Sirolimus (Rapamycin): Skin Care Benefits

If we're going to talk about topical rapamycin. Rapamycin is a drug that's currently being studied to prolong life span in animals, including humans. So rapamycin is a product that's been around. It was discovered on the island of Rapa 30, 40 years ago and it's used for organ transplant rejection. That's this medical, FDA approved use. There's also a topical form used for certain rare form of tumors on children's skin. But we're finding that the drug is rapamycin, also known as sirolimus, appears to expand the length of health span or lifespan in every organism tested and currently is being tested in humans. So it's really unknown in humans. Will this drug prolong human life? It's assumed that it potentially will, but this is yet unknown. A lot of doctors are using rapamycin as part of an anti aging regimen. Getting back to this discussion. Is using rapamycin on the skin. So there's an oral form of rapamycin that's used for organ transplant rejection and there's a skin form that's used for a type of rare tumor that occurs in children. But we're finding that it improves the quality of the skin in people without tumors at a much lower dose and improves the age of the skin. So a study done at Drexel University looked at using rapamycin on the skin. In this case they did study on the hands where they used one hand as the study hand, the other hand as the control hand and they put a low strength of rapamycin.001% on the treated hand every day or every other day, one time, just a small amount, one pump out of a little bottle and they followed the people for a few months. What they found was that the skin not only looked better, but when doing biopsies where they take a little piece of tissue out of the skin, they found that the skin was actually younger, had less senescent cells, senescent cells are old kind of senile cells, had more type 7 collagen which is at the basement membrane, the part of the skin that is the germinal portion or the stem cell portion of your skin. The skin was more elastic, less saggy, had better color, less we call solar damage, less pore size. We see clinically, and this is using the drug sirolimus, also known as rapamycin, topically every day or every other day. So we've been using this in our clinic since 2021 I believe, and we're seeing is after about two to four weeks we see brightness of the skin, less pore sizes, decreased brown spots, decreased redness, and better elasticity and texture to the skin. And it's really underutilized. I think everybo should be on this medication. Now, the timing of the medication, we're recommending people take their bottle of sirolimus, which we get it compounded. You could buy it at the drugstore at a higher concentration, but it's very, very expensive. Several thousand dollars a month. But if you buy the compounded version, it winds up being like less than $100 a month. Way, way less than that. You use two clicks out of the little, a little device on your face, for example, stays done in the hands on the face every other day. And that seems to be all you need to use it for because this drug has a long half life, means it stays around a long time and you'll see improvements of your skin pretty quickly. So the worse the skin is, the faster we see results. It really is not a miracle drug by any means, but in terms of medications that we use on the skin, we've got some great fantastic topical skin care that really everybody should use, which would include sunblock, vitamin C, topical retinol, which is actually a vitamin A and a glycolic moisturizer. Those are the biggest, three or four. And then sirolimus for conditions where you have actually sun damage. So somebody preventative, they're using vitamin C, retinol and glycolic and sunblock, preventative and treatment wise. And then sirolimus more for treatment of reversing the appearance of age in the skin. The way I've been approaching this is that since the medication is reversing the age of the skin by reducing the number of senescent cells or senile cells, increasing the amount of collagen production, improving the elasticity of skin, the color of skin, the pores of the skin, the redness of the skin, making skin thicker and healthier. Don't need to use it all the time. So this might be something that you could do. You know, one bottle typically lasts about three months. So you do a three month treatment, go off it for two or three months and go on it again. So probably two bottles a year would suffice. And it's very inexpensive relative to the one you buy. You know, at the store we can get a generic compounded version much cheaper and it will reverse the age of your skin. Has no known side effects. It's known at even much higher doses that it doesn't get in your bloodstream. This is a very, very local topical medication at a very low dose and extremely safe. With decades of experience with it and from a cost benefit ratio, this is really one of the slam dunks that is kind of the secret nobody really knows about. Sirolimus is very inexpensive, extremely safe, and it potently reverses the age of the skin. Now, the studies in humans just check on lifespan. These are studies that are hard to do because you have to enroll people that are going to die in the next 10 years or some percentage of them will die in the next 10 years and follow people for 10 years. So there is a study right now going on where they're putting people on oral rapamycin, various doses, a milligram a day, 5 milligrams a week, 10 milligrams a week, and control to see what dose is the most effective for the presumed longevity that will occur. And longevity should go along with improved and lengthened health span, not just living longer. That's ongoing. And I know a lot of doctors taking that themselves to expand their health span. But this is something that we could do right now for the skin because we have studies on it. There's a handful of studies using this on the skin. What it does for the skin. I've been asked questions like will it restore hair? Maybe on rodent studies or animal studies, it does appear to to restore hair growth. On humans, there are no studies. So I really don't have an opinion on it. When somebody's bald, I'm bald, nothing really works. When somebody's thinning, they could try it. It's inexpensive and worth trying. But there's again, there's no studies, but definitely for photo aging of this skin, which just be like environmental aging of the skin. Rapamycin is I think is really the best bargain. We go by the name sirolimus. Now why do we have the name rapamycin and sirolimus? Well, the United States adoptive names Console. The United States adoptive names Console calls rapamycin Sirolimus. Chemists call rapamycin rapamycin and it's called Zap because it was found on the island of Rapa Nui. That's Easter island. First isolated about 1972, became a drug in the 90s and we've been using it as a topical form for about a decade or so. There is an FDA approved topical form which is more strength than you need and it's very, very expensive. I just use a compounded version which is a fraction of the cost. So rapamycin or serolim is for the skin for younger looking skin, reverse the age of the skin, reverse senescence of the skin, reverse pore size of the skin, decrease brown spots, decrease redness, improve elasticity and it is available at any of the Allure locations. Thank you very much.