Is there such thing as anti-aging drugs? What side effects do these drugs have on the body?
According to Nicklas Brendborg, some medical interventions hold promise for treating the symptoms of old age—or even reversing the aging process. But, like with any medication, a lot more testing is needed.
Here’s an early look at some of the anti-aging drugs that Brendborg points out.
Medications to Slow Aging
Brendborg discusses various anti-aging drugs that may be able to slow the aging process.
The first of these drugs is metformin, a diabetes treatment that has shown promise for extending a person’s life even if they are not diabetic. This is because insulin resistance tends to increase with age, meaning your body gets less efficient at processing sugar, and therefore is less able to regulate your blood sugar levels. Insulin resistance is the exact problem that drugs like metformin are designed to treat, meaning that this could be a way to treat one of the symptoms of aging.
However, Brendborg is somewhat skeptical about giving metformin to healthy people because it may make exercise less effective, which is counterproductive to a long and healthy life. Exercise and metformin both boost your ability to metabolize sugar, but for reasons that scientists don’t fully understand, these two methods seem to interfere with each other rather than supporting each other as one would expect.
(Shortform note: A 2021 clinical review of various trials of metformin concluded that it’s unclear whether metformin is effective in humans as an anti-aging drug. However, the researchers noted that metformin does extend healthspan (the years of life spent in good health) by reducing the risk of conditions ranging from diabetes to dementia. They add that these benefits appear to be side effects of processing and regulating sugar more effectively—which is what metformin is primarily used for. However, as noted above, some studies do suggest that combining exercise and metformin treatment lowers the effectiveness of both.)
There are also drugs that promote autophagy, the cellular recycling mechanism. Autophagy naturally declines with age, so enhancing it (using dietary choices, medications, or both) is an effective way to combat that part of the aging process.
One of these autophagy-boosting drugs is rapamycin, an immunosuppressant that’s normally used to prevent the body from rejecting a transplanted organ. Another is spermidine, a compound found naturally in many foods like whole grains and legumes. Spermidine has the advantage of not needing a prescription, since it’s readily available as a dietary supplement.
(Shortform note: Using unproven medications and supplements like Brendborg describes can be dangerous, and there’s a very real chance of doing more harm than good. Rapamycin in particular is known to have serious side effects, ranging from body aches and blurred vision to deafness and seizures. Furthermore, at least one recent study suggests that rapamycin may accelerate aging rather than slowing it. On the other hand, spermidine is not known to have any serious side effects, and some research suggests that it does have real and significant anti-aging properties, similar to those of calorie restriction.)
Finally, Brendborg points out that the development and testing of anti-aging drugs faces significant challenges. This is because, by the very nature of the work, it takes a long time to determine whether anti-aging treatments have been effective. Researchers must either wait decades to see if middle-aged test subjects live longer than expected, or test drugs on elderly subjects with less time for the treatments to work.
(Shortform note: By FDA protocols, clinical trials for new medications—or new uses for existing medications—are already time-consuming, possibly lasting upwards of six years before a drug can be approved for widespread use. Furthermore, the FDA estimates that only 25%-30% of drugs even make it to the last stages of trials, let alone being released to the public. As Brendborg notes, this problem is exponentially worse for anti-aging drugs, where researchers might have to wait decades at each stage of trials to see if the test subjects actually live longer than average.)
