zazim
#41
I have been wearing a CGM for the entire nine months that I have been taking rapamycin. There is no discernible difference on the day I take it or the day following.
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As you can see from my comments above. I think there is a variation. I wish to confirm this.
But you are also taking metformin and acarbose
I take berberine (metformin) but not acarbose.
zazim
#45
I was taking Metformin before I started taking rapamycin so the decline isn’t attributable to Metformin. The key point is that my levels did not increase. I did add acarbose but I only get nine 50 MG doses per quarter. I tend to use it 2 to 3 times a month.
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Have you looked back at your long-term trends (fasting, peak, variability) to see if there is a long-term shift rather than just a short-term change?
zazim
#47
Nothing that I can discern. I can’t calculate variability, but certainly no trend upwards in my average glucose for each successive 90 day period looking back each month. It is easy to look at my daily average readings before and after Rapamycin since I take it in the same day. They are all over the place depending on what I have eaten. That said, I would expect that over time my average glucose readings will increase somewhat as a result of taking rapamycin. But my HOMA IR score (.47) was good prior to starting so things have been under control thus far.
I agree that variation from food eaten will be most significant. I posted my CGM charts and my breakfast and lunch were consistent. I saw less effective glucose control with higher serum levels of rapamycin. I posted the charts so people can make their own minds up.
zazim
#49
Yes, those were interesting. I could post about 50 of those charts, but I think they were just confuse people. In some cases they would show rapidly declining glycemic control and in others they would show dramatic improvements.
It will need a few more results to see a pattern. However, I have a freestyle session and a G7 session to use. I am planning on taking Rapamycin on a friday morning so any sleep disruption can be handled without causing difficulties for the school run (which requires me to leave the house at 7.20am)
A further update to this. I now have a test result from 18th April. This gives HbA1c of 4.4279% and 24.9 mmol/mol. I don’t know whether this includes the labile element or not. However, comparing it to the same result from the same lab prior to my recent Rapamycin I see no real movement. The previous value was 24.3 mmol/mol and I had one quite a while ago from this lab at 23.2 which is 4.3%. I don’t think those variations are significant. My best HbA1c was 4.18%, but that was a completely different lab and I am pretty sure they exclude the aldimine element.
We are coming into some periods of bank holidays when the schools are closed in the UK soon and I will aim to run a similar test based around those.
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I have now implanted a freestyle libre 2 into my left upper arm. I think it is best to use the left arm as it is better to sleep on the vagus nerve which is on the right side of the body. My plan is to take Rapamycin on Friday morning at about 6.15am which will give me two normal breakfasts to monitor before seeing the effect of Rapamycin. I will avoid taking Curcumin first thing so that the Rapamycin hits my digestion without any material levels of curcumin in the system. I will, however, take Curcumin about 2 hours later. Peak blood serum for Rapamycin should be around the same time so hopefully there will not be any impact. I am juggling in my mind as whether to take 4mg (as last time), 6mg (logarithmically close to root 2 times 4) or 8mg.
I would rather not do an oral glucose tolerance type test this time. I would rather stick to my regular breakfast and see what varies. If anyone thinks there is a value to doing this again please explain why.
In rummaging around my storage I have found I have in fact got two more Dexcom G7 boxes so I can run a couple more of those.
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RPS
#53
What’s the significance of this root 2 times 4 pertaining to Rapa dosage?
Assuming an exponential rate of decay using a geometric increase is probably more use than an arithmetic.
It was said that Freestyle tend to start out with slightly high readings. Looking at the 6am values which should be consistent in the three days I would think that is right. The values were 26/4 5.7 27/4 5.4 28/4 5.3 (multiply by 18 for mg/dl 102.6, 97.2, 95.4) Dexcom without rapamycin was giving me more like 5.0, 5.1.
There are a number of differences between Freestyle and Dexcom. I cannot get Freestyle Libre 3 at the moment and Libre 2 does not upload automatically and scanning it is a little bit fiddly, but not that diffcult. On the other hand Freestyle updates the cloud almost immediately whereas Dexcom runs in the cloud about 3-4 hours behind. Freestyle’s app will allow screenshots which is nice whereas Dexcom does not allow this. Dexcom also does not support all android phones so you need to use a hack that someone has done if you have an up to date phone.
Dexcom’s cloud will give you numerical readings by hovering over a data point whereas Freestyle does not do that. Both have a download, but it does not download all the readings as far as I know and when you are looking for the peak value that may not appear.
I have had the same breakfast at roughly the same time on thursday and friday and slightly later on wednesday. Adjusting for CGM error it appears that the difference between peaks and trough today is higher than the previous two days, but the downloaded data does not fully substantiate that at the moment.
I took 8mg Rapamycin at 6.15am today. I won’t update this every day, but will do a CGM update at some stage. On Wednesday I had a meeting at 10am and the breakfast was slightly later so I did not either go shopping or for a walk in the park. I did, however, walk back from the pub where I eat my breakfast. I think the difference on the charts is clear.
Well my 14 day session on Freestyle Libre 2 finished a short while ago. It has not yet uploaded and processed on the cloud, but I have some photos of the sensor and my arm after I removed the sensor that people may wish to see. The sensor has a small wire which is placed in the interstitial fluid. The process of insertion did not actually hurt at all. The same is the case for G7.
I cannot get a Freestyle Libre 3 because it has limited availability. The differences between Libre 2 and Libre 3 are
a) Libre 2 has to be scanned every 8 hours and uses NFC. If you don’t do this you lose data. To me this is the big flaw with Libre 2 as I have lost some data.
b) Dexcom and Libre 3 use bluetooth.
Libre 2 does seem to use up phone battery quite a bit.
I was, however, quite pleased with the way Libre 2 stuck on. I put some kinesiology tape on top of the sensor just to be certain, but it could readily have stuck on even without the kinesiology tape.
I do like having a CGM particularly at night because I can tell by the movements in glucose what is happening to cortisol and whether I have swing from the parasympathetic nervous system being in ascendence to the sympathetic nervous system (with the cortisol awakening response). If the body swings to awake like that there is no sense trying to get back to sleep without swinging it back. That may mean waiting 90 mins for the end of an ultradian cycle.
I will attach the photos so that if there are any other non-diabetics who are thinking of using a CGM session or two they can see the after effects (which are trivial). For diabetics it is a lot better than finger sticking.
What I did do right this time was to get the placing of the sensor right. It is difficult to work out the ideal placing. My first sensors were in my abdomen which are easy to put there, but hard to manage. I then used my upper right arm, but that is the vagus nerve side. This particular location fitted comfortably with what I normally do. That may be different for other people, however.
Although CGMs are reasonably costly say GBP 80 for 10 days continuous glucose you only need one session to get an idea of what is happening.
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Here are the charts. I took 8mg Rapamycin at 6.15am on the first Friday. Freestyle is thought to over report glucose in the first couple of days and in many ways it would be good to wear both CGMs at the same time in an attempt to get more reliable results.
My view is that it is hard to tell from these charts what is happening. I still think that the glucose handling with Rapamycin is less sensitive to that without Rapamycin and as such you get higher peaks. However, my going for a walk at the end of breakfast (even if I first do some puzzles) does skew the results. I know from the previous exercise with Dexcom when I did an OGTT with sucrose and got two peaks that Rapamycin probably does itself cause a double peak.
However, it is really necessary to do this with the post prandial walk being delayed perhaps for an hour so that the outcome without that can be seen.
Another Freestyle problem is that the downloaded glucose data is only roughly every 15 minutes which is not much good for picking up the extremes.
Still here are the charts.
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Hi, I have an eye implant( mini magnifier) my right eye with the implant was having blurred vision since I went on my second bout of Rapamycin, I wonder if the Rapamycin caused the blurred vision as it is basically prescribed for people having had an implant
