Strangely, the fear of tobacco smoking is less intense than the fear of rapamycin. But whereas smoking shortens both the healthspan and lifespan, rapamycin extends them. Smoking increases the incidence of cancer and other age-related diseases. Rapamycin prevents cancer in mice and humans. Heavy smoking shortens life expectancy by 6-10 years. In other words, simply
not smoking prolongs life by 6-10 years. In middle-aged mice, just 3 months of high-dose rapamycin treatment was sufficient to increase life expectancy up to 60% [
109]. When taken late in life, rapamycin increases lifespan by 9-14% [
155], despite the dosage being suboptimal [
111]. This possibly equates to more than 7 years of human life. By comparison, smokers who quit late in life (at age 65 years), gain between 1.4 -3.7 years [
172]. Considered in those terms, one could say that in the elderly,
not taking rapamycin may be even more “dangerous” than smoking. Finally, rapamycin may be especially beneficial to smokers and former smokers. While the carcinogens from tobacco cause lung cancer in mice, rapamycin decreases tobacco-induced lung cancer multiplicity by 90% [
28].