The Dog Longevity Framework, Step 1 — Prescription Longevity Drugs for Your Dog

Hello, hello, hello, you guys, and welcome back to The Longevity Vet. Glad you're here. I'm Dr. Kevin Toman Toman, and today we're going to talk about prescription longevity drugs for your dogs. But before we do, let me clear one thing up, and that is I'm very much an integrative veterinarian but not a naturopath, and here's the difference. I'll bet I'm asked at least once a week whether I believe drug therapy is the best choice for this medical condition or that medical condition, and, and my answer is almost always yes. As an integrative veterinarian, I do believe in the benefits of acupuncture, but I believe in benefits of surgery as well. I do believe in the benefits of herbs, but I believe equally in the benefits of nutrition, and I'm a huge believer in the benefits of drugs for our pets, whether they be antibiotics, occasionally steroids, and more often the use of pain relievers to keep our older pets as comfortable as possible. Because to be clear, I don't think there's anything more important than keeping our pets as comfortable as possible as they age. With those things being said, let's get to work. In today's discussion, we'll chat primarily about Rapamycin, Acarbose, and Metformin. I hope that over time that list expands, and as it does, we'll circle back around. But for today we'll start with Rapamycin. Why? Because Rapamycin is the single most widely studied and widely used longevity drug in the world. Why is that? Because Rapamycin has been proven to extend lifespan by up to 15% in every species studied to date. And to be clear, that's over 1 year or more for many pets. Rapamycin— how do— how does rapamycin work? We think it works in a couple different ways, actually. Number 1, by reducing cancer incidence, or at least postponing it. Number 2, by reducing inflammation, which is another big help for that arthritic older pet population that I just spoke of. Rapamycin has also been proven to reduce, or sometimes even stop, the progression of fatal heart disease in in both dogs and cats. It's been proven to help kidney disease in humans and is actually being studied at a couple different veterinary schools for its use in chronic kidney disease in cats. And here's a couple of small factoids for you. It also helps to reduce the, the inflammation associated with periodontal disease and seems to improve geriatric hearing loss, which is a big help when you turn 64 like me. So here's the best thing about Rapamycin though, you guys, and that is that it's safe. I'll bet we have over 800 patients enrolled in Rapamycin at this point in time, and we've only seen side effects in about 3 to 4% of them, and in almost every case that has been limited just simply to soft poop as the dog's GI tract gets used to it. To the best of my knowledge, we've not seen anybody that had to stop Rapamycin therapy because of negative side effects. The other thing I'll say is that Rapamycin plays well with other prescription drugs, such as the nonsteroidal pain relievers that I just mentioned in dogs, and such as the, the classic feline heart disease medications like Furosemide, Atenolol, and Clopidogrel. And so at the end of the day, Rapamycin seems to be a very safe drug that has lots of science behind it and can help your pet live up to a year longer, and that counts. Let's change over to Acarbose and Metformin, both of which act to reduce blood sugar by different mechanisms. We'll start with Acarbose because it's intriguing in that it's been proven to work synergistically with Rapamycin. What's that mean to you and me? If Rapamycin buys us 15% of extra life, the use of Rapamycin plus Acarbose in males seems to extend life by another 12 to 14%. Now interestingly, that same synergistic effect does not seem to take place in females, and there's still a lot of head scratching about why that is. But you and I can use rapamycin plus acarbose to maximally extend our pet's lifespan if they're male. One other thought on acarbose is that there's a theoretical possibility, actually for both acarbose and metformin, that because they they have a tendency to drop blood sugar levels. They can be used not only in obesity management or the care of diabetes, but in both cases, they may be of some benefit to pets undergoing cancer. Why is that? Because cancer cells are required, they're obligatory eaters of blood sugar. They don't, they can't exist on any other form of nutrients, whereas normal cells can exist on sugar, fat, protein, etc. And so if you and I can drop blood sugar levels, theoretically we ought to be able to slow or perhaps even stop cancer growth in some, in some pets, and that counts. The final thing that you should know about metformin is that it's been proven to reduce and sometimes even stop progression of heart disease in dogs before hearts progress to clinical heart failure. Wow, Kevin, you're stuttering, stammering a little bit. So at the end of the day, let me recap the Acarbose plus metformin deal. They both reduce blood sugar by different mechanisms. They both would benefit weight management. They both would benefit diabetes and metabolic disease. There's the theoretical thought that both Acarbose and metformin could help in cancer management by essentially starving cancer cells, and you can learn more by looking up the Warburg effect, W-A-R-B-U-R-G effect, on Google. And finally, metformin has shown significant benefits to dogs in chronic heart failure. So I guess that's about it, you guys. Um, you can tell I'm still stuttering, stammering a little bit, but I'm trying like heck to get better on these YouTube videos. The moral to the story is this, though. If you have any questions at all about pet longevity drugs, whether they be prescription or supplements that are currently available, I'm happy to help. You can email me at Dr. Kevin, just D-R-K-E-V-I-N, at helpingpetslivelonger.com, and I will respond. We are all in this together, and your pets count. So have a good day, and I'll talk to you next week.