[ad_1]
Charles is your average 50-year-old family man. He lives in the suburbs of Atlanta, works in marketing, Brazilian jujitsu and spends weekends watching his child in wrestling tournaments. Except that Charles has a problem: he is worried about feeling dying, of these age marks such as haircut, the loss of a step and forgetfulness of his wife's name. Charles is the kind of guy who is active on the anti-aging Internet forums and takes a handful of supplements. A few years ago, when my grandfather had cancer, I saw him die, he said. Charles read other ways that his grandfather might try to prolong his life, but his grandfather did not try them. Shortly after, Charles (who asked not to use his real name) had news that sent his hitch in hyperdrive. I took this genetic test 23andMe, he says. I discovered that I had a risk for Alzheimer's disease. This is a risk that increases with the aging of your body.
Van, 72, led sales of medical devices in Boston until his retirement and his move to Spain. He ran five miles and lifted weights three times a week. But by the end of sixty, all that wellness stuff was not working very well. I started to be really tired in the afternoons, says Van, who also did not want to give his name. I would be too tired at night to go to dinner, and I also started to suffer from high blood pressure. I felt the effects of aging. His attempts to launch a kettlebell were heartless and his walks in the neighborhood were getting slower. Van felt that the sun was setting over the life of vitality that he loved and that he was heading for a morose and inevitable end.
Each of these men solved his concerns about aging at about the same place and time. They found information in Reddit discussions and on longevity blogs about something that, according to people on the other end of the keyboard, could help them live longer longer. This would make Louis healthier as he got older and all his friends saw their bodies fade. This would reduce the risk of Alzheimers at Charless and incite men of ten years to fight against him in the BJJ. This would revive the formation of Vans and drop his blood biomarkers to those of a person half his age. It had the potential to be more powerful than diet and exercise. But it could also cause problems.
It was a curious substance discovered in soil collected on Easter Island during a Canadian research expedition in 1964. Scientists who studied the disease found that people did not contract tetanus as they expected. , and they told themselves that the soil had secrets. But no one expected to find this one. The soil was stored in a laboratory at the University of Montreal until 1969, when a researcher looked for useful compounds and discovered a molecule that was a powerful immunosuppressant. In 1999, the FDA approved the molecule under the name Rapamune (sirolimus), also called rapamycin. In the mid-2000s, rapamycin was found to increase the lifespan of worms and yeast and, in a 2009 study, prolonged mice life expectancy by 28% for males and males. 38% for women. 28% more energy? This could result in more than a decade of better years for humans, said editors and bloggers. But there was a trap.
Rapamycin was not really benign, and Louis, Charles or Van could not just go to CVS. In high doses, rapamycin inhibits your immune system. The FDA has approved for people who have undergone an organ transplant to prevent their body from rejecting the given organ. The product may expose you to side effects. About 5% of patients in clinical trials have suffered to the point of having to give up the drug. The FDA has affixed rapamycin a "black box" warning, the most extreme, for drugs that pose serious or even fatal risks, such as infections, pneumonia and cancer.
Still, the forums had links to legitimate research and showed much enthusiasm in the ranks of influential biohackers such as Tim Ferriss and doctors like Peter Attia, MD, who had featured on their podcast researchers from MIT and doctors from the University of Chicago. – bending benefits. In general, doctors do not openly prescribe rapamycin for longevity. Van was lucky and found someone who did it. But Louis and Charles, like many people who want something today, went on the Web.
We talked to many men like Louis, Charles and Van for this story. They are between 27 and 76 years old and their opinions on the drug will probably help, but are no better than physical exercise, to the most important drug ever discovered by humanity and should constitute a topic of key discussion during the next cycle of presidential elections. They are workers, academics, doctors, contractors and all the rest. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these men who are quietly experimenting with rapamycin across the country. And if these guys are right, they could be like the lucky rodents of research, walking around with better brain, heart and vital health while the rest of us go to mortality. Or they could kill themselves slowly. It's too early to say.
The mystery of aging
Scientists still do not know what really causes aging. Maybe it's because your cells stop dividing, your telomeres get shorter, you deplete your stem cells, or your DNA is damaged and stops repairing itself, or a combination of all these processes. Or maybe it is not one of them. All we can do to live longer and better is to treat the symptoms of aging. So that's what the anti-aging community has been forced to do.
It's a story of whack-a-huckster. In the 1800s, treatments were patented drugs such as Clark's Stanleys snake oil liniment and Hamlins oil sorcerer oil. In the 1920s, anti-aging physicians claimed between $ 750 and $ 2,000 for life-prolonging gland transplants. The medical advice of the late 1930s intervened to reduce these quack treatments. But in the 90s, baby boomers brought back the quack. This generation reached middle age and, having grown up in the turbulent decade of the 1960s, was willing to question the institution in this case. The medical establishment turned to self-help. Boomers have begun to consume dubious over-the-counter supplements and receive HGH injections, all hoping for extra life. In 2002, when the anti-aging market had reached $ 43 billion, a group of 51 scientists working in this field had published an article in Scientific American describing the booming trade in anti-aging medications. Nobody really cared. Five years later, the market was to reach $ 64 billion.
BusinessInsider USA Images
The story is full of anti-aging therapies; in the 1880s, snake oil was praised for fighting it.
It was about the time when Silicon Valley came up with big data, scientific data and huge sums to, of course, disrupt death. Larry Page, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos and other billionaires in the tech sector have since pumped billions into extension companies, such as Calico and the Methuselah Foundation. (See Death Disrupters, page 111.) Much of the new research is based on an anti-aging discovery dating back to 1935. It was then that Cornell researchers discovered that rats who spent their lives in a state of caloric restriction lived longer.
Finally, this discovery would be linked to this living compound in the soil of Easter Island thanks to the microscope of David Sabatini, Ph.D., MD. Dr. Sabatini did not want to interfere in this strange world of anti-aging, but in 1992, examining a sample that was badyzed one day at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, he discovered a protein, now called mTOR (abbreviation). mammal target of rapamycin), which would form a link between how rapamycin could prolong life and how caloric restriction does. He had discovered the mTOR cell signaling pathway that responds to rapamycin. The drug could act on the very causes of aging.
Dr. Sabatini, now a professor of biology at the Whitehead Institute and at MIT, explains the mTOR path as follows: Imagine that your body is an old house. Your oldest cells have all kinds of problems and are involved in the decay of your home. You can not completely renovate the old house with a plumber, an electrician, a roofer, or a drywaller, says Dr. Sabatini. You would need to hire a general contractor, who would hire all the specialists who would then come to solve all the problems to be solved. The mTOR pathway is like the general business, telling your body to demolish parts of its old cells and replace them with newer, healthier cells.
Dr. Sabatini thinks that rapamycin causes the body to think that it's in a state of calorie deprivation, prompting the entrepreneur to call on all the guys for renovations. Cell workers consume your oldest and weaker cell parts, even parts of senescent cells. These are cells that no longer divide and are supposed to stimulate aging and perhaps even cause cancer. This means that rapamycin could give you all the benefits of fasting without the voracious annoyances. In addition to studies on rapamycin in yeast, worms, flies and mice, scientists started working on dogs in 2014; he found that people on the drug showed signs of a younger heart and a reversal of age-related heart problems.
Meanwhile, Mikhail Blagosklonny, Ph.D., M.D., a prolific researcher on aging at Buffwell's Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, began writing his theories on rapamycin in medical journals. He noted his anti-aging promises in 2008 and hypothesized that a lower dose than transplant patients could have beneficial effects without side effects. On Christmas Eve 2014, a study by researchers at Novartis and Stanford and published in Science Translational Medicine confirmed Dr. Blagosklonnys' theory. Seniors taking the drug for six weeks did not see their decreased immunity increased in groups taking as little as 0.5 mg per day or 5 mg per week. Adult transplant patients usually take a dose of 2 mg daily.
Today, there are more than 2,000 rapamycin clinical trials in the world, including nearly 1,000 in the United States, and even the NIH director has published a blog about its potential benefits. All of this means that rapamycin checks a lot of boxes in the description of a trend about to explode: wellness gurus discussing, credible researchers giving it ink and enough unfamiliar to interpret the research to fit your vision of the world. But science, like science, is progressing slowly and cautiously and may never find answers. Because the drug is already generic, pharmaceutical companies are not interested and anti-aging enthusiasts are going ahead and taking it, sometimes with serious consequences.
Decide to take the pill
in the world of rapamycin for anti-aging, guys find a way to get the drug. Louis and Charles searched the forums, not the moderates, like Reddits, but the forums that Charles would rather not mention, just to protect them, you know? Charles found a message with a link to an obscure unregulated pharmacy in India that was willing to send rapamycin to anyone without a prescription. Louis received his from a supplier that he would not disclose.
Van located the only doctor in the United States who would have prescribed the drug. His name is Alan Green, MD, and he cares for patients from his home in Bayside, Queens. As you have to visit him in person, Van flew to LaGuardia Airport, took a taxi to Bayside and found himself at Dr. Greens' office.
With these anti-aging medications, there are patterns, we do not know the effects, but we recommend those you receive from Dr. Green and those that are fragmentary from foreign pharmacies and underground providers. Many foreign pills go well, but some are not. The bad ones can be counterfeit, contaminated, contaminated or otherwise dangerous. They can make you sick, cause dangerous interactions with other medications that you take and even kill you. In the eyes of Charless and Louiss, the biggest risk was to do nothing. They each requested a shipment of rapamycin; Charles received a $ 100 supply over four months and Louis a $ 200 supply over two years.
The prescription of the vans came from Dr. Green, who takes the medication himself. At the right foot and weighing 175 pounds when he started, with a white hair border around his tan head, the decision to take it was easy. He had just turned 72 and everything was going badly. It was clear that I was coming down quickly, said the 76-year-old. I would be easily out of breath and I would not move either. I knew I would not be alive if I continued to degrade at this rate. He came across the work of Dr. Blagosklonnys and wrote a 6 mg prescription himself once a week. I had nothing to lose, he said. The first thing I noticed was that it became easy to lose weight. I lost two pounds a week. I also had a clear increase in energy and I did not feel as easily trained.
Dr. Green continued his treatment for a whole year with benefits. So I decided, well, I'll make this available to other people, he says. The FDA black box warning is an excellent warning because it applies to organ transplants. At doses for anti-aging? Not that much, said Dr. Green. It is not illegal for him to prescribe the drug. Once the FDA has approved a drug, health care providers can usually prescribe it for unapproved use when they deem it's medically appropriate for their patient, says Jeremy Kahn, a spokesman for the FDA. Overall, one in five prescriptions today are for nonconforming use, such as the Inderal hypotensive drug used for the treatment of performance anxiety or the Zoloft antidepressant for premature ejaculation.
Dr. Green has created a website presenting the research and heard testimonials from people who found it online. I thought I would see a few patients a month, he says. His phone started ringing a lot more than that. I think I was Dr. Greens' second patient, Van said. The doctor asked Van a handful of questions about his medical history, his interest in rapamycin, and what he hoped to learn from it. Then he did some basic blood tests, Van said, and wrote him a prescription. Van filled the Rx, threw in his hand six pills of 1mg of aspirin, and put them in his mouth. He came back to Boston and at home, he was taking the same 6 mg dose once a week. My blood work quickly became that of someone 20 to 30 years younger, he says.
BusinessInsider USA Images
Dr. Alan Green, 76, did not think that so many men would get rapamycin in his Queens office, that he started taking himself when everything was going to shit.
Seeing Dr. Green is not cheap. You will need to travel and will charge $ 350 for an initial visit and between $ 100 and $ 200 for follow-ups. Your insurance does not cover drugs, which cost between $ 75 and $ 150 a month. Dr. Green now sees about three patients a week, and many are doctors, doctors and executives, he says. But that does not help guys like Charles and Louis.
They received rapamycin tablets a few weeks after placing their orders. Charles added a dose of 5 mg with all the other supplements that he took and washed the mixture with water. Louis did the same thing with a 7 mg dose. Both guys take their pills once a week. I've lost 10 or 15 pounds in the last three months, says Charles, who also admits to having eaten better. I feel less bad, as if I was taking Advil. I was going to leave Jujitsu a few years ago because of my joint pains and I find myself now with 25 years old. My hair also looks a lot thicker. Louis was on and off for almost a year; he says that he can not say if less joint pain and an improvement in mood are direct results or just a coincidence. He had sores in his mouth, signs of a compromised immune system, but they did not shake it, they thought that they could also be a coincidence.
The concerns about infections and the worst are one of the reasons why doctors do not prescribe rapamycin. Dr. Green said that bacterial infections occur in about 5% of patients. I had some skin and soft tissue infections, which I treated with antibiotics, he says, and he points out that infections can become serious quickly without antibiotic treatment. I have two patients who developed pneumonia and had to be hospitalized. In both cases, they started taking antibiotics with a delay of a few days to a week or more.
I think [prescribing rapamycin] is on the edge of ethics, says Dr. Sabatini, who does not take the drug. I think that they were far from knowing that there was no inconvenience to long-term use. Dr. Attia, an influential 46-year-old doctor who focuses on longevity, says that he will not prescribe it to other people, at least not yet. I take rapamycin myself, so on a certain level, I decided that it was a smart option, he said. But I have not prescribed it to patients, except one, who is himself a scientist studying rapamycin. And I think that speaks to my desire to better understand the risks, not only of taking too much, but also of not taking enough. Probably never be able to study directly if rapamycin really helps humans live longer, says Dr. Attia. It takes too much time and is too expensive to do such a study. There must be a combination of agents, he says, and scientists are discussing developing such tests to badyze what types of markers could actually identify what is happening with the drug.
Yet Louis, Charles and Van Arent are waiting for science to catch up. They have been on the trick for as long as two years and do not plan on stopping. Perhaps the three of them, the rest of Dr. Greens' patients, and the countless number of people seeking rapamycin on the Internet will be part of the 95% of people who see no effect secondary negative. It's baduming that the pills they're getting are legitimate. And maybe they will eventually survive us. Or maybe they will find an unknown and unforeseen consequence. Medicine can be a gamble. Some medicines have been on the shelf for decades before doctors realize they have long-term adverse side effects and need to be removed. The painkiller Vioxx, for example, has been badociated with 27,000 heart attacks and strokes after being approved by the FDA, and the acne drug Accutane has dramatically increased the risk of miscarriage and severe birth defects at women who take it during pregnancy. Many later sued his manufacturer.
That being said, none of these cases will influence the decisions of the antiagers to whom we spoke. I do not know if it will make me live longer, but I hope I can overcome the dementia, says Charles. And I feel good, man. So why not?
Source link
