Social Media Claims This FDA-Approved Pill Can Slow Down Aging. Can It?

In most Western cultures, aging is not something that folks necessarily embrace. While it’s better than the alternative, society does not make getting older easy.

Age discrimination is rampant, and beauty standards favor youth. So it’s no wonder that people do anything they can to push back on aging, whether that’s using Botox for fewer wrinkles, hair dye to hide grays or fillers to combat age-related face changes.

And people are turning to medication to slow aging, too.

Some medical professionals and social media influencers claim that rapamycin, a pill that’s approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in organ transplants, can also be used for increasing your life span.

The excitement around rapamycin as a longevity drug comes after studies showed years ago that low doses of rapamycin could increase the life span of mice by roughly 14%, said Dr. Elena Volpi, the director of the Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

But it remains to be seen whether this is true in humans, too. Clinical trials are ongoing to look into this, but for now, experts “don’t know whether rapamycin can expand life span in humans,” Volpi said.

So although there is science behind rapamycin, there is also more to the story. Here’s what experts say:

Rapamycin is FDA-approved for certain uses, but not for longevity.

Rapamycin was discovered on Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean, where it was found to have antifungal properties, said Stephanie Venn-Watson, the co-founder and CEO of Seraphina Therapeutics. (Venn-Watson studies longevity-enhancing substances and owns a brand of health supplements.)

Since then, rapamycin has been used for organ