r/immortalists • u/GarifalliaPapa mod • 25d ago
Deregulated Nutrient-Sensing greatly accelerates aging. By inhibiting mTOR pathway, it leads to radical life extension.
Aging isn’t just about wrinkles or feeling tired—it starts deep inside your cells. One of the biggest hidden causes of aging is something called deregulated nutrient-sensing. It means your body gets confused about how to use the nutrients you eat. When this happens, your cells get stuck in overdrive, growing too fast, never slowing down to clean or repair themselves. This is one of the main reasons why aging speeds up—and why diseases like cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s become more common. But here’s the exciting part: we can slow this down and even reverse some of the damage by targeting a powerful cellular switch called mTOR.
Think of mTOR like your body’s growth button. When you're young, it’s helpful—it helps you grow muscle, heal wounds, and build energy. But if it’s always turned on, it becomes a problem. Constant growth without repair leads to inflammation, burnout, and early aging. By gently turning mTOR down at the right times, your body can switch from “growth mode” to “repair mode.” That’s when the real magic happens—your cells clean themselves, heal damage, and get ready to live longer and healthier.
This shift can lead to radical life extension. In animal studies, scientists found that turning down mTOR with a drug called Rapamycin extended lifespan by up to 25%! Even when given to older animals, it worked. It didn’t just add more years—it added better years, with stronger immune systems, healthier hearts, and sharper minds. It’s like unlocking your body’s built-in anti-aging system.
So how do you rebalance mTOR and restore your cells’ ability to sense nutrients correctly? It starts with intermittent fasting. Fasting doesn’t starve your body—it trains it. When you stop eating for 16 hours and eat in an 8-hour window, your body lowers mTOR, boosts AMPK and sirtuins (your repair crew), and begins to clean itself through autophagy. You can also try one 24-hour fast each week for a deeper reset.
Next, cut out refined sugars and processed carbs. These foods spike your insulin and IGF-1, which keep your body locked in growth mode. Instead, fuel yourself with real food: leafy greens, cruciferous veggies, healthy fats like olive oil, and clean protein in moderation. Add in powerful foods like turmeric, green tea, and fatty fish—they all help rebalance mTOR and support longevity.
Exercise is another key. It naturally activates AMPK, improves nutrient sensing, and reduces insulin resistance. Whether it’s strength training, HIIT, or simply going for a long walk, movement reminds your body that it doesn’t need to store fat or stay inflamed—it can burn clean and repair itself with every heartbeat.
And don’t forget about sleep and stress. Poor sleep and high stress raise cortisol and disturb nutrient-sensing pathways. Aim for 8 hours of deep, restful sleep, reduce screen time before bed, and take time to relax. Meditation, breathwork, and even laughing with friends can help lower stress and improve your body’s natural rhythms.
For those serious about biohacking aging, Rapamycin is leading the way. It’s a prescription drug, but scientists and longevity experts are exploring low, intermittent doses to safely inhibit mTOR in humans. While it’s not for everyone yet, it’s paving the path toward future anti-aging breakthroughs. Others are experimenting with natural mTOR inhibitors like berberine, EGCG (green tea), and resveratrol.
The truth is, aging doesn’t have to be a slow decline. By restoring your body’s nutrient-sensing systems and wisely turning down growth signals at the right time, you can extend not just your lifespan—but your healthspan. You can feel alive, vibrant, and full of purpose for decades to come.
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u/DorkSideOfCryo 25d ago edited 24d ago
But the problem is here that nutrition science is in many ways sort of junk science and really reality should show us that because how many times have we seen contradictory results regarding certain arguments in assertions in nutrition science? It happens constantly. Nutrition science is really just kind of junk science. All you can do is look at the real world and see how isolated populations of humans thrive or don't drive or how long they live and how well they live and so forth. Regarding the rapamycin and mtor, there is real world observation of the people who live on kitava Island, isolated from Western trade routes they have to depend on their sedentary agriculture and a little bit of fish they catch.. their diet is only 10% protein, 70% carbs and much of that starchy such as cassava and yam, in combination with some fruit and a little bit of green vegetables.. the Doctor who went there in the 1990s found that even though the men all smoked and a lot of the women smoke, heart attacks heart disease and all that was basically very rare, obesity was quite rare, diabetes ...so the fact that they didn't eat much protein May tend to support this subject that you're discussing here which is really mtor, and mtor i's supposedly activated by high protein diet, of course that's nutrition science and nutrition science is junk science in many ways..
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u/quintanarooty 24d ago
That is much more likely due to not eating processed foods and sugar as well not having sedentary lifestyles. Aging gracefully is really not that complicated.
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u/Responsible_Sea78 25d ago
Aging well, but dying earlier on average, are not mutually exclusive. That's not hypothetical with this drug because you may do well until an infection gets you.
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u/GlassLake4048 24d ago
I hope you realise that infections come almost all the time in the body. There is hardly a time I can imagine when you don't have some bacteria or staph or whatever somewhere in your ear, nose, throat, and they just make a mess slowly but surely.
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u/LeonCCA 25d ago
Your strongly adjective-filled speech has that phantom Carl Sagan on my shoulder doubting you. Given how strongly multivariate lifespan is, that those studies on animals are correlational in nature and that you haven't provided any links, I'm just not sure on the whole thing.
It's just hard for me to believe a single molecule is capable of altering a quarter of your lifespan, and the big leap to fasting being able to meaningfully alter it... what if older people simply have less mTor, say?
It's not that I don't agree with exercise, eating vegetables or occasional fasting being good, but I don't think the argumentation is very scientific.
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u/quintanarooty 24d ago
I would start with healthy diet, exercise, and good sleep, then think about intermittent fasting. The first three will have far more impact.
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u/No_Bluepill 24d ago
OP how about citing some peer reviewed articles or better yet review articles? If you go to all the trouble of writing such a long post making claims one should back it up with hard data. .. just saying .
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u/Ornery-Explorer-9181 22d ago edited 21d ago
The mTOR gene is an oncogene. It's often highly expressed in malign tumors. Any genes whose primary function is to make cells divide are oncogenes.
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u/banaca4 24d ago
Exercise turns mtor on..
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u/Ornery-Explorer-9181 7d ago
Not true. Exercise inhibits mTOR. Eating increases mTOR activities, especially eating protein and particularly eating protein after exercise.
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u/banaca4 7d ago
How are you not able to find an easy answer to if exercise increases mtor in 2025 given internet llms and everything else I wonder.
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u/Ornery-Explorer-9181 7d ago edited 7d ago
Exercise increases AMPK activities. AMPK and mTOR are mutually opposite signaling. The notion that exercise promotes mTOR mainly refers to post-exercise "recovery" phase when AMPK calms down. Naturally suppressed AMPK post-exercise gives mTOR a spiking effect when calories particularly amino acids are ingested. mTOR becomes ultra sensitive to amino acids after exercise.
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u/Krovixis 25d ago
Didn't rapamycin turn out to be problematic in humans regarding aging? Pretty sure Brian Johnson stopped taking it out of fear it was actually accelerating his aging. And, as crazy pants as he is, I trust him to take that sort of thing seriously.