>>>News Flash: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Cured by Rapamycin
One in 500 patients, leading cause sudden death young athletes.
1% sudden death per year. Only treatment, defibrillator.
Progresses to fibrosis, heart failure death. Most common inherited cardiomyopathy.
A patient, middle age Ophthalmologist being followed by a Cardiologist.
Takes Rapamycin. Echocardiogram every year. Each year less and less obstruction, and thickening.
After 3 years, has melted away. Heart looks normal, shortness of breath on exertion gone. Person who does Echocardiogram each year says this is impossible.
If have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy; good to know cured by rapamycin. Need permission from treating Cardiologist to add Rapamycin, once a week to usual care. Ask Cardiologist to follow progress with an annual echocadiogram.
Hospitalized 11/5/23 - 11/18/23. Jan 6, 2024; No the worse for wear. Feel great.
Dear Friends,
I had a massive Upper GI bleed on Sunday, 11/5/23.
It started with Codfish. I thought a low carbohydrate diet would be good. I thought codfish was the perfect food; low calories, almost all protein, low fat. Was eating about a pound of codfish (boiled, no sauce) almost every day. Codfish is very high in purines. As a result of a very high purine diet from codfish, I developed gout.
After a month of a painful right wrist due to Gout, I decided to try a high dose Prednisone for a short period. Excellent response in 12 hours. Took prednisone for 3 days, 40 mg, 30 mg, 20 mg then stopped due to fluid weight gain. The problem was taking Eloquist. A blood thinner for atrial fibrillation and Ibuprofen for pain related to Gout. All 3 meds increase the risk of bleeding.
Sunday morning I had a massive upper GI bleed. In the hospital, I received excellent care when I was finally transferred to CICU, and treated by an excellent cardiologist who understood Cardiomyopathy. I have a very rare inherited cardiomyopathy (see My story, why I started on Rapamycin in 2016).
After 5 days of fluid overload which almost killed me. Then added a new drug for fluid overload which crashed my blood pressure (80/40) and caused shock liver with liver enzymes of 3000.
Minimal liver damage.
I figure the chance of survival of the UGI bleed with all the medical complications was about 25%. I attribute my survival to Rapamycin. Due to 8 years on Rapamycin I had no significant coronary artery disease. If I had coronary artery disease, I would have never tolerated all the stress and medical malpractice, and I would have coded.
Now home. Back to my usual state of health. No harm, no foul.
Will start seeing patients during regular office hours, Monday, November 20, 2023.
1. Theory of Rapamycin Medicine
Humans and other terrestrial mammals have programmed death by Aging. Anti-Aging medicine is about blocking pro-death/pro-aging pathways. The most robust pro-Aging is mTOR (mechanistic Target of Rapamycin). Rapamycin is the most effective drug to block mTOR. Hence anti-aging medicine is called Rapamycin medicine.
In the field of Aging, what was not understood for over 150 years is the benefit of programmed death.
Evolution can be seen as a type of arms race. You must develop the atomic bomb BEFORE your enemy. In evolution, survival is getting faster, stronger, smarter, before the competition. So the big question for Evolution is how to evolve faster. Among vertebrates, the first animal to solve this great question were mammals. The solution was programmed death.
Fish, amphibians, and reptiles do not have programmed death. Programmed death presents itself as senescence and Aging leading to death. Fish, amphibians, and reptiles have negligible senescence. Many fish can live over 100 years. A 100-year-old crocodile is big and strong and robust and dominates the breeding pool. However, crocodiles have evolved little in the past 250 million years. Terrestrial mammals have a relatively short lifespan. Cats have a relatively short lifespan and cats have evolved 50 different species, each with a miraculous degree of perfection. Humans evolved an extraordinary brain. The great advances in mammals are due to programmed death.
Mammals first appeared 180 million years ago. They were trying to survive in a tough neighborhood. With the death of the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago; mammals took over the Earth. The reason mammals and not reptiles dominate the Earth is mammals have a short lifespan due to programmed death by Aging.
So what is the great benefit of programmed death? Programmed death causes Aging and the death of the individual animal. Aging is harmful to the Aging animal which dies.
So who does Programmed death benefit?
The answer first came from Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 1976. Evolution must be seen through the eyes of "The Selfish Gene". While the individual lives for a relatively few years, the gene can survive for billions of years. The gene has a mindless quest for Immortality. Dawkins described all living things as two parts: the selfish gene and the survival vehicle the gene creates. We are all merely survival vehicles for the Selfish Gene. Survival of the gene for millions of years is based upon building better survival vehicles.
Genes continually undergo mutations; some mutations are good and some are bad. The bad genes don't survive to reproduce. The problem is how to introduce the new genes, from the new generation into the breeding pool. You could just wait patiently for old animals, who do not have the new and better genes, to die; but then you are losing the arms race. The best answer is cause the old animals, who don't have the new genes, to die.
This required the evolution of pro-death pathways. mTOR, which had been around for 2 billion years; took on an additional role: causing death in older animals by promoting debilitating effects which present as Aging.
However, none of us ever clicked on "I agree" to programmed death; so we free to opt out of the program.
Programmed aging requires biological pathways and these pathways provide targets. Anti-aging medicine is about BLOCKING for pro-death/pro-Aging pathways.
The great majority of people in the field of Aging; do not believe there are intentional pro-aging pathways and therefore they don't think anti-aging is real or possible. For the most part, the people in the field of Aging are not part of the solution; they are part of the problem.
Do no harm:
This is the fundamental tenet of Hippocrates going back to Ancient Greece.
For researchers it means; better a thousand people should die as a result of lack of treatment; than one person die due to treatment.
There must be a controlled clinical trial. As a practical matter, a controlled clinical trials that might cost $300,000 or more is only done by Big Pharma on new brand-name drugs they are developing and hope to make billions in profits.
When combining these two basic tenets of medical practice what you get is the denial to millions of people of the benefits of Rapamycin and Dasatinib; the current two most effective anti-aging drugs.
You have "catch 22". A formula of why things can't be done.
My office believes in two different tenets:
Informed consent, calculated risk
My office believes "prefect" is the enemy of "good".
You go to war with what you have; not what you want.
This is a war against aging and age-related disease.