The sole reason this forum exists is the fact that rapamycin showed clear life extension in every animal study to date and some clinical benefit in at least one trial human trial. Do you really think any of the forum members would otherwise self experiment with taking an immunosuppressant ? Personally, I am still waiting for more data on rapamycin before trying the regimen myself. Brad Stanfield will begin his human trials soon and Matt Kaeberlein dog studies will finish in several years.
Exactly the point I was trying to make, though I may have been unclear. You are on the fence about rapamycin (and other interventions/tools) precisely because the data donāt yet support it for you and your particular risk/benefit threshold or profile. Iām not suggesting that anyone here is blindly trying things with NO data. However, a lot of people are comfortable enough with the risk/benefit profile of certain interventions based not on large or long-term human clinical trials. I agree it would be wonderful to have plenty of long-term human data, but a lot of people arenāt waiting because the data suggest to them that the benefits outweigh the risks.
This is, I think, the crux of the difference in mindset between clinicians like you and Dr. Stanfield, and those people labeled ābiohackersā who are willing to try interventions that havenāt been through the same clinical testing process that most treatments in medicine have. And although rapamycin has more data behind it than using CGM for longevity purposes, this is largely still from animal data. And, no one is going to try to validate whether CGM works in animals the way many people are using it, because it just doesnāt apply; further, no one is likely to fund a human study to determine whether CGM is useful for longevity either. Thus, like with a lot of interventions discussed on this forum, many people donāt see the lack of a clear demonstrable benefit from clinical trials as a roadblock to using it and testing whether it provides a benefit to them. Like with any intervention, we could be wrong and doing more harm, but at this point a lot of what is discussed here is experimentation based on educated speculation anyhow.
The reason I am pushing back hard on the CGM is the cost of $3000 or so per year. That is a lot of money for āexperimentationā. IMO, for an average individual this is an awful misallocation of resources. For example, for $3000 you can build a small home gym with weights, treadmill, etc. Exercise is hands down the ultimate way to extend your lifespan proven by very clear results of hundreds of human studies.
I donāt disagree with you on this point, if every CGM cost this much. I currently pay nothing for my CGM and have a prescription for a yearās worth of sensors, even though I am not diabetic. And, as youāve said before, many people need to use it only a few times to see the trends and relationships they need to make necessary adjustments. So, if an average person could afford say $500 a year, that could still buy them a couple of months of testing and potentially provide some insights, especially if they work with a doctor that is as well-versed as you are. It still doesnāt mean there is NO potential benefit. We just donāt know if there is or isnāt to the degree that you and a lot of others would like (me included).
My guess is we could argue about the details of CGM for each individual for a long time. I suspect, however, that if used with the right mindset, the appropriate expectations, and guidance from a doctor, there are legitimate use cases for CGM in non-diabetics, even though their use in this population has not been clinically validated. If we were ONLY using CGM in isolation, I can imagine that adjustments we make based on it may be potentially harmful, as you suggest. However, a lot of people here, as well as many doctors Iām assuming, rely on data from an assortment of markers and blood tests. If, for example, using a CGM somehow increased my ApoB, I would know about it because I am getting regular blood tests. Yes, certainly there can be unintended consequences to making any dietary, lifestyle, and medication changes, but that is precisely why measurement over time and across multiple biomarkers is important.
Anecdotally, my Dexcom G6 has worked pretty well, with the average blood glucose readings within an acceptable level of variation from my A1c measurement, which has been consistent for close to two years now at 4.9-5.0. I agree that there is the potential for variance and spurious signals (e.g. compression lows), but as with any measuring device one must know its limitations and set expectations accordingly.
Lastly, doctors use medicines off label all the time, despite the lack of clinical trials for efficacy for those off-label conditions. Aside perhaps from more safety data with certain medications, that sort of use doesnāt strike me as much different from what we are doing here when repurposing drugs and tools. Likewise, just because there are clinical trials doesnāt guarantee that there is no long-term harm from a medication. Iāve been taking an SSRI for over twenty years. As far as Iām aware there are no studies of people who have been taking these medications for that long. But, I keep taking it because I see a benefit in my particular case, despite the lack of long-term data. In fact, it is even worse for some medications like SSRIs in that we donāt know the reason that these medications actually work. So, not only have I and a lot of other people been taking medications given by doctors for decades without long-term clinical data, the doctors giving them to us donāt even know what they are doing to our brains!
