#1

I’m a 33 year old male and physician, I have a history of intermittent bouts of weight lifting but otherwise an unremarkable lifestyle. A few months ago I developed neuropathic pain and tingling in my legs/feet and also occasional hand/arms. Imaging shows multilevel degenerative disc disease and other mild-moderate signs of spinal aging. I don’t think direct disc impingement on nerve roots is the main issue as a steroid burst effectively all but eliminates the symptoms, so it seems to be primarily an inflammatory process. All my labs are normal except elevated CRP (although when tested I was also recovering from strep). I have no significant past medical history other than very mild intermittent asthma.

I’m really saddened by this new issue as it really affects my quality of life, and it just happened seemingly randomly, I wasn’t lifting weights recently nor did I injure myself in any other way.

I just started my first dose of rapamycin 1mg today with plan to slowly ramp up the dose but was wondering if anyone has had similar issues and whether Rapamycin helped, or any other recommendations.

I’m following the back rehab program by Stuart McGill from Back Mechanic book.

4 Likes
#2

Sorry to hear that.
Are you using any medication except rapamycin or are you using supplements? If so I would look for side effects of those and the symptoms you are having in Google + prompting for studies, in case there is any case reports matching. I’m not a doctor and this isn’t medical advice by the way, also feed all data you have into GPT4 or Claude 3 Opus in case they can find something novel with good prompts (see Anthropic manual) as the intelligence of the models improve this will be more and more useful, so it’s worthwhile to look into now IMO.

#3

Hi Brandon, welcome to the site.

Have you seen this part of our website, from this thread: The Case for Starting Rapamycin Earlier in Life (e.g. late 20s) vs middle age (e.g. 50s)

Spinal Health

Also - when you look at spinal disc degeneration that comes with age you see that rapamycin reverses some of the effects of age on the spinal disc , but only about 50% (very roughly). While this study was done in older monkeys and looked at spinal disc regeneration, I suspect that the results for preservation of the discs would be much better if rapamycin was started earlier. As with all these areas, more research needs to be done.

RapamycinDiscRegen
RapamycinDiscRegen2362×1336 225 KB

2 Likes
#4

Thanks for your reply and welcome, and yes I did do a search before I posted and I saw that, which is one reason I decided to give rapamycin a try. And I’ve seen personal reports on here of rapamycin improving general aches and pains but I didn’t see anyone post specifically about their personal experience with DDD.

1 Like
#5

Great book. Hoping you get some relief.

#6

Hi Brandon, great to have another doctor on the forum!
As I’m gaining more experience over the last 4-5 months with patients on rapamycin, one of the things that is a recurring theme, is symptomatic improvement in patients with DDD and also osteoarthritic symptoms. It’s not 100% of the time- but I’ve had some folks go from thinking they were going to need a back procedure, to reversing that thought process.
I’ve not specifically prescribed Rapamycin for that indication - but it is something to add to the potential benefits.

3 Likes
#7

Thanks for mentioning that- that is certainly encouraging and hopeful

1 Like
#8

Hi Brandon,
Any feedback on your progress?

My wife got injured while squatting and we are considering rapamycin as the doctor told her she had to live in pain for the rest of her life (she’s 25)

1 Like
#9

Yes, rapamycin definitely helps my symptoms (by as much as 90%) but only as long as I take it. I tried stopping and symptoms came right back, although only tried it for a few weeks total so far.

But it really depends what the issue is. If you have a herniated disc then the issue is mechanical pressure from the disc into nerve roots. In my case, I don’t have any herniation, only disc degeneration and probably a disc annular fissure causing a local inflammatory reaction that then highly sensitizes the nearby nerves.

So rapamycin helps because my issue is primarily inflammatory but if it’s more structural then it may not help as much.

1 Like
#10

Tell us more. Sounds bizarre.

#11

Hi Brandon, what dose and how frequently were you taking the rapa to see that level of relief? Are you still taking it?

Thanks.

#12

GO BRANDON!! Hahaha.

Welcome to the forum.
If you don’t mind… where in the Midwest?
I work at A.T. Still University in Kirksville, Missouri.

My rapamycin use since August of 2020 (about 4.5 years) has significantly reduced my inflammation.

I had beginnings of arthritis pain that vanished after about 3 months use. I also test my glycans for inflammation levels and I am at the biological age of 45 years.

This inflammation level has been consistently in forties – except for a spike when I did high rapamycin for 7 months - that biological age spike returned to forties after a year of lower - 6 mg per week rapamycin dosing. In 3 plus years of Glycan testing… rapamycin really a game changer for me in tamping down sterile inflammation.

Also, my excercise tolerance, recovery and strength improved with rapamycin. Best - Jason

20250117_092347
20250117_0923471920×793 150 KB

20250117_101144
20250117_1011441920×1028 188 KB

#13

Great results! I’m Champaign, IL currently.

1 Like
#14

Yes… I hope you can get similar or better results. :wink:

#15

@Brandon i know your post was from a while ago, so i hope you receive an alert to my response -

if nothing else, i wanted to tell you,

please don’t get steroid injections - they may make you feel better for a while, but they actually destroy joints :frowning: ;

i know you’re a dr., but even some dr.'s don’t realize this, and go on administering them to patients…

…BUT. there are some therapies i had wanted to try, for joint regeneration -

do you know about “PRP”?

…and now, there is also “amniofix,” sterilized amniotic fluid injections which are supposed to regenerate the joints…

and also, “PEMF (pulsed electro magnetic field [therapy]),” which has been found to have a regenerative effect - on the whole body, not just joints ;

one system is called, i think, the “earthpulse” -

i loaned mine to two different people -

one whose mother had terminal liver dosease :frowning: , and she said it REALLY did help her mother, and that if only we could have started her on it, early in the disease, maybe it could have saved her,

and the other was my father - i think i gave it to him, to help with extreme pain, and i think it helped him too …until he …slept directly on the magnet (you’re supposed to put something between it and you, like your mattress, if you’re going to sleep on it), and he burned it out :frowning:

but very important, never put the magnet(s) anywhere near computers OR your cellphone

(in an abundance of caution, i wouldn’t even want my devices in the same room, although that is probably not necessary)

as it can erase hard drives or cause them to act haywire :frowning:

…i hope this post helps you - or someone else out there :hugs:

.

#16

Hi there- Thanks for your thoughtfulness. I have not received any injections. I take rapamycin and it helps my symptoms. I try to take the minimum effective dose and cycle off of it as long as I can tolerate it to minimize any unforeseen long-term side effects.

3 Likes
#17

Please don’t spread misinformation. This is simply not true.

3 Likes
#18

@KarlT

this was talked about on the medical talk show “The Doctors” - The doctor(s) said that cortisone injections will actually cause deterioration of your joints

…and my own poor Mom, once she got steroid injections, her joins Rapidly got Worse…

(also, anyone who has Hypercortisolism/Cushing’s disease will tell you what cortisol/Cortisone does to their joints [and every other bodily system])

#19

Don’t use medical TV shows like this for medical advice or knowledge - they are famously of very low quality, and are really designed for getting viewership (eyeballs) and entertainment vs. giving good information.

They’re fun to watch, but medical TV shows are often more hype than reality — and you shouldn’t rely on them for factual medical information

You likely can’t trust what you hear on “nonfiction” medical talk shows like The Dr. Oz Show or The Doctors either. One study found that these shows offer questionable medical advice: Only one-third of the recommendations from The Dr. Oz Show and about half of them on The Doctors had enough scientific evidence to back them up.

See this summary:

Quality of advice

[edit]

A 2014 study in the British Medical Journal examined 40 randomly-selected episodes of The Doctors and studied the veracity of 80 randomly-selected statements or recommendations made in each episode. The study determined that “evidence supported 63%, contradicted 14%, and was not found for 24%” of recommendations made by the panel of doctors, and advised that “the public should be skeptical about recommendations made on medical talk shows”.[19] However, the limitations of that study included “the inherent complexity of the shows, including the subjective nature of the recommendations such as distinguishing between what was said and what was implied”.[19

Source: The Doctors (talk show) - Wikipedia

The same is true of the Dr. Oz Show:

1 Like
#20

@RapAdmin and @KarlT too,

much respect to both of you :slight_smile: -

i just shared my impression,

but if anyone wants to take the chance on trying cortisone shots, they can :slight_smile: