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Review of Anti-Aging Drugs

scienceblog.com

91–100 of 176 posts

Re: Review of Anti-Aging Drugs

#91
post #20

> Fast for short intervals regularly, and longer fasts as they feel good to you. You can effectively do this every day if you just eat once per day. When I was properly obese, this technique resulted in rapid weight loss. Zero exercise was required to see results, which was good at the time because the not eating part was about all I could handle. Being in a fasted state is as close as you can get to actually reversi…

While autophagy does correlate with fasting and some studies link it to health markers, it should be noted that it usually takes at least 18 hours of continued fasting to even start and only goes into full swing after 48 to 72 hours. It is also an extreme cell response that is associated with high levels of cellular stress, which might have understudied long term detrimental effects. A simple calorie reduction either…

I have personally reduced my a1c from 6.2 to 5.3, mostly by fasting for 36 hours per week.

I already cut refined sugar out of my diet several years ago.

Re: Review of Anti-Aging Drugs

#92
post #5

Winner, "Ascorbic". Do they mean Vitamin C?

My physician has just advised that I eat a piece of fruit every day, and I try to do so.

I think that is a safe way to ensure this bioavailability.

I have tested low on vitamin D and my physician advised supplements. I see that vitamin E is also on the list.

What natural foods provide those?

Re: Review of Anti-Aging Drugs

#93
post #87

There's a fascinating tension with anti-aging drugs, which is that your preference would obviously be to take them as early as possible, so you spend more time at a younger age as opposed to just prolonging the last years of your life, where you'll be stuck in a nursing home anyway. But taking experimental drugs while you're young is also much higher risk, and you might see people sacrificing their 20s for the sake o…

Taurine and Vitamin E are readily available and seem prudent. For melatonin, tryptophan plus niacin would maximize the serotonin pathway (note this is dangerous when used with SSRIs). How many of these are easily available? I had no idea that royal jelly is sold as a supplement.

Don’t listen to this stuff, he sounds so confident but it’s like he’s stapled together info nuggets. This isn’t like a thing people know with certainty.

Re: Review of Anti-Aging Drugs

#94
post #6

Would any of the OTC stuff even be effective? Melatonin, NAC, and Berberine.

Melatonin is just for jetlag/otherwise shifted sleeping schedule, are people using it as an anti aging drug?

Melatonin is always made from serotonin.

Serotonin is made from tryptophan, which can also be made into niacin.

Taking tryptophan and niacin as a supplement will boost both serotonin and melatonin naturally, assuming these pathways are working properly.

However, this can be dangerous in the presence of an SSRI.

Re: Review of Anti-Aging Drugs

#95

There's a fascinating tension with anti-aging drugs, which is that your preference would obviously be to take them as early as possible, so you spend more time at a younger age as opposed to just prolonging the last years of your life, where you'll be stuck in a nursing home anyway. But taking experimental drugs while you're young is also much higher risk, and you might see people sacrificing their 20s for the sake o…

Especially selegiline, MAOIs are dicey business.

Re: Review of Anti-Aging Drugs

#96
post #77
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just another way of saying there have been no big advances in clinical anti-ageing. And that's probably because little serious effort is going into it, compared with say, military spending.

It's easy to poke at the military budget as wasteful, but human history has shown that military expenditure is at a minimum, necessary. The same cannot be said of most preferred spending avenues for the cause of the day.

I'm reading that the US spends about $893 billion[1] on national defence and about $5.3 trillion on health care in 2024, with spending on track for roughly $5.6 trillion in 2025 [2][3]. These figures don't match my intuition...

---

[1] https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IN/PDF/IN1242...

[2] https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/pdf/10.1377/hlthaff.2025.0...

[3] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/how-muc...

Re: Review of Anti-Aging Drugs

#97

These articles really need a lot of context to parse as they paint some of the compounds as having potential upside without downsides. Metformin is amazing in people with diabetes, but among non-diabetics taking it for vague life extension claims it’s often discontinued due to side effects. Rapamycin has fallen out of favor among many in this space because they felt it was producing net negative effects as well as ca…

What side effects cause people taking Metformin to discontinue it? I'm taking, but haven't noticed any, but... you don't notice your baseline, I suppose!

For diabetics, Metformin is usually a net win. Having controlled diabetes is better all around than uncontrolled.

For non-diabetics hoping Metformin will bring health benefits, the subtle side effects like reducing adaptive responses to exercise ( https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6351883/ ) and other small negatives aren’t usually advertised by the anti-aging influencers who only talk about the lifespan studies (in mice)

Re: Review of Anti-Aging Drugs

#98
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is way too early to know about any downsides of these drugs. I’m afraid too many people are gonna find out the downsides when it’s too late.

These drugs have been around since 2005. Exenatide was approved by the FDA for use in 2005. We've had plenty of time. Only their approval for weight loss is new

Exenatide was a very small population base. The approval for weight loss means this drug is being taken by millions of more people which leads to a larger sample size. The larger the sample size the more negative effects will be revealed. I’ll just leave this here for the future m. I have no evidence other than common sense that it is ridiculous to think that injecting a hormone randomly in your body does not lead to side effects.

Besides, who is going to be the one that links thyroid cancers and pancreatic cancers to these drugs? My father died of pancreatic cancer, no one really thought to ask why.

Re: Review of Anti-Aging Drugs

#99
post #93
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taurine and Vitamin E are readily available and seem prudent. For melatonin, tryptophan plus niacin would maximize the serotonin pathway (note this is dangerous when used with SSRIs). How many of these are easily available? I had no idea that royal jelly is sold as a supplement.

Don’t listen to this stuff, he sounds so confident but it’s like he’s stapled together info nuggets. This isn’t like a thing people know with certainty.

[deleted]

Re: Review of Anti-Aging Drugs

#100
post #82
post #57

Ascorbic is not a correct name of a compound. Should be 'ascorbic acid' or Vitamin C. Such sloppiness cast doubt on accuracy of the whole review.

I mean this guy is not a scientist. He's an enthusiasts aping scientific process. Look at how he talks about the "10-20% flexibility". Hypothesis assumed true, no supporting evidence. Same with his idea of being young longer. No evidence supports this, yet his comments proceed as if it's a gospel truth

Agreed, I would have appreciated this more as a peer-reviewed meta-analysis than a blog post.
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