or not you feel that empty, churning feeling in your stomach. Another good measure is if you're into the idea of eating something like plain cabbage or oats.

I feel that after a few hours of not eating. Is feeling it or not feeling it the sign that I've reached the necessary effect?

I think it is bare minimum for good clean digestion. As far as ALL the benefits of fasting... I think it is a good start.

Re: Rapamycin, drug used in cancer therapy, emerges as powerful anti-aging remedy

#217
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's NMN?

Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an unregulated supplement. Note also: > We found that, when data from all organisms studied were combined for each compound, aspirin resulted in the highest percent increase in average lifespan (52.01%), followed by minocycline (27.30%), N-acetyl cysteine (17.93%), nordihydroguaiaretic acid (17.65%) and rapamycin (15.66%), in average. [0] Though I'd consider whether flies and worms are go…

> Though I'd consider whether flies and worms are good models for your human self.

Even other vertebrates don't share the human cancer model, so people are absolutely jumping the gun assuming that this generalises to us.

But I'd imagine (and hope) that it's mostly laymen (and quacks in the supplement business) that are pushing the notion that the evidence is in?

Re: Rapamycin, drug used in cancer therapy, emerges as powerful anti-aging remedy

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your concern is correct. Suppressing the immune system is a 2-edged sword - a little suppression in the right setting, is extremely beneficial, but go overboard and it is harmful. That's why in a perfect world, we would have large human trials with different dosages and iterate until we can get the maximum benefit and the least harm. The problem is, no one wants to do those trials because rapamycin is cheap and gener…

Why don't insurance companies fund some of this research? Honestly, I don't know. Wouldn't they want to get treatment costs down? Large HMOs, especially, have motivation to control treatment costs, and access to the patients, data, etc... to make it work.

Delivering care counts toward their margins, regulated by the ACA. I forget the exact number, but it is 80 percent to be spent on care, something like that.

The key thing is more care = more dollars = more in the bank.

One response to that legislation was insurers buying care providers.

Re: Rapamycin, drug used in cancer therapy, emerges as powerful anti-aging remedy

#219

This isn't new. David Sinclair wrote about rapamycin in Lifespan[1][2] (I keep linking this book on HN a lot; no relation) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifespan_(book) [2] https://lifespanbook.com/

Anything David Sinclair has endorsed should be considered with at least double the normal skeptical scrutiny.

I don't think he _endorsed_ rapamycin or metformin. If he endorsed anything, I'd say it was NMN.

Everything people like Sinclair state should be taken with a grain of salt (as even his peers say he's guilty of making excessive claims) but it's forward-thinkers who change the world, not people following others' steps and afraid to take peek outside their box.

Maybe the guy will achieve something real in the field and maybe it'll be the next guy. No way to know. But I'm far from dismissing someone just because their opinions are not in line with popular knowledge. Boltzmann, Galileo, Copernicus and Wright brothers were discredited or ridiculed.

Re: Rapamycin, drug used in cancer therapy, emerges as powerful anti-aging remedy

#220
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every day we stray further from god's light

[1] - "The figures are staggering: out of 35,000 children in care, more than 2,000 were physically or sexually abused by priests between 1936 and 1999" (Ireland alone) [2] - French Church abuse: 216,000 children were victims of clergy - inquiry 1. https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/45133-sexual-abuse-church-map... 2. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58801183

It's a meme. But that aside, two groups can both do bad things.
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