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Testing Rapamycin to clear old Serotonin/Dopamine cells

lemonman

Bluelighter
Joined
Sep 17, 2017
Messages
53
mTOR inhibitors , dopamine or serotonin

Hi,

If you overdose amphetamine for example for 20 years, does old dopamine and serotonin junk cells build up,

And does taking a mTOR inhibitor clear out old dopamine or serotonin junk cells that are basically junk from over use of drugs?.

Thanks.
 
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Not sure what you're wanting to do here.. but your body recycles receptor proteins on it's own and replaces them..
 
The brain uses various housekeeping cells to clear waste away from the brain, in addition there is a lymphatic drainage system that kicks in particularly at night during REM sleep that helps clear away waste. Lysosomes in cells are a microcellular example of waste disposal.

mTOR inhibition is a horrible idea for depression, anti-depressant therapies all activate mTOR which helps the brain create new proteins (new growth/synaptic remodeling is important for antidepressant therapies)
 
im interested in this too. it doesnt have to be rapamycin though, does anything else particularly help out with the cleaning of waste process? maybe speed it up somehow, besides i think good night sleep and exercise, there must be some other methods or drugs?
 
taking rapamycin sounds like a stupid idea, as it will cause immunosuppression...

I think the most sustainable way to keep your brain healthy is aerobic exercise and a good diet, as I always say there is no miracle pill to fix issues of the mind.
 
One of the primary functions of sleep is the removal of neurotoxic waste products in the animal brain, so adequate sleep would be something to consider.

Exercise activates mTORC1 in muscle cells in order to synthesize the massive myofibrillar proteins that make up skeletal muscle (e.g., titin, myosin, and actin), so the use of an mTORC1 inhibitor like rapamycin would inhibit exercise-induced skeletal muscle hypertrophy and probably wound healing as well.

Rapamycin has been shown to inhibit protein synthesis in the brain and it's been noted in medical reviews as being a potential therapeutic agent for some neurological disorders; however, mTOR activators (i.e., beta-hydroxy beta-methylbutyric acid, aka "HMB") have also been shown to augment protein synthesis and dendritic remodeling in vivo in nonhuman animals and in vitro in non-human animal cell lines. As a result, compounds like HMB could affect cognition and clinical outcomes in neurological disease states as well, but that remains to be established in humans.

It's worth mentioning that, in human brain cells, mTORC1 and mTORC2 both play important roles in the regulation of synaptic function and remodeling.
 
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what does adequate sleep mean btw? like the usual proposed 8 hours or so? i will end up sleeping up to 12 hours, is this beneficial? i have to admit, when i am sick that helps me somehow, but generally 12 hours of sleep causes severe brain fog and irritability, but my question is, does it clear way way more neurotoxic waste than lets say 8 hours will??
 
Take one REM period as 2-3 hours roughly, 2 REM periods are required daily to sustain a healthy adult body. They can be subdivided into power naps of 2-3 hours or done back to back resulting in overall 6 hrs of required daily sleep. Any excess is skeletal/muscular rest and this can be achieved while awake.
 
Take one REM period as 2-3 hours roughly, 2 REM periods are required daily to sustain a healthy adult body. They can be subdivided into power naps of 2-3 hours or done back to back resulting in overall 6 hrs of required daily sleep. Any excess is skeletal/muscular rest and this can be achieved while awake.

i dont get it. where do you get this information? 2 rem periods are required to sustain healthy adult body?? what does that mean? so going to sleep at night and sleeping and then waking up is not good because you have to nap during the day and night and get maybe 2-3 hours in between for best sleep. i dont think i understand. and how is being awake good for skeletal/muscular body if you are not at rest but move around?
 
In a human with normal sleep architecture, sleep cycles occur in roughly 90 minute bits. During a cycle, our brain cycles through different stages of sleep, from light to deepest. Stage 1 -> Stage 2 -> Stage 3 (Non-REM sleep) and then finally Stage 4 (REM sleep), then starting a new cycle we revert back to Stage 1.

The average human will be doing about 5 sleep cycles or so a night. For the first few cycles, there isn't too much REM. There can be a couple minutes or so of REM at the end of the first two-ish sleep cycles.

As the night goes on, especially towards the early morning, the latter sleep cycles contain proportionally more REM sleep compared to lighter sleep than earlier cycles. It is during these last sleep cycles that we get the bulk of our REM.

However, if one is sleep deprived, REM sleep rebound can prove powerful, causing earlier sleep cycles to contain more REM than is usual. Or if one falls into REM while part of the brain is still awake, sleep paralysis ;)

While there are alternate sleeping cycles that some have used, I think we still need ~6-8 hours of full cycles following a normal circadian rhythm to be at our best. There is a sleep method (I can't remember the name of) that involved sleep depriving one's self to the point where REM sleep rebound is very strong, and then training one's self to sleep during the day in small increments, essentially a bunch of REM sleep naps.

The idea of that technique was to enter into REM sleep very quickly, but this method seemed to sacrifice much of the other stages of sleep which are still beneficial for the brain, but particularly beneficial for the body. The majority of e.g. growth hormone release occurs during slow wave sleep/non-REM sleep.
 
In a human with normal sleep architecture, sleep cycles occur in roughly 90 minute bits. During a cycle, our brain cycles through different stages of sleep, from light to deepest. Stage 1 -> Stage 2 -> Stage 3 (Non-REM sleep) and then finally Stage 4 (REM sleep), then starting a new cycle we revert back to Stage 1.

The average human will be doing about 5 sleep cycles or so a night. For the first few cycles, there isn't too much REM. There can be a couple minutes or so of REM at the end of the first two-ish sleep cycles.

As the night goes on, especially towards the early morning, the latter sleep cycles contain proportionally more REM sleep compared to lighter sleep than earlier cycles. It is during these last sleep cycles that we get the bulk of our REM.

However, if one is sleep deprived, REM sleep rebound can prove powerful, causing earlier sleep cycles to contain more REM than is usual. Or if one falls into REM while part of the brain is still awake, sleep paralysis ;)

While there are alternate sleeping cycles that some have used, I think we still need ~6-8 hours of full cycles following a normal circadian rhythm to be at our best. There is a sleep method (I can't remember the name of) that involved sleep depriving one's self to the point where REM sleep rebound is very strong, and then training one's self to sleep during the day in small increments, essentially a bunch of REM sleep naps.

The idea of that technique was to enter into REM sleep very quickly, but this method seemed to sacrifice much of the other stages of sleep which are still beneficial for the brain, but particularly beneficial for the body. The majority of e.g. growth hormone release occurs during slow wave sleep/non-REM sleep.

Wonderful explanation as always! Thank you CY!
Tez
 
... neurotoxic waste ...
That sounds like it's industrial waste that goes in a landfill, haha. The authors referred to it as "neurotoxic waste products", as in neurotoxic metabolites.
 
yeah, ok thanks seppi.

cotcha yankinov, i still cannot understand the evolution of human beings and their long sleep schedules up to 8 hours to feel normal. how the hell were humans able to sleep up to 8 hours to feel normal in the deserts, jungles and forests as were going through evolution. is it possible that those human beings that slept less than 8 or not sleep at all for days were the ones to die off and those who were lucky enough to find some nice "warm nest" to chill for 8 hours were able to procreate and survive??
this still baffles me as i have seen studies of lack of sleep and actually enhanced cognitive function as protector from danger just like fasting causes the body to up regulate lots defense mechanisms even though hunger is bad, it seems in many studies it actually encourages protective mechanism. in that regard, so should lack of sleep, no?
in my personal experience, i have been quite quick on thoughts and perception of situations while lacking sleep but then again it was most likely related to things i have taken to keep me that sharp and not just general lack of sleeping causing it
 
yeah, ok thanks seppi.

cotcha yankinov, i still cannot understand the evolution of human beings and their long sleep schedules up to 8 hours to feel normal. how the hell were humans able to sleep up to 8 hours to feel normal in the deserts, jungles and forests as were going through evolution. is it possible that those human beings that slept less than 8 or not sleep at all for days were the ones to die off and those who were lucky enough to find some nice "warm nest" to chill for 8 hours were able to procreate and survive??
this still baffles me as i have seen studies of lack of sleep and actually enhanced cognitive function as protector from danger just like fasting causes the body to up regulate lots defense mechanisms even though hunger is bad, it seems in many studies it actually encourages protective mechanism. in that regard, so should lack of sleep, no?
in my personal experience, i have been quite quick on thoughts and perception of situations while lacking sleep but then again it was most likely related to things i have taken to keep me that sharp and not just general lack of sleeping causing it

Part of that evolutionary pressure is biological, likely associated with changing functional homeostatic sleep requirements driven by other biological evolutionary pressures, and part of the evolutionary pressure is environmental. The reason that humans and a number of other mammals evolved to sleep for approximately 8 hours is that this is more-or-less the average amount of time that it remains dark in the night and early morning hours of the ~24 hour solar day. Animals that hibernate evolved to sleep through the coldest months, so there was environmental evolutionary pressure driving that sleep pattern as well.

You could probably read more about this if you searched for a review article on the evolution of sleep patterns in humans and other animals.

On a tangential note, sleep deprivation impairs virtually all executive functions in humans; so, even though some cognitive functions may improve during sleep deprivation, clinically significant decrements in planning, decision making, and reasoning will always occur.
 
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