Weekly Rapamycin for a Year: Safe, But Did Visceral Fat Budge?
Everyone wants to know whether weekly rapamycin can shrink visceral fat and boost healthspan, and the PEARL trial has an answer that may surprise you. After 48 weeks in healthy adults, the primary endpoint of visceral fat did not budge, yet safety looked comparable to placebo. Some secondary signals, including lean mass and pain in women on 10 mg and better well-being on 5 mg, hint at benefits. But those are subgroup and self-reported findings, the drug was compounded, and no one has shown that it extends human lifespan. Here is what the data supports and what it does not.
Vitamin D3 Preserved 140 Base Pairs of Telomere in a 4-Year RCT
A large, randomized, placebo-controlled trial found that four years of vitamin D3 slowed telomere shortening by about 140 base pairs. The data come from the VITAL study of older U.S. adults taking 2,000 IU/day. The effect was modest and borderline significant (p=0.039), and telomere length is a surrogate marker, not proof of a longer life. Omega-3s, meanwhile, did nothing for telomeres in this trial. Here is what the numbers show, what the limits are, and how to use the finding sensibly.