DIY Rapamycin skin cream

not sure how I make such table, is there a formatting option ?

No - you just copy from your spreadsheet and paste into the message an its automatically formatted correctly.

Thanks for the clarification on formatting, @RapAdmin

Below is the table showing my suggsted mix, from the link in post above.
All advice is very welcome!

For daily application to skin (face, neck etc)
Product Amount Comment
Moisturizing Cream (Nivea or Cetaphil) 85g
Propylene Glycol 5g Mixed with grinded Rapamune-tablets
Rapamycin (Rapamune 1mg tablets) 10mg In total, ca. 0,01% concentration in 100g cream
Hyaluronic Acid 99% 5g
Astaxanthin 10% powder 5g Astaxanthin 10% powder concentration yields 0,5% Astaxanthin concentration in Cream
Biotin 100mg 0,1% biotin concentration. Copied from biotin skin cream, see link.
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According to the NIH: "Conclusion: Although topical minoxidil has a better overall therapeutic effect than 1 mg oral minoxidil, the difference between the two groups was not significant. Therefore, 1 mg oral minoxidil may be as effective and safe as standard topical minoxidil in female and male pattern hair loss.Nov 29, 2023.
My concern with the oral minoxidil/spironolactone is that spironolactone decreases testosterone. Not worth it, IMO, if oral is not significantly better than topical.

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I can understand. I am on TRT weeklyā€¦ my 4 month testosterone blood panel numbers are in the 1400 to 1500 range past 4 years. So I take the oral Minoxidil with no issues.

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Have you seen significantly better results taking the minoxidil orally? I probably need to be on HRT anyways so if oral yields much better results than topical I will consider it.

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Hey! I think the minoxidil is great orally for hair and good for blood pressure health too!
My hair very thick and bushy in most places.

This from the Mayo Clinic - Minoxidil works by relaxing blood vessels so that blood passes through them more easily. This helps to lower blood pressure.

Minoxidil has other effects that could be bothersome for some patients. These include increased hair growthā€¦ hahaha!

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Even with those controls, photo to photo comparison can be extremely problematic with auto exposure thresholding inherent in almost all cameras.

I like oral minoxidil better because itā€™s just so much easier to use. Adherence to topical minoxidil is low because men have to use it twice per day, it kind of goops up the hair (and/or makes it sticky) and often causes irritation of scalp skin. Compare that to just popping a tiny tablet once daily, which for the vast majority of users has no side effects.

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can someone help me with the calculations, trying to make my first rapamycin cream.

So I want to make 0.1% rapamycin cream in 56 grams of olay cream (my base cream) In order to get 0.1% strength in 56 grams of cream , I would need to crush 56 1mg rapamune tablets or 28 2mg tablets, if I am not mistaking?

How much Transcutol p would I roughly need to dissolve 56 grams/56 mg of rapamycin tablets (powder)? I am worried my cream will be too watery if I use to much transcutol and once I fully dissolve the rapamycin in transcutol do I just add and mix it into the olay cream?

thank you!

Hi All,
Iā€™m new to Rapamycin (2nd week) and Iā€™ve read through the thread. But, I just want to confirm my understanding regarding solvents. The preferred reagent is Transcutol - a trademarked solvent, which is diethylene glycol monethyl ether.
Is the Transutol in any way better than the generic diethylene glycol monethyl ether? Has anyone noticed a difference between the two solvents in quality or effectiveness? In terms of price, there is a bit of difference.

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Hi Jensen,

I started with about 5ml of transcutol and added a bit more to the rapamycin powder. I used an electric stiring stick as mentioned above to mix it in a small bowl. Its not much transcutol, so I ended up adding more, perhaps to a total of 10ml. Then I added the skin cream and mixed again in a larger bowl. For the hand cream + rapamycin mixture I used a mixmaster you would use in your kitchen and that worked fine. Use a rubber spatula to scoop it all back into the original (or new) hand cream container. You can always put the final mixture into a larger container and add some more skin cream to make the final mixture a little thicker if you need.

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I have not seen any indication that the brand version is any better than getting the generic version of this solvent. I just purchased and used the Lab Alley product mentioned and linked to in this thread and it seems to work fine.

Rapamycin is soluble in Transcutol at a level of 20 mg/ml, so 56 mg in 10 ml of Transcutol would be well below this. However, if youā€™re crushing pills, you will be left with a lot of the tablet binder material. Each 1 mg tablet of Biocon weighs about 170 mg, so you will be trying to dissolve about 9.5 g of binder in total, which probably wonā€™t work. My recommendation would be to obtain pure rapamycin powder for high % solution applications like what youā€™re trying, rather than trying to use crushed tablets.

https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0378517316304549

Iā€™ve done it both ways; with powder and via crushed tablets. It works fine both ways, powder is easier, but with the crushed tablets you also have to filter out the residue (small bits of some sort of skin-like coating that remains) from the concoction.

Powder is cheaply available from sources like this: Sirolimus Powder - 3rd party analysis

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Can anyone give an update on their results from topical rapa cream?
Does it seem worthwhile?

Works for me.

I have tried several formulations of rapamycin creams or sprays over the past 18+ months with and without additional additives. Every additional additive that I tried diminished the results.

My current method is to crush 10 mg of rapamycin tablets in a mortar and pestle, dissolve in 20 mL of Transcutol, add 80 mL of distilled water, strain through coarse filter paper, and put in a fine mist spray bottle.

This helps better with preventing and healing sun-damaged skin. The simple formulation leaves my skin more blemish-free than any combination additives that I have tried

My skin is currently virtually blemish-free.

My complete skin care is quite simple:

I wash my face in the morning and spray on the rapamycin mixture.

Put on some ā€œCeraVe AM Facial Moisturizing Lotion with SPF 30 | Oil-Free Face Moisturizerā€
IMO: CeraVe facial products are excellent and you can get them with retinol if you donā€™t want to use retinA cream

In the evening I put on the retinA before bedtime.

IMO: There is nothing that matches retinA for reducing fine wrinkles and repairing sun-damaged skin.

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I would say its hard to tell. I use three things; Cera Ve moisturizer, Retin-A (.05% and .1%) and sirolimus cream. I alternate the Retin-A and Seriolimus day by day. And I usually use sun screen every day. My skin is great but I donā€™t know how to attribute or parse out the benefits between the different treatments. Iā€™ve used Retin A off and on for about 15 years. Perhaps 30% of the time I actually used it on a weekly basis, the rest not at all. It has significant benefits and the cost has been minimal as Iā€™ve purchased in Mexico and from India. Sirolimus cream for about 1.5 years total. All is good, but Iā€™m not sure of the marginal benefit.

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Iā€™m using a rapa serum based on @desertshoresā€™s formula.

Iā€™ve been using it daily for over 6 months, and I think I see a slight lessening of dark blemishes on my light skin. But it is hard to be certain until itā€™s clearer. Or better yet, gone. (I have every intention of reporting here if the spots actually clear.)

In the meantime, Iā€™m also trialing a separate serum based on Pine Bark Extract, on another part of the same hand. Again, Iā€™ll report back if I see clear results.

Iā€™m not using anything else on these spots.

In both cases, my formula is stupid simple, and is based on my research about how transcutol works. Again, Iā€™ll say more if and when I have higher confidence that itā€™s working.

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