Here's an anecdote which will make a few of you laugh, and maybe alarm a few others, but remember my board name. Instead of doing the usual oral intake of 10mg of Rapamycin last week I took it by SubQ injection. Yes, it's stupid, but I've been injecting so many substances subQ lately, to the point that oral intake seems quite unusual. And I had mixed and stored it in a recycled injection vial so it looked like an injectable. Don't worry, now I have labelled it ORAL so this doesn't happen again. In any case, I have no bad effects to report one week later. The worst was the injection itself. It had been dissolved in alcohol so I injected alcohol subQ. Don't ask, yeah it stung like heck. Other than that nothing else bad happened, unless there's a relation to the recent white canker sore inside my mouth the size of a half dollar? Yeah, that stings too, especially when I suck on a lemon lol.
Cheers,
DareDevil
DD, wow. I mean yeah. Wow.
OK, good to know even that won't kill you. Really? A half dollar?
I'm going to make a more detailed and relatively non-boring report on my experience so far.
First a refresher: I'm 59, diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease 8 years ago, but with no other major health issues. Not pre-diabetic, obese, or anything else. I've recently been eating vegetarian; I still eat eggs, but no dairy. I've been carefully watching my omega 3 vs omega 6 ratio, as that's been shown to have a significant impact on inflammation. I've also been consuming broccoli sprouts to keep cleansed. Plus a list of relatively normal supplements which I've listed before.
I won't go over my entire history, but i've been taking R for 22 weeks; 2-3 mg / week for the first 12 weeks, and 9 mg of R a week for the last 10 weeks. Just one exception: week before last, I didn't take a dose, because I wanted to make sure it wasn't building up. After re-starting this week, I got 3 small mouth sores that lasted 5 days. Those were the first I'd seen in many weeks.
I'm more and more pleased with my progress on several fronts:
1. I lost 12 lbs since starting, and am now only 3 lbs above my ideal weight.
2. I now jog or run a half to full mile nearly every day. Sometimes I even sprint the last 200 yards up a hill. My heart no longer feels stressed at all, just well exercised.
3. I can now do 40 push ups w/o stopping. When I was 50, before PD, I could do 45. Just before starting Rapamycin I could do maybe 10. So 40 is very good.
4. For me, the biggest benefit has been the reduction in my PD symptoms. This is hard to quantify as PD symptoms vary day-to-day and depend on a dozen variables; amount of sleep, caffeine, blood sugar, exercise, etc. But I'm seeing an overall steady - possibly accelerating improvement. PD sufferers understand that making a claim like this isn't something to do lightly. Nobody wants to get anyone's hopes up w/o real documented proof, and I want to be clear that I don't have that. Others w/o PD might find this interesting b/c PD is somewhat similar to Alzheimer's and other age-related diseases of the brain.
5. Finally, my mood is off the charts. PD-related depression is common b/c in addition to dopamine, serotonin is also greatly reduced. Basically, the PD brain lacks the chemistry to feel good. I'm no longer experiencing that, and I find myself enjoying things again.
For the record, I should make one more thing clear; I take Rytary, which is a dopamine replacement drug, and it does reduce some physical symptoms. BUT I've been on the same dose for over a year, and before Rapamycin I didn't feel 50% as good as I do now. Normally, as time goes by, drugs like Rytary have to be increased as more brain cells die. In contrast, I've sometimes gone w/o a dose and barely noticed it. Those with PD will understand that this is unheard of. I'm not ready to tell others with PD, b/c this is not a scientific study with all the control groups, double-blinds, etc. etc. But I'm still cautiously optimistic, and maybe a bit more.